Choosing Your Attitude; A Recent Personal Experience

July 24, 2009 by Gil Pizano
Filed under: Positive Attitude 

Anyone for Lemonade?I’m sure many of you have heard the say­ing “When life gives you lemons…make lemon­ade”. Well for those of you who know me, you know that I enjoy work­ing out and stay­ing in shape. Some of my per­sonal exer­cise pas­sions include run­ning, weight and resis­tance train­ing, and mar­tial arts. Recently, I injured myself while work­ing out in the gym. The injury wound up to be a par­tial tear of both my right iliop­soas (hip-flexor) and my lower rectus-abdominis (the six pack mus­cle). Don’t ask me how I did it. Let’s just say that even though I had been work­ing out already for over 40 min­utes, and was more than warmed up, one wrong angle on a par­tic­u­lar exer­cise can make all the dif­fer­ence. Need­less to say, the injury put me out of being able to work out at all until the injury is healed. The injury didn’t even allow me to drive a car!

That was a recent lemon that life gave me and it’s now about a month ago. I’m still not allowed to work out or drive a car until I’ve gone through a cer­tain amount of phys­i­cal ther­apy.  Accord­ing to the sports ortho­pe­dic doc­tors who’ve exam­ined me, this type of injury could take between six months to a year to heal…UGH!Not A Happy Camper

Not being able to work out, run or do mar­tial arts is shear tor­ture for me! On top of that, I also enjoy eat­ing var­i­ous types of foods. The food I enjoy may be healthy for the most part, but food none the less. With­out the abil­ity to be as phys­i­cally active, the amount of calo­ries my body needs has gone way down. If I con­tin­ued to eat the way I was before my injury, I would for sure pack on the pounds!

What Do I Do Now? Impor­tance Choos­ing Your Attitude

So what did I do with the lemon I got thrown?  I could’ve com­plained, gone into a bout of self-pity with a neg­a­tive atti­tude, but I chose not to!  I decided on main­tain­ing a pos­i­tive atti­tude. To do some­thing more pro­duc­tive with the time I now had by doing some­thing I never did before. I started a blog. In addi­tion, I started to read many other people’s blogs as well.

What I did not expect was how much joy cre­at­ing a blog, adding to a blog and read­ing other people’s blogs would be. In the past month I’ve met a lot of great indi­vid­u­als and groups online. I’ve been able to share expe­ri­ences, dis­cuss top­ics of inter­ests and learn from peo­ple who I did not even know a cou­ple of months ago. Now I look for­ward to adding to my blog, com­ment­ing on other blogs and shar­ing ideas. Choos­ing your atti­tude is so impor­tant. For me, this was the lemon­ade I chose to make with the lemon I got and it’s opened up an entire new world that I oth­er­wise would not have known.

An Inspi­ra­tion

A per­sonal favorite of mine is the New York Times best seller “No Excuses: The True Story of a Con­gen­i­tal Amputee Who Became a Cham­pion in Wrestling and in Life” by Kyle May­nard. Kyle is a con­gen­i­tal amputee who was born with arms that end just above the elbow and legs that end at the knees.

No ExcusesHere is a per­son who had many rea­sons to not do things in life, but his choice of atti­tude helped him to not give in and become a cham­pion high school wrestler. An exam­ple of his atti­tude towards the chal­lenges of his life, and life itself:

“When­ever I’ve faced adver­sity, I’ve used that chal­lenge as moti­va­tion to win through, no mat­ter the cost. When I meet with fail­ure, I pick myself up, dust of the dirt from the fall and focus on try­ing again. You can’t let fail­ure beat you or give into the temp­ta­tion of tak­ing the easy way out. The world’s great­est accom­plish­ments aren’t achieved on the first try.”

I read Kyle’s book a few years ago, but it still remains in my top 10 favorites. His atti­tude to choose the pos­i­tive made all of the dif­fer­ence in his life. That exam­ple is one of the things to this day that helps me main­tain my pos­i­tive attitude.

Some Sources for a Pos­i­tive Atti­tude Boost

Regard­less of who you are, myself included, we all get days when it seems as though the only choice is to have a neg­a­tive atti­tude. When those days come into my life, the thing that has helped me out is of course my own per­sonal faith. Addi­tion­ally, there are many other things that help me regain a pos­i­tive attitude.

  • A favorite song
  • A favorite book
  • The mem­ory of some­one whose com­pany I enjoy.

Blogs and web­sites are also some of great sources for re-acquiring a pos­i­tive atti­tude. Below are some of my favorites that may help you in choos­ing your attitude:

What are some of your favorite ways to develop a bet­ter atti­tude? Do you know of any­one who is always in a pos­i­tive mood? How do they keep such a pos­i­tive atti­tude going? Inquir­ing minds would like to know.

(My sin­cer­est wish is that the above has helped to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in your life or in the life of some­one you know! If you know of some­one who you believe needs to see this post…let them know!)

Warmest Regards,

Gil

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Comments

6 Comments on Choosing Your Attitude; A Recent Personal Experience

  1. Q on Sat, 25th Jul 2009 1:25 pm

    2. You know, things truly hap­pen for a rea­son. Not say­ing that in the weird cos­mic way, but read­ing is prob­a­bly some­thing you needed to do right about now in order to learn some­thing about your­self.
    That is great you did not let your injury get you down!

    Like or Dis­like: Thumb up 1 Thumb down 0

  2. Cristina Hennelly on Sat, 25th Jul 2009 2:44 pm

    3. I heard about Kyle’s story in a spe­cial that one of those 20/20 type shows did on him. Very inspi­ra­tional! Cool Blog!

    Like or Dis­like: Thumb up 1 Thumb down 0

  3. Michael on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 1:03 pm

    4. Hey Gil -

    I love your Lemon­ade (Blog). You are a true inspi­ra­tion and I look for­ward to read­ing your future posts :) Well Done and keep up the good work!

    Like or Dis­like: Thumb up 1 Thumb down 0

  4. Sue Vittner on Sat, 29th Aug 2009 1:02 pm

    5. i love this post! great job in mak­ing that yummy lemon­ade! do you add honey to it?

    i also had an injury once that led to a new career. i had just started get­ting into yoga and “don’t ask me how” but i hurt my shoul­der. it was right before i was to go to antarc­tica to be a janitor.

    sure enough, all of that toi­let clean­ing and mop­ping really added to the shoul­der injury and one night out danc­ing my neck just wouldn’t move. for­tu­nately there was a great phys­i­cal ther­a­pist on the ice who had also been a mas­sage ther­a­pist. she mostly did mas­sage on me and i quickly got bet­ter. i was sold on the idea that mas­sage was a heal­ing art, so when i got back to the states i started mas­sage school. it’s been a super path for me.

    thanks for your post and i look for­ward to your blog posts!
    Sue Vittner´s last blog ..Do You Stand On Your Head In Hopes Of Pleas­ing Oth­ers? My ComLuv Profile

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  5. Looking for Something To Do? Why Not Give Reading a Shot! | gilpizano.com on Sun, 20th Dec 2009 5:18 pm

    6. […] for­tu­nate to only get 12 to 16 inches. Some other areas of the state got over 24 inches. Due to my injury this past sum­mer, I’m still recov­er­ing and med­ically for­bid­den from all strong twist­ing motions that may cause me […]

    Like or Dis­like: Thumb up 0 Thumb down 0

  6. shubhangi on Thu, 19th Aug 2010 2:10 am

    7. its really felt me encour­ag­ing read­ing your blog. i don have much knowl­edge but i def­i­nitely can say that its pos­si­ble all if atti­tude is pos­i­tive.… thank you so much..

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