Attitude

A mental position (feeling or emotion) concerning a fact or a state; a state of mind; a point of view or an outlook. Attitudes are relatively enduring views on people, behavior, events, or things. Attitudes are expected to change as a result of experience, in contrast to personality, which, as another mental construct, is much less apt to alter over time.An attitude can also be a position in which a body is placed; an arrangement of body parts; a body's posture, gesture, or pose. Because a body's position and movement can express feelings and ideas apart from oral and facial expressions, it is said to communicate in "body language."Quote: "A super-positive mental attitude is very important when you are trying to learn a new skill. Whether it's learning to ride a bike, play the violin, or draw in 3-D, you've got to believe in yourself. You've got to believe you can and will learn to do it. Not only just learn it, but master it to the point of being a world-famous expert. For example, let's say that you are just learning how to ride a bike. You get on the seat, hold the handlebars straight, put one foot on the pedal, and push off the ground with your other foot. As the bike begins to move, you begin thinking to yourself, 'What am I doing? I can't ride a bike! This is totally crazy! I'm going to crash! I'm going to fall over and bounce on the street like a rubber ball! Help! Help!' How far do you think you will get with this kind of negative thinking? Not far at all, I guarantee. This thinking inside your head is called self-talk. Everyone self-talks with themselves twenty-four hours of every day. This self-talk is amazingly fast, several hundred words a minute, much faster than you can speak out loud. Having a super-positive mental attitude means training yourself to self-talk in a 'Yes I can do it,' positive way. Now let's try that learning-how-to-ride-a-bike scenario with a super-positive mental attitude. You get on the seat, hold the handlebars straight, put one foot on the pedal, and push off the ground with your other foot. As the bike begins to move, you begin thinking to yourself, 'Hey, this is easier than I thought! I can do this. This is really cool. I'm a bike-riding machine! I'm a pedaling animal! I'm going to go to the Olympics!' How far do you think you'll go? Do you think you will learn how to ride a bike faster? I do! That same kind of positive self-talk will help you become a Super-3-D Artist in no time!" Mark Kistler, American TV artist / drawing instructor. "The Twelve Renaissance Words of Drawing in 3-D," 1997. "[Today's students] can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains . . . . If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude." Jesse Jackson (1941-), American civil rights leader, politician, and Baptist minister. Also see achievement, artistic temperament, bias, brainstorming, effort, empathy, expression, inspiration, irony, meaning, memory, model, motivation, muse, nuance, obsession, positive, praise, and sentiment.