Attitude

I had a great conversation this afternoon with a couple of ladies at work about attitude.  As is normal right now it was about the recent flooding around here.  One of the ladies was flooded.  The other, like me, has been helping the best she can.

We were talking about how the attitude, for the most part, in Calgary has been pretty good.  People are helping, those affected are doing ok.  It is hard and stressful for sure, but generally things are getting done.  The co-worker helping has been out at some friends place in High River.  She said the feeling there is depressed.  People are struggling.

We got to talking about the difference in leadership.  The mayor of Calgary has been doing a great job.  He hasn't sugar coated anything, but he also is not complaining or being rude.  You can see that he really cares about what is going on, about the people.  He said at one point his role was 1. safety 2. courage and morale and 3. to get out of the way of people doing the work.

In High River the mayor hasn't been as effective in his communications.  And there is a fairly high profile MLA (provincial representative) who lives there that has been doing a lot of complaining.

We were talking about how these things have to have an effect on people.  The leadership in both places seem to be managing the best they can.  But, one is working on showing what the community is made of.  The other has been complaining.  Now, I know this is over-simplifying things and I am not saying it is the whole explanation.  There are lots of other factors to be sure.

However, I truly believe this is a contributing factor.  Attitude.  How you look at adversity. How much you look at the impersonal "government" to help, or how much you believe in the community to help.  How much you celebrate the small successes, whatever they are, or focus only on what is not working.  How much you can keep a sense of humour in really tough circumstances.  

All of this applies to the floods, but it also applies to life.  For me it does anyhow.  I notice that more and more of late I am choosing to stay away from people I know that focus on the negative.  It's not about putting my head in the sand and sugar-coating life, but it is about choosing to put myself in situations where the attitude is good for the soul and doesn't drag me down.