I'm having problems with this statement in Kaido's mega post:
"Third: Realizing that attitude controls like 98% of enjoyment."
Trying to have a positive attitude about things like my job is super tough. Sure, I could SAY something like "Gee, I LOVE reseting user passwords and having my boss ignore all of my suggestions for improvements!", but I'm never going to BELIEVE it because I know that it isn't true.
I'm starting to think that people "slip into" IT and get stuck there because it's a steady paycheck. That said, no sane person would actually enjoy this type of work.
I should expand on this, because the explanation is a bit more complex as far as my personal definition of attitude goes. I heard a good example a few years ago:
1. Let's say you're on a bus, and the bus is going down a big hill
2. Now let's say the bus loses its brakes and is going to crash into a building
3. Saying "I have a positive attitude!" is going to do exactly zilch for rectifying the situation. You're still going to crash & you're still going to die unless you take action.
I think the first step to managing situations is attitude, which begins with choosing to have a proactive attitude, i.e. not just looking at problems, but adopting them & solving them, even when they're dumb & even when someone else should really be doing them (ever seen the garbage or dishes pile up?? haha!). So it's a multi-faceted definition:
1. Attitude controls a lot of how we feel about things, because you can have a good or a bad attitude about anything. You can be Oscar the Grouch about life, if you really want to!
2. You can choose to be negative, neutral, or positive in your attitude. And it's OK to have different attitudes in different situations. Sometimes work is fun & sometimes it's just work & it's just meh.
3. You can choose to be proactive or reactive in your attitude, in terms of choosing what to focus your attitude on. If you derive your happiness from the current set of circumstances, then you're going to be subject to whatever life gives you in that moment: a boss who won't listen to you, stupid IT busywork, etc. As a result, because you haven't designed a blueprint for how you want to feel & what your default approach is going to be, then you become subject to how you perceive the situation & how other people make you feel. This goes back to the story of Viktor Frankl from his book Man's Search for Meaning - he was stuck in a Nazi prison camp, which was a horrible situation for everyone, but he chose to alter his attitude about it. Obviously it wasn't all rainbows & butterflies, but we compound our problems with how we approach the problem from the perspective of being proactive about our attitudes.
We will all die, someday. You might get cancer, or get into a car accident & lose bodily functionality, or get depression, or suffer from anxiety, or any number of things, but at the end of the day, you're still stuck with how you choose to feel about things, because we all have our free agency. For me, I hit a point where (1) I realized I actually did have control over my attitude, and (2) I realized I didn't want to go through life moping or being complacent about how I felt. Again, having a better attitude doesn't mean being super giddy all the time, but is more of a combination of choosing how you want to react in different situations instead of feeling like the situation dictates how you HAVE to feel. And attitude is really the first step to action...if your attitude is crap, then you're probably not going to make progress on whatever it is you have to do. Like at work, I have to get my work done, so my attitude is worker-mode. At home, I let myself slide on soooooo many things because my attitude shifts into "meh" mode, lol.
So that's what I mean when I say that most of my enjoyment in life comes from my attitude. Situations come & go, things change, but how you define your attitude & then work to adopt & support that attitude is kind of the gate that is open or closed to how you feel about specific things & about life in general. I spent a long time waiting for life to make me happy, before realizing I had to take my happiness into my own hands by being more proactive about how I chose to feel about things, as well as what my action choices were & what I wanted to invite into my life. I don't want to say I was a miserable person, but rather I was just kind of coasting there for awhile with no direction, simply because I hadn't chosen one.
And I definitely don't think it's as easy as rolling off a log...you have to work at it. I think the first step is realizing that you have a choice about how you feel, and then the second step is defining your default attitude, which for me includes being proactive about things & being positive about things. Not necessarily dopey-happy all the time haha!