Two Attitudes

I’m reading Ryan Holiday’s Courage Is Calling, rekindling my love for his writing. It is his first in what will be his series on the Four Stoic Virtues – wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Otherwise, my all time favorite book of his is The Obstacle Is The Way. You may have seen me write that phrase a few hundred times by now. A chapter I read last night coupled with a Jay Shetty podcast I listened to yesterday added some clarity to my own thoughts on choice in attitude, so today I’m writing about two attitudes and how they shape our experiences.

Two Attitudes

First, a short passage from last night’s reading:

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“We go through life in two ways. We choose between effective truths: that we have the ability to change our situation, or that we are at the mercy of the situations in which we find ourselves. We can rely on luck . . . or cause and effect.

Of course, just because you think you can do something doesn’t mean you can. But if you don’t believe you can do something, if you’re afraid of it, it’s very unlikely that you will be able to do it. Whether that’s walking again or inventing something—if you decide it can’t be done, it’s not happening. Not by you, anyway.

Xenophon, the great Athenian cavalry commander, once found himself trapped in the middle of Persia, one of ten thousand leaderless Greek troops. As he attempted to rally the men who had begun to despair, who had frozen with fear and frustration, waiting for the next bad event, he explained to them the same dichotomy. He said they could choose between two attitudes, one that said,

“What is going to happen to me?”

And the other that said,

“What action am I going to take?’”

– Ryan Holiday, Courage Is Calling

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What is going to happen to me?

VERSUS

What action am I going to take?

AKA – Choose how you respond.

Control the Controllables

This all sounds a lot like the idea of controlling the controllables and accepting the uncontrollables. This falls under the second attitude of “what action am I going to take?” The first attitude sounds like hoping for good luck – that sounds stressful!

Peace and Balance

Jay Shetty’s podcast on ways to create more peace and balance in your life fits in with this idea, too. The first way he discusses is to not obsess over peace and balance. AKA – control the controllables and accept the uncontrollables. Fretting over peace and balance is in essence butting heads with it, forcing it, creating a battle where in actuality you want the opposite. In his opinion it is better to be wherever you are and let it come when it does. Two different attitudes, two very different results.

Recovery Attitude

I’m so happy to have realized these two attitudes in my own life prior to this entire hip and pelvis journey! I wasn’t always of the second attitude, instead living with a sense that I could control everything – pushing for what I wanted, when I wanted it. Fortunately, life, previous surgeries, loss, difficult pregnancies, raising kids – these things taught me to live in harmony with whatever comes my way, dance with it, and find the actions that I can take to promote the best outcome.

A huge part of Best Outcome is the mental toll that occurs during the journey and this toll is determined by our own chosen attitude. Best Outcome arises when it does, how it does, so I may as well make the best of the journey and focus on what is within my scope.

It would be easy to sit by helplessly waiting for fate or luck or whatever passive thing to happen to me, meanwhile worrying and being grumpy. Instead, I’ve chosen to do whatever I can to further my healing, and then accept whatever else is and the unknown timelines that accompany. Harmony, peace, patience, and ultimately the results I’ve wanted from the start.

Two Attitudes

When the unexpected happens in your life, which attitude do you naturally lean towards? Which do you find to be the most effective?

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