Your attitude is in many ways nothing more than a collection of your values, beliefs and the opinions you have about a specific subject. These parts of your psyche are shaped by your thoughts, and your thoughts are shaped by the world you live in, by your past memories, and as a result of the things you have chosen to focus on over a lifetime.

Whatever you give your attention to becomes a priority in your life. Therefore, whatever you decide to focus on has meaning for you, and as a result these things will shape how you think, what you believe, what you value, and essentially the attitude you will project out into the world.

Your attitude is also tied to the references that you have collected over a lifetime.

Every experience you have — whether good or bad, painful or pleasurable — creates a set of memories. These memories form references that you use to make sense of the world you live in. These references are just experiences that have come about as a result of pain and pleasure in your life.

You might for instance have experienced a negative situation in the past which brought you painful memories. Or you might have experienced a positive situation in the past which brought you pleasurable memories. These situations/experiences are nothing more but memories today. However, these memories/references have a significant impact on the attitude you project out into the world.

Your brain will naturally connect many painful memories/references together to form an opinion about something. These opinions strengthen over time as more related references are found. And over the long-term these references come to form your beliefs about this specific situation or area of your life. And subsequently, these beliefs form the foundations of the attitude you project out into the world.

Now, it’s important to note that these memories/references are only opinions. They are only your perspectives and interpretations of the situation. They might have no actual basis in reality. As such, your attitude might be based on false references and distorted memories that you have accepted as the truth. Your negative attitude is therefore based upon a “lie” that you have convinced yourself to believe. And this is influencing how you feel, think and behave in specific situations, for better or worse. What’s even worse, is that it influences your expectations of yourself, of others and of the world around you. This therefore creates a “snowball” effect where a negative attitude grows and picks up momentum over time until it destroys your life.

• Read more: Negative Mental Attitude