When I was young, we lived in the inner city. I had a great time growing up but it wasn’t without its challenges. I remember living in my neighbor as a youth, there was this street not too far from house that we weren’t allowed to cross. I never knew what was beyond that street but I always knew that there was more to life than just my neighborhood. Don’t ask me how, but I knew that there was so much more to life and so much more I needed to see.
I remember sitting and talking with my mother all the time about different things. I ask her “what will I be when I grow up”. She said “that I would have to decide that”. I was thinking, how will I know how? She told me your attitude has a lot to do with where you wound up in life. Attitude? what does that have to do with it. She told me to be good at anything; you have to have the right attitude. If you can control that, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in life. She also said, that is probably took more energy to be negative than positive. I thought? “how did she know what energy it took”? And then she said the magic words, “control your attitude and you’ll control you destiny.

She said there are things you can control and things you can’t. But you attitude is something’s you can control. You choose the minute you wake up what kind of mood you’ll be in. That sounded so simple but so hard to do. She told me one time, “it might be a 100 degrees outside tomorrow but are you going to let that control your or stop you from doing something? She told me whether is a 100 or 20 degrees, you still need to wake up with a good positive attitude because the day is still going to happen no matter what your attitude is.
But the thing about me, I have bad hours but not bad days, months or years. I refuse to dwell on the negative things. I put them in a certain place and their proper perspective. I don’t deny their existence but I don’t let them rule or run my life. With the right attitude, I make all my problems line up and take a number until I figure them out. But my attitude is always that there is a solution out there, I need to find it. Things have worked out for me for the most parts but I’ve had my challenges and setbacks. Like anyone else, there are things I would have done different but I can’t change them now so why worry about them now. There are things I need to work on but I always believed in “control attitude and you’ll control your destiny’ as Mom would say.