James wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being

James wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” Explain why you agree or disagree and give an example from your own experience.

When it comes to William James I do agree to an extent that human beings can alter their life by altering their attitudes.  When I was in grade school the phrase your attitude determines your altitude” was written on our hallway walls. Later in life I found it was a phrase from a motivational speaker named Zig Ziggler. The phrase was meant to show kids that positive attitudes and outlooks would bring about positive outcome. “Dr. Martin Seligman proved in his book that attitude is a better predictor of success than IQ, grade point average, or almost any other factor you can think of”. When it comes to different situations in life sometimes the only thing we can control or account for is our own attitudes. Maintaining a positive attitude or outlook on any given situation gives hope and the ability to preserver through the toughest situations. “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”(James, Williams).  When I was young I always viewed things in a negative way. I found myself being on the bad end of different situations. One day I just decided I would change the way I acted and try to look at the positive of every situation. It was not easy but finally around high school I began to change my actions and viewpoints, eventually I was less stressful and in doing this I altered my life in a positive way. I tell people all the time now the importance of having a positive attitude.