Attitude and behaviour are woven into the fabric of daily life. Research has shown that individuals register an immediate and automatic reaction of good or bad towards everything they encounter in less than a second, even before they are aware of having formed an attitude.
Most of the people hold complex relationships between attitudes and behaviour that are further complicated by the social factors influencing both. The present state of the world, in which we live, is what it is because of certain systems—social, political, economic, religious and others —all these woven together into a complex structure, called society.
These systems, in turn, are built on certain attitudes and values which various nations, communities or groups of people have come to acquire over a period of time. These attitudes, in their turn, are based on the ideas, ideologies or beliefs which people have acquired, over a period of time, from others or have learnt by first hand experience.
So, if we want to build a better world order, there is no way to it except through attitudinal change or the shift in values and that change or shift, as has been pointed out earlier, cannot take place unless certain age-old beliefs which people have acquired and which are now working as the matrix for their attitudes, relationships and behaviour, are changed.
People have to be given a better ideal which inspires them to have higher values and nobler behaviour. It must be remembered that the present stage of turmoil is because our society has no such ideal which can motivate it for higher aims and can give it a better direction.
Let us, therefore, not forget that the improvement in the self, betterment of our relationships and the spirit of service of others would not be possible without Attitudinal Change, and in order to bring about the attitudinal change, we have to give to the society a new, convincing and inspiring ideal and also the ideology necessary to achieve that ideal. We should also remember that family is the unit of society.
It is the first school where everyone gets educated. In fact, most of our attitudes are built up in our family and hence the deterioration first starts in the family and then it penetrates into the society. So, in order to bring about a better world, we must inspire people to make a better family.
Today, the family is disintegrating and so we find that there is a tendency of separatism and fragmentation all over the world, as a result of which a country like India that is known for its rich cultural heritage and family values is now witnessing more and more nuclear families as compared to joint families which acted as a strong support system for every member.
Nowadays there is no real love among family members and, so, there is no real love in man’s relationships with others. The criteria of every relationship today is “Give & Take”. We must remember a fact that a man who is dissatisfied at home and finds tension there, would spread dissatisfaction and tension outside as well.
This can be clearly seen in increasing number of cases of divorce in society.
So, before this erosion of values devastates us, we should seriously think about changing our attitudes and start building better families, for, better families would make a better world. Don’t wait too long, adjust your attitude right now.
You’d be surprised how much you really can change the world just by changing your attitude.
