ABSTRACT

The philosopher Anthony Grayling states: Attitude is very consequential stuff. It determines everything one does, from falling in love to voting for one candidate rather than another. Attitudes are evaluations we make of an object, person, group, issue, situation or concept. Working through the change process requires one to put their new knowledge into action, preferably on a daily basis, in order to strengthen their conviction in it over the longer term. The Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl survived the horrors of four Nazi camps including Auschwitz and famously wrote that 'everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way'. If one accepts the premise that their attitudes shape their responses to events, then identifying what they are can reveal whether they are acting resiliently or self-defeatingly in the face of adversity.