If there is one lesson I wish I could have processed earlier in life, it would be the same one I want to impress on others today. In short, it is this: what we think about, dwell on, give our attention to, has a tremendous impact on our behavior patterns. Put even more simply, we become what we think about most of the time.
That truth came to me years ago, not through a personal revelation, but by a book: Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. He was also a Holocaust survivor. The book documents his experience in Nazi concentration camps, which led him to find the meaning of life in all its forms of existence. The book contains his now famous statement: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Here’s another sentence from that book that still grabs my attention: “When we are no longer able to change a situation,” he said, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”
That truth, by the way, is very similar to Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer, known as The Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Frankl’s words are a channel to freedom, empowering us to escape the captivity of our own negativity. His words both challenge and comfort. We can choose our attitude in whatever situation we find ourselves, whether we are fortunate enough to be staying in a luxury hotel on a beach in the South of France or unfortunate enough to be locked up in a corrections facility in Whatever City, U.S.A.
The Apostle Paul, who knew a thing or two about being incarcerated—often being confined to dungeons, on several occasions having been beaten within an inch of his life—reflected on how his attitude affected his behavior in a letter he wrote to the church in Philippi, probably written while he was in a Roman prison, where he would have been at the mercy of friends to bring him food and clothing: “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have,” he wrote. “I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little” (Philippians 4:12).
And where did he find that contentment? “I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength,” he told them.
Christ had dramatically changed the way he thought and that had changed the course of his life, resulting in freedom and contentment. He stated that truth to the church in Rome: “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think,” he admonished them. “Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
He even gave the Philippians a sample of what they could think about: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8).
When you awake tomorrow morning, your pains, your hurts, your challenges and battles will not be exactly like mine. And your joys, and delights, and victories will vary from mine as well.
But you and I will have this one thing in common, regardless of who you are and where you find yourself: we both have the freedom to choose our attitudes.
Even if you are bound by addiction, or confined in a padded cell, or oppressed by someone else, you can at least choose your attitude.
The only question is, which attitude will we, you and I, choose?
How about let’s choose the right ones, one moment at a time, and patiently wait for the positive results?