Attitude Determines your Altitude
For a lot of people this one will also come in under the heading of ‘well, der!’ but sometimes things can be a revelation to me so I thought I would share it anyway.
I have been amazed in the past how a change in attitude, due to a new idea, a new viewpoint or a new learning can result in a situation which I may not have been happy with initially, becoming eminently satisfying in a very short time.
Some Examples
While I started out driving quite small cars, I graduated to larger cars as I grew older. This culminated in driving a Holden station wagon which I likened to a battleship, it was big, ungainly and heavy on petrol, but seeing as it was my choice of company car the costs weren’t a big factor for me. Then I came across some new learnings as part of a Master’s degree primarily about environmental issues twenty odd years ago. The result was I no longer looked on the behemoth with favour and when it came time for it to go, I replaced it with a much smaller and very fuel efficient diesel car, and was very happy driving it.
Pest control can be a lot of fun, well OK, not really! We use environmentally friendly controls so as to minimise the impact of a naughty bug on the stuff we are trying to grow so we can eat it, while also minimising the impact of our pest control efforts on the good bugs which help us with that. We do well but one of the continuing issues we have are white cabbage butterfly caterpillars on our brassicas. I have used Dipel, and it works well, focussing only on the pest caterpillars and leaving other insect life unmolested, but it doesn’t last long and requires regular spraying during the pest season, which for us these days is for most of the year.
To reduce the spraying requirements I started removing the caterpillars by hand for destruction, and that can be a drag as well. It is an interesting thing that when I recast them from ‘pest’ to ‘chook treat’ I looked forward to gathering them and feeding them to the chooks, providing and extra, high protein boost and contributing to egg production. Not to mention that the chooks loved them!
Lastly, and this has occurred just recently. When I was somewhat younger the thought of wearing repaired/patched clothing would have sent me running, but now, understanding that we need to get the most of our resources by repairing stuff it is a different matter. Linda has been doing some repair work on my stuff, I can be a bit rough on clothes, and I love it. It reduces our outgo and conserves resources and I am proud to wear the re-fixed clothing again!
So there you have it, it really can make things easier if you can find the trigger to change your attitude and make behaviour change easier!
