Change your Attitude

 

This originated as a Facebook Note.  A bunch of my friends liked this passage, and then I shared it on my first blog, Caroline’s Chronicles of Crime.  I’m sharing it again, because it is still a worthy read. 

Instead of changing your attitude, make the changes you truly want.  Why should you have to change?  Why can’t the other people change instead?  In some ways, it’s good to change in the sense of learning and growing, but everyone needs to grow, not just the one getting fertilized with all the BS.

Changing the world is easier said than done, but changing your attitude is lying to yourself.  The world around you is going to change anyway, for better or for worse.  Some people sip their tea, watching the world burn with the consequences of others’ actions, and other people still believe utopia is possible.

The following is my original passage.  The last few paragraphs were my spur of the moment thoughts on the matter.

Change your Attitude

Whenever anyone is negative about work, school, or the doldrums of life, it’s not unusual to hear someone say, “Change your attitude.”  It’s supposed to be a positive statement, but in my honest opinion, it’s not natural.  It’s not good to just change your attitude about anything negative or painful.  Try telling that to a Holocaust survivor and their terrible memories.  O, just change your attitude and learn to like the Nazis….no.

While on the point of the Holocaust, I remember listening to an inspirational tape by Earl Nightingale, and he was a Holocaust survivor who believed in changing one’s attitude.  I give him kudos because he underwent indescribable cruelty.  He talked about his experiences being vivisected by the Nazi scientists.  The Nazis could do virtually anything, but he realized they could not control his choice of thoughts.  He could either feel like crap while scalpels were cutting into him, or he could change his attitude toward the situation.  I don’t know how anyone could be happy while undergoing vivisection, but I couldn’t call him phony for “changing his attitude.”

I thought about this for awhile because I always thought it was flaky and insensitive to tell people to just change their attitudes.  Then something clicked.  Vivisection is unspeakable enough that medical schools ban its practice on animals.  It’s traumatic for a human.  With trauma, come the mind’s defenses to get through it.  In psychology, they are called ego-defense mechanisms.  Changing your attitude is an ego defense mechanism, specifically Reaction Formation.  In order for Nightingale to get through the torture, he had to form an alternative reaction.

Besides extremes like torture, we are expected to change our attitudes when faced with problems.  For instance, if you hate math, staring at your homework and grumbling for a few hours will not get it done quicker.  If you pretend to like it, it gets done quicker.  It may be fake, but it works, and it’s better than feeling miserable.

Though in some cases, changing your attitude is not the best idea.  Let’s say you work at a department store and you don’t believe in the store’s overburdening policy to force-sell credit cards on every customer, driving more people into debt.  Bosses and stupid posters say “Change your Attitude.”  The reason for this is to keep you in your place.  Retailers have high employee turnovers, so management wants to retain its subordinates by keeping them “happy.”  If you choose to change your attitude, then, OoooHHhh my goooshhhh I LOVE SELLING CREDIT CARDS TO THESE DEBT-LOVING CUSTOMERS……This isn’t the only option.  You can get another job.  Then maybe your boss can change his/her attitude about the employee turnover rate.

You shouldn’t have to change your attitude all the time.  Sometimes it’s a good thing, and other times, it’s not healthy.  If you are in the military, should you have to change your attitude toward killing?  If you are a rape victim, should you just change your attitude toward rape?  There’s always that flaky person who says, “You have a choice.  You can either feel horrible or you can change your attitude and think happy thoughts.”  Try telling that to child porn victim!  Changing your attitude is not the best idea, despite it being advertised as such – it’s not the only idea.

Your initial feelings and thoughts are your truest reactions to any situation.  Changing your attitude masks those honest feelings with alternative, secondary emotions that we make ourselves feel.  It can be an emotional crutch, but you don’t always need a crutch.  It represses or denies our real feelings.  If someone changes their attitude too often, emotional compromise becomes habitual and at some point, the person may be confused on what their natural feelings really were.  They have emotionally lied to themselves so long that they don’t even know what their real attitude is anymore.

Tom Sawyer changed his attitude toward painting a fence to deceive the neighborhood kids to help him finish the chore/punishment.  The idea is that he changed his attitude as a means of deception.  Tricking yourself into liking math will get you through your homework so you can play your video games sooner.  Although changing your attitude may help to an extent, but if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Instead of creating attitudes to protect your true but vulnerable feelings, embrace your honest feelings.  Even though sadness may be horrible, it’s at least real.  Tears release toxins.  Anger is your mind’s alarm system, letting you know something is wrong.  Sweeping your problems under the carpet will build up over time.  Even though sadness and anger are painful, they are a part of your psyche.  Denying the fact that you hate certain things is ignoring part of your character.  Get to know yourself for how you really feel and think.  Self awareness is the first step of self-actualization.

Changing your attitude is not the best answer to life’s problems.  Learning to like a messy house will not keep the cockroaches away.  (Don’t learn to like the cockroaches, either).  Instead, look at the problem from different angles.  Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.  By viewpoint, I mean an intangible standing point to view a scenario.  From there you can draw more than one judgment and develop many attitudes naturally.  Keep your first view, because all views equally exist, just like your attitudes whether you repress them or not.  Instead of thinking like someone else, you can think like many different people.  It’s multi-dimensional thinking.  Looking at situations from multiple angles enables analytical abilities.  Take into account the positive, negative, and neutral standpoints.  If you only think positively, then you are ruling out the negative, which is biased – not positive.

Here are my key points.

1. Changing attitude is Reaction Formation, an ego defense mechanism.
2. Like other ego-defense mechanisms, they can be good or bad.
3. Don’t change your attitude if you have other options.
4. Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.
1. Look at things from multiple stances.
5. Your first feelings are your most honest.
6. If you can, embrace your feelings, and know yourself.

If you are traumatized, don’t pretend you aren’t.  If you hate stuff, you don’t have to pretend you love those things – unless you need to tackle the chores or homework, then just fake it for awhile.  If you have a problem, do something about it.

I’m just throwing this in here.  I once read that some murderer was happy while being executed.  While the lethal injection was being administered, he said, “This is awesome!”  Did he change his attitude or was that his real attitude?

Curious to note, when Earl Nightingale said he changed his attitude towards vivisection, he did not mention what his new attitude was.

 

 

Originally posted: February 5, 2014

Adding to the Idea for the Scariest Haunted House

 

            Last year, I realized something was missing from my haunted house.  What is an OSHA violating haunted house without a snake pit!  I just felt I needed to edit this post so it would be complete.  For those who haven’t seen this idea and like a scare, you’re in for a treat – or a trick if you dare.  Go ahead, read on.

*** 

            I had this idea for a haunted house that I know will never happen, due to anticipated OSHA violations.  Given that, no one will steal this idea either.  It’s just interesting to imagine, because it features eclectic fears that aren’t normally considered when conceptualizing a haunted house.  Normally, there are people jumping out of corners and screaming semi-randomly, which is more annoying than scary.

Anyway, onto the non-existent Halloween attraction that will never be built!

Patrons would need to sign waivers and get an EKG test prior to entering.

The adventure starts with patrons being led into an elevator.  It claims it's taking you down to the eighth basement.  It descends one level, but it shutters and gets stuck with the lights out.  The fire alarm goes off.  Red lights flicker.  None of the emergency buttons work.**  The phone box is empty.  Fog starts filling the elevator compartment, and it smells smoky.

After a minute, the doors fling open.  The patrons walk down a hallway with glass walls.  On the outside of these windowed walls are hundreds of tarantulas.  There are separate glass enclosures for the scorpions.  A voice over the loudspeaker says that the windows need to be fixed due to breakage points in the glass.  At the end is an abrupt chamber for a couple coconut crabs.  (At this point, PETA would come after me too, but they have animal skeletons in their closets anyway, those baby seal clubbing hypocrites!  I would feed all the insects and those coconut crabs!  Plus they would get enough exercise!)

The patrons would turn a corner into the next hallway.  One side has a floor-to-ceiling mirror.  People might think it’s tame since there is nothing else in the hallway, until they reach the end.  They would turn the corner, and find out that it was a two-way mirror on the other side.  There are creepy people on the other side, watching.  Instead of horror movie monsters, they are just dressed as unkempt, trashy people sitting in chairs, staring at the unaware patrons through the mirror.  The creepy employees don’t say anything or move.

As you snake around to the next corridor, the walls become farther apart.  This hall has a glass floor with a complete view of a large room below, 14 feet deep.  That room is full of pythons that are free to roam, within the piles of the other snakes, scale the walls of the pit, or reach the ceiling under your feet.  The glass is clear enough to feel thin.  Hopefully you don’t trip.

[End of Edit – Plus I would insure the serpents were well fed.]

Then the final hallway is a winding, dark crawl space with absolutely no light.  Inside the void/crawl space, there are unnerving sound effects.  Disturbing sounds include distant screams, and closer growls of animals prowling the crawl space.  There are whispers over a loud quietspeaker that there is no end to this maze, that it eventually narrows into an ultimate dead end, and you’ll be buried alive and/or eaten by the tarantulas.  (I can already imagine the lawsuits!  This is supposed to be a non-existent, never-will-happen haunted house.  So chill!)

In the end, patrons will make it out of the crawl space alive, which leads to a gift shop.  Honestly, who doesn’t like gift shops?  All patrons would receive free sunglasses to cope with the light, which would be relatively dimmed.  If anyone was too disturbed, they would get refunded and a free gift from the shop.  If someone was unimpressed and completely unafraid, they would be free to give constructive criticism on how to make this theoretical place more threatening, plus get a free gift!

Disclaimer:  No, I would never subject anyone to these horrific situations.  The point was to conceptualize the scariest possible haunted house.

**At my first apartment, the elevator malfunctioned, and the alarm button was not working.  There was no call box.  I was alone in a small, old Westinghouse elevator, trapped.  Emergency services were going to take forever, so I banged on the elevator door, and the doors opened!  Luckily, it was stuck at an opening, and not between the levels.  I got out!

 

25 Signs that Your Mother is a Nurse

 

This post was due for an update.

This post is for nurses and anyone who has a nurse in their life.  Though the following is especially true for parents in the field of nursing.  I wrote this post on Facebook awhile back, hence it says mother, rather than parent or relative.  I've seen some great male nurses too. 

Your mother just might be a nurse if

1.  There are nursing related coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets in the house.

2.  You get free medical advice.

3.  There is a stethoscope in the house and extra points if there’s a sphygmomanometer lying around.

4.  Medical terminology rolls out of her mouth effortlessly.

5.  She watches televised surgeries, complete with a picnic tray; sandwich, chips, and lemonade.

6.  Her free reading is filled with books on nursing.

7.  She watches nursing related TV shows.

8.  She doesn’t run out of nurse-related entertainment. She finds random, eclectic shows about Australian nurses during WWI.

9.  When off duty, she will save someone’s life in public places like the grocery store.

10.  At work, she has brought people back from the dead, and has listened to near-death experiences.

11.  At home, you’re likely to learn that the lost eyelash in your eye was swimming behind your eyeball for 8 hours, and she will continue to do gardening.

12.  She has nurse T-shirts, like RN stands for Rescue Ninja.

13.  She has shoes just for nursing, since she’s on her feet all the time.

14.  Relatives call her for medical advice.

15.  She immediately cleans up children’s vomit without a word of complaint.

16.  You’re in the bathroom feeling sick at 3am, she heard you, and she’s ready to help.

17.  Your dad is complaining about something petty and demands to know, “Well what did you do all day,” and her least disgusting example has you fishing for the antacids and Dad says, “Kids, clean up the kitchen.  Mom doesn’t have to clean up today.”

18.  Giving veterinarian medicine is easy, even with the most stubborn dog.  Then she says, “Well how do you think I get little children to take their medicine?”

19.  When remodeling rooms in the house, she requests everything to be white, like a hospital.

20.  Within context, she will proudly state, “I’ve seen 2 million butts during my whole career!”  (or something similar).  Every time, she says it with pride.

21.  Someone is choking, she does the Heimlich Maneuver, and saves the guy on the first compression like a boss.

22.  She works the electronic CPR dummy with next to zero errors, while you make all sorts of embarrassing mistakes.  (Believe me, that machine is hard!)

23.  She is in a different hospital, senses someone is coding, and feels the urge to take action – and then a family member has to stop her and let the regular staff respond.

24.  After retiring, she does extra chores to occupy her time.  Even if it’s simple things you can do on your own, like pouring yourself a beverage, she insists on doing it for you – just to keep busy.

25.  You go to see a Marvel movie, and your mom’s T-Shirt is a Superman symbol with RN where the S should be.