Always Positive Attitude

I want to share something that came out of a book I was reading last week “Building and Maintaining an Always Positive Attitude” and the accent of the book is on ‘Always Positive Attitude’ in your business. It’s a compilation by different authors on different subjects. The one that grabbed my attention was the one on self image by Jim Dorman. A well put together article and a lot of my thoughts this morning come from that article. As I was reflecting on what to share with you all this morning, some of the images I’ve been giving you over the months I have been speaking to you came to mind. One was of the ship, that while it may be safe in harbor, that’s not why it was built; and so have encouraged you to step out and inherit the things that God has for us. Another image that comes to mind is: you get into a swimming pool and we hold on to the piping along the sides, treading water, and say that we have been swimming, but never really get into the deep. We’re really not swimming, are we? We don’t experience the joy of getting into the deep and having a real good swim.



These images in mind, I thought self image is sometimes like that. We go out in life and life sometimes isn’t very good to us. In the environments we are in, we come up against people who may not think the way we do, who may not react to the things we do in a pleasant way. It tends to leave its scars on us. At the end of the day, we come home and we retreat to the things that will try and help us to work our way through the toll that the day took. Some of us get into hobbies, some of us have good families that we come back to and try to get back our self image. Or we go back to old habits.

I remember a song from the early 70s or 80s about a guy who had a guitar and every night he would go out and sing and entertain people. And some of them would appreciate and some wouldn’t. But when he came home he would crawl into bed with his wife who believed in him. The song went on to say that to her he was always a superstar. Some of us have that beautiful person to come back to and some of us may not. Some of us may be going through a difficult situation, a family crisis. And chances are that it may not be something that enhances our self image.

So what do we do? How do we get a good self image so that we’re able to have a healthy outlook towards life?

I thought a key is to be able to build a good foundation so that whatever we face around us doesn’t in any way mitigate or diminish our idea of our self or our self image. There are some folks who have a superior idea about themselves – see myself and project myself in such a way as to confirm that I have no weaknesses or flaws. “I am the strongest, the smartest or the coolest, the most successful person in the group.” While this is positive, it’s not very healthy. And some of us may have an inferiority base – see yourself as less talented, less attractive, less successful that anyone else. We tend to see more of our weaknesses rather than strengths. We always want to obtain the qualities that we lack or see in ourselves from others. And we think of ourselves as insignificant. This is neither positive nor healthy.

The key is to have a balanced image of ourselves. I recognize that we have God-given strengths or gifts that we can use to pursue our goals and acknowledge the gifts of others without the fear of reducing our own value. And we work on improving but having no illusions about being the perfect individual. This is healthy and positive and will lead to a life of significance and satisfaction. But, how do we get there?

I read a quote by Richard Bach. He says “One way to find out is to look in a mirror. Look there and we’ll see someone’s dearly beloved. Some warm, honest and trusting human, loving and thoughtful, foolish sometimes and sometimes wise. There we’ll see one who can encourage and cope and inspire another human being to live to her very best, to reach the highest he can dare imagine.” That’s the ideal, isn’t it? To have that kind of a self image, that we see ourselves as somebody who is loved, who is an encourager. Yet we know that very often that is not the case. We see around us people who are not like that, are not perfect. And while we are reminded that we are all made in God’s image, sometimes we say that image is a poor image. We see physical defects all around us. Yet we ought to remind ourselves that to be made in God’s image is to be made in the thought patterns, the mind that God gives to us. We live in a world that is not entirely perfect.

I love this article by Jim Dorman because he talks about his son Eric who was born with spina bifida which is a defect of the spinal cord. Eric didn’t let this defect prevent him from having a good self image. By the time he was a teenager, even though he had almost 30 brain surgeries to counter the seizures he was having, as well as bladder and kidney problems, he not once allowed it to interfere with how he thought of himself. Jim Dorman says that one day he and his brother who wore glasses from the time he was small, were sitting together and both of them had braces. And Eric’s braces were coming off that day and he looked at his brother and said, “Tomorrow after my braces are off, I’ll be normal and you’ll still be wearing glasses.” What a wonderful statement, from one who is in a wheelchair, struggling with all kinds of problems. Eric went on to do a whole lot of things. He became a team sport player in Atlanta, started an organization called Power Soccer where athletes in power wheelchairs can compete with others throughout the world, raises money to offer aid and encouragement to those less fortunate than himself. Snorkels in Hawaii, plays billiards and chess, does all the things, has a healthy self image. And yet his physical image is not healthy at all.

I want us to move away from that. A self image doesn’t depend on how you look, or how God has put you together or some of the strikes that we have against us. It’s the image of God that is within us, that enables us to have a good self image. Sometimes we look at our lives and say, “Yes, but for a long time I have had this kind of an image. I don’t really think too much about myself”. Well, maybe its time to reprogram yourself.

I love the story of the glass. Computer programmers know the acronym GIGO. It means “Garbage In; Garbage Out”. What you put in, is what comes out. Imagine each of us has a glass of water that represents our life. To symbolize the negative we’ve all experienced, we add red coloring to the water. How dark is the water in your glass? Some glasses are darker than others, but all glasses have some discoloration. And once the coloring (the negative images) get there, we can’t remove it. Here’s what you can do. You can dilute it with all your positive experiences. Books, tapes, people, things that you’ve read in the Bible or anything that will be positive for you. It’s like clear water. You pour enough of that into your glass and the red will eventually become diluted to the point that you can no longer see it.

How is your glass today, my friends? As you listen on this call are you looking at yourself and saying, “Well, my self image is not that big. I’ve had a lot of strikes against me. I’m a couple of inches tall in my own eyes.”

The Bible says: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” How we think about ourselves is how we will become. And yet we have the ability to take a pause like maybe today, and say, “I’ve taken a lot and believed a lot about myself. But today I’m going to put positive things into my life. I’m going to look at my life and say I’m better than I thought I was. I have a purpose in life. I’m a person of integrity. I’m a loving faithful husband and father or wife and mother. I’m a trustworthy leader, loyal and dependable. I have a sense of humor, I can laugh at myself, laugh with others. Maybe you can say this morning, I’m persistent, resilient, sensitive, and compassionate. I’m decisive, optimistic, creative. I’m available to others, I’m teachable. All good qualities, maybe you never thought about. Maybe it’s time to take a highlighter and highlight those areas of your life and say “Hey, you know what? That’s who I am. For many years I believed the negative things and never thought of myself with a healthy self image. But today, I’m going to.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes says, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.” How is your self image today, my friends? Are you ready to put in some positives? Look at the positives in your life and put them into the glass that is red in color and watch it get down to a pink and then light pink and then almost disappear. The effect of that is a positive self imaged person. That’s my prayer for each one of you on this call, that today would be a defining moment, that you stop looking at yourself as someone who doesn’t have a good self image and say, “From this point on, made in the image of God, that’s a great positive start for me and I’m going to believe that.

May God Bless You All.