ATTITUDE

Attitude is the easiest thing to change. Every morning when you wake up you can make a decision to keep a positive, peaceful and loving attitude towards everyone around you, the earth and it's creatures. The four concepts below: Love, Forgiveness, Integrity, and Justice are the cornerstones of a peaceful and civilized society. Watch the local news on any given night and you will realize that these concepts are in short supply. It's easy to change your attitude. Just add a healthy dose of positivity, and work on implementing these four concepts into your everyday thinking, speaking and actions and see how much better you feel at the end of each day.

LOVE

Imagine that love is a filter, a transparent screen that surrounds you. If you let it, it will affect all the communications coming in and going out. This is all that is necessary for the world to be a much better place. All the religions in the world promote this "adjusting" of your thoughts and actions with the love filter. Unfortunately many people have lost their filter and their thoughts and actions show this. If your occupation forces you remove love from your decisions and actions as a condition of "success" or continued employment, perhaps that is the reason you lack fulfillment or happiness. To truely love is to respect all life on this planet and recognize that all have an equal right to live as they see fit. To love is to celebrate the diversity of the human race and the animal kingdom

"We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep on watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it."
- John Lennon

FORGIVENESS

It's very difficult to have love be a significant part of your being without forgiveness. More and more our society seems to be based more on blame and revenge than on forgiveness. The legal system in the U.S. has exploited the blame card way past what is reasonable. It has become a major depressor to the economic situation and cost of living and hurts those at the bottom of the economic scale the most. It's time for a big change to fix this. The term used is "Tort Reform" and its overdue.
Two of the finest examples of forgiveness are found right here in Cincinnati. Don and Irma Olberding have completely forgiven the young man who took their daughter's life about 13 years ago in a senseless act of robbery. They have focused their energies on turning a negative into a positive and have done a fantastic job of it. To learn more - read about the Reggae Run

INTEGRITY

Integrity is the resulting respect you earn from those who know you by being a person who keeps their word, by being a person with the strongest moral character, by being a person who includes love and forgiveness in all that they do and say. Integrity is a fragile thing. If you are on the right path it builds and builds. Make a wrong turn and you can loose it in an instant. This is a concept that every young adult should learn about, and make a personal commitment to begin to build their own integrity.

JUSTICE

Forgiveness and Justice are complementary. They work well together and are both necessary for a civilized society. We are all bound to live under the laws we have created and it is certainly advisable to pattern one's life in a law abiding way. When someone is on a path that breaks these laws it is up to our system of justice to correct them and try to get them on a path that will keep them out of future trouble. If you are walking down the wrong path, stop and reconsider where it is leading you.

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
Alexander Graham Bell