{"id":9671,"date":"2013-02-12T15:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.familylife.com\/flministries\/?p=9671"},"modified":"2013-02-12T15:20:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T21:20:00","slug":"how-do-you-change-a-bad-atitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/faith\/essentials-faith\/repentance\/how-do-you-change-a-bad-atitude\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Change a Bad Attitude?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

January 2013<\/h3>\n\n\n

In my neighborhood here in Little Rock, huge piles of tree branches are piled in front of nearly every home.  It\u2019s the aftermath of a winter storm that swept through central Arkansas on Christmas Day\u2014freezing rain and then 10 inches of snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a white Christmas, but not the type you dream about!  It\u2019s difficult to enjoy the snow when falling trees and snapping limbs take out the power in over half the county.  In our case, the outage lasted five nights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have ever faced a similar situation, you understand what a shock it is to realize how much you depend on electricity.  Your normal lifestyle is disrupted when you lose it\u2014especially in cold weather.   We have a generator, but that only gave us power for a refrigerator, a space heater, cell phones, and a few small appliances.  Our house grew colder and more depressing with each passing day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once our power returned, I was left with two major questions:<\/p>\n\n\n

1. How did our ancestors make it without electricity and central heating or air conditioning?<\/h3>\n\n\n

I feel spoiled by my modern comforts and conveniences.  I can\u2019t imagine the hardships faced by rural families trying to make it through a winter in Wisconsin or Nebraska\u2014or a summer in Arkansas.  Yet those days were not so long ago\u2014many of our grandparents or parents who grew up on farms didn\u2019t receive electricity until the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n

2. How do I get rid of a bad attitude?<\/h3>\n\n\n

This was my biggest struggle. After the second night without power, thoughts began running through my head:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This house is making me depressed\u2014it\u2019s so dark and cold.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other people are getting their power back on \u2026 why is it taking them so long to fix ours?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was looking forward to my time off between Christmas and New Year\u2019s, and now I don\u2019t get to relax at all.  My whole life is focused on staying warm.  Why did this have to happen to me?  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt like I had a constant pressure weighing me down.  At times I was irritable, sour, and moody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew I had a bad attitude, but I couldn\u2019t break out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think this is one of those nitty-gritty issues of life.  And it\u2019s a critical issue in a marriage and family; when you\u2019ve got a sour attitude, it creates a black hole that threatens to suck in every other person in the home. Sometimes the bad attitude will focus on your circumstances, sometimes on your perception of another person, sometimes on problems in the world at large.  I\u2019ll bet each of you can recall situations where you\u2019ve created that black hole\u2014or where you\u2019ve been affected by the sour attitude of a spouse, child, or parent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I return to my question:  When you\u2019ve got a bad attitude about your circumstances, or another person, or about anything at all, how do you deal with it?  How do you get out of the rut?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, I don\u2019t have a good answer for this yet.  So I\u2019m doing some reading and gathering some feedback.  I\u2019d like to hear from you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How have you dealt with your bad attitudes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How have you dealt with sour attitudes in another person\u2014especially your spouse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In particular, how has your faith helped you address these situations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u00a92013 by FamilyLife. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of the nitty-gritty issues of marriage and family life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":243267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"This is one of the nitty-gritty issues of marriage and family life.","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2827],"tags":[],"equip-category":[],"cwp_profile":[3074],"class_list":["post-9671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-repentance","cwp_profile-dave-boehi"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1001\/2013\/01\/how-do-you-change-a-bad-attitude_1300x403.jpg","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1001\/2013\/01\/how-do-you-change-a-bad-attitude_1300x403.jpg",1024,317,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Joshua Starcher","author_link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/author\/josh-starchercru-org\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"This is one of the nitty-gritty issues of marriage and family life.","meta_box":{"_cloudsearch_visibility":"0","profile_obj_manual_select":false,"profile_obj":false,"separator":false,"enable_link":false,"login_restricted":"0","content_type":"","disclaimer_banner":"","currency":false,"pricing_subtext":false,"element_type":false,"date_field":false,"date_format":false,"theme_header_position":"","post_header_is_sticky":"","is_header_overlay":"","series":false,"ignore_sticky":false,"conditional_blocks_category":false,"cta_selection":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"equip-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/equip-category?post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"cwp_profile","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cwp_profile?post=9671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}