Back in May one of the worst earthquakes in decades struck central China, with 9,000 people killed in collapsed schools, nearly 2,000 children orphaned by the tremor, and a deadly toxic chemical leak. Today another strong aftershock rocked China. Social media has been crowdsourcing and reporting news by the minute.

A recent poll of 4,300 Chinese Quake survivors conducted by newspaper China Youth Daily and news portal Sohu.com, showed that 88 percent thought that the recent China earthquake had “changed” their lives. 82 percent of those polled report that they plan to “cherish life more and create more value for society” as a result of the quake. Over 70 percent plan to do more to help the needy. A recap of results:

Over at Schreiner’s Media Landscape, they suggest that China’s earthquake is karmic - and wonder if the quake can improve their country’s attitude. Seems so, Schreiner.

After natural disasters, attitude, culture, and fatalistic beliefs can affect how survivors perceive risk and recover. Devastation can leave people with strong emotions and a sense of uncertainty. On a more micro level, uncertain times, personal trauma, and crises can shake your attitude.

Cultivating an attitude of resilience can help us cope. Resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary. It starts with having caring and supportive relationships with family members, friends, and other connections. Encouragement and reassurance bolster a person’s resilience. But resilience is a trait that can be learned.

Some of the ways you can build your resilience?

• Try to see beyond today - and focus on future circumstances.
• Accept circumstances that cannot be changed.
• Develop realistic, measurable, bite-size even babystep goals.
• Take decisive actions, rather than detach yourself.
• Surround yourself with encouragers - life is impossible if you journey through it alone.
• Be an encourager - if you feel you don’t have anyone in your life, then go out and be a support to someone. It will return to you in ways you can’t possibly imagine.
• Acknowledge your own strength and resourcefulness.
• Maintain an optimistic outlook by visualizing a better future.
• Meditate or write - to better understand and accept your feelings.
• Stay flexible - and realize that resolution or outcomes may not be as you hope or plan.
• Look to self help groups, online resources, and books for additional strength.

99.9% of all challenges come without warning. In 1990, my family’s town (Plainfield, Illinois) was wiped off the map by a microburst — a huge storm wherein the sky opens up and air is pushed down. When it hits the ground it spreads like a tornado and destroys. Our town was declared a federal disaster - 28 people lost their lives, thousands were injured, and many lost their homes. The storm came without warning - no siren, no breaking news. And that’s the way many challenges come. They don’t set up appointments. They just come, leaving us feeling hopeless and helpless. We want to give up.

Here is the secret - you can make it. Don’t give up or lose hope. It’s okay to feel the pain and look for the meaning in the experience, but don’t stop living. This is your opportunity to have your life deepened in ways you may not yet be able to imagine. Whatever you are going through or have gone through - you can make it.

SoulsilenS, a self-described “conscious rock group” that writes songs about human feelings and good intentions, is kicking off a World Tour for their debut album to deliver great music and promote the PRO-GREEN movement.

While rock-n-roll has often been about attitude, music’s impact on attitude and regulating mood inspires intriguing discussion.

Music is often used in advertising to enrich key messages - and is believed to be one of the most stimulating components in t.v. and radio commercials (Hecker 1984). Music positively arouses consumer emotional states (Stout & Lockney, 1988). Exciting music can heighten emotional response. Calm music can decrease anxiety and help you tame your tiger. Music therapy has been used effectively to combat depression, for stress management, for meditative healing, to improve behavior in Autistic children. Believe it or not, children spontaneously create songs and make music (2-6 songs per hour) at age 2 (although by age 5 word language takes over the world of sound in most children).

If you want to change your attitude, change your music. Listen to music that is appropriate for your desired feelings. Upbeat music for energy, slow ballads to help you relax. Better yet, choose your own personal theme song. I have one that I play before I speak at events and before important meetings or media interviews. It gets me going. Sometimes I even sing it in the shower (heck yeah, I’m off-key, and I’m proud of it).

And crazy as it sounds, singing doesn’t have to be in private. I was once in the crowded Newark Airport, getting a little stressed out looking for the rental car desk. Off in the distance, I heard something extraordinary: one guy singing. He was in charge of giving people information - where to go and how to get there. I walked over and asked how to get to the rental car place. He sang me the directions. What an experience! Filled with enthusiasm. I smiled, laughed, and walked away feeling good. Singing a direction or question may just get you a better response.

Janice Harris talks more about music therapy over on her Music Therapy Show blog.

Don’t be fooled into thinking something this simple can’t be powerful. A simple song and the right theme music can kickstart your attitude and change your life.

I admit it, I’m a big NASCAR fan. As much as I get psyched up about the hard driving action, Nascar driver attitudes on and off the track can be offensive. Over at LisaM321’s blog, she’s worried that Kyle Busch’s post-race win boasting will lead to Tony Stewart bad attitude traits. And NASCAR is notably littered with bad attitude rockstars. They can’t control their temper. They make crazy moves on the track.

Do you have to act like a jerk to lead and win races? Do you have to be a driver that fans love to hate?

Maybe not. Danica Patrick believes the “right attitude” allowed her to become the first woman to win an IRL IndyCar race in the male-dominated world of motor racing. And a ton of folks are saying that NASCAR needs Danica Patrick. FOX race analyst Jeff Hammond led Darrell Waltrip to two of DW’s three Winston Cup championships as his crew chief. And he has recently reported on Darrell racing at Darlington, suggesting that the intriguing and challenging racetrack “is all about attitude.”

Taking the checkered flag in NASCAR and in life requires a positive attitude. And demonstrating self-control requires good emotional management. I’m not suggesting that you suppress your negative emotions. I’m only suggesting that you relieve your negative emotions in a more constructive way. It can help you prevent a disastrous finish. A few tips for NASCAR drivers and for everyday folks like you and me:

• Practice Patience
• Recognize the elements that push our buttons (change, challenges, unexpected events, negative people) and inspire us to respond
• Let it go, and choose to make every situation better
• Renew your mind and body so you can get to a place where your thinking is better
• Don’t sweat it. You can always rally to overcome an early spin that could have knocked you out of contention

Poor Mayor of Oaklawn, Illinois, Dave Heilmann. Back in September 2007, Oaklawn created a memorable and quirky public service stop sign campaign, adding comical slogans the likes of “…and smell the roses,” and “means that you aren’t moving” to the bottom of STOP signs. The City of Oaklawn created the unique signage to in an effort to increase jaded motorists’ attention and inspire them to pause, if for nothing else, to read the phrases. The signs were the idea of the City President, and local residents were encouraged to submit their own ideas. Found throughout the city, the signs garnished attention with the press.

This week, dry personality and humor intolerant IDOT (the Illinois Department of Transporation) squelched the creative slogan stop signs. IDOT suggested the signs violated the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (the instructional bible for all things transportation safety-related).

Kudos to Mayor Heilmann for attempting to come up with a unique and eye-catching way of slowing speeders. It’s too bad that Oak Lawn has yet to publish statistics on whether the signs reduced accidents or stop sign running. We can’t wait to see these numbers.

In the meantime, we are awarding IDOT (the Illinois Department of Transportation) with Everything Attitude’s Worst Attitude of the Week Award. Life is short, so lighten up, IDOT. Humor creates positive human connection and saves us all from terminal professionalism. Ahh the price of uniformity!

When federal or local government regulations supress creativity, they decrease public awareness, empathy, responsiveness, and potential accountability. We need to fight censors and the mechanization of culture that surpressses creativity. Hang in there, Mayor Heilmann. Find the opportunities in your adversities. And find comfort in your biggest fans (those who are supporting you and Oaklawn’s ingenuity):

- John Howell and Cisco Cotto
- My Crazy Hobby Blog
- Illinois Reason Blog
- My Hero of the Day
- Southtown Star

Do you HATE getting stuck in traffic jams? It’s one of the those modern stressors that anybody who lives in a big city has to deal with. 

You know, that feeling when the overhead sign tells you just how long you’re going to be sitting there (in Chicago, rush hour signs report things like: “25 minutes to Circle,” a trip that normally takes 7). And you look around, and the guys next to you are swearing (you can tell because their lips are snarling), and the massive truck ahead of you hasn’t moved in like 15 minutes, and the fumes are getting funneled back into your car til you have to push the “recycle air” button, and your stomach is knotting up, and you’re starving because you didn’t have time for lunch. You know the drill.

You probably don’t have one of these suckers to just drive right over the cars ahead of you in the traffic jam…

One way NOT to deal with the traffic is to do several other physical things. The Okanagan blog complains about traffic jams and says multi-tasking drivers admit causing 1 out of 20 accidents. Okanagan doesn’t have much traffic up there in BC, Canada.

Okay, but let’s say you’re in a city that does get traffic jams. The first trick is to choose to stop thinking about this stuff. Instead, come inside your own mind (where else can you go?) and breathe slowly. I knew a yoga teacher who described one type of breathing that’s powerful for calming the mind—”use the back of your throat” when you breathe. It makes a quiet noise, and that’s what it should do. Let the breath come in through your nose, not your mouth, and you’re drawing it in with the back of your throat. Try it. And here’s a few more ideas about yoga breathing to calm you down.

Next, decide the positive thing(s) you want to think about. Could be your great job, your dear spouse, your beautiful kid, your garden, your friend–pick only things you can feel good about right now. Decide that this time is yours–and you get to pick what you want to do. You can focus on your favorite music or think about how to surprise your family with something positive when you get home.

Positive thoughts can be mined like gold. All you have to do is pick them out and wash the bad stuff through the sieve of your mind.