Abraham Lincoln once met a man who he really didn't like. The man kept annoying him and Abe couldn't understand what it was that made him have to act like that all the time. In a famous quote, he said ?I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.? This quote embodies one of the great sentiments about people that we sometimes forget to incorporate into our lives.

There are many people in the world who don't make sense to us and who we wish were different than the way they are. In fact, there are many people that we would simply do better to just avoid rather than try to understand them. Still, Abe Lincoln's quote is a great sentiment for many of us to learn by because it teaches us that we don't always see people for who they truly are and we may be too quick to judge a person who has been through something that may have been harder than we can imagine.

Everybody is born into a certain life and is faced with overcoming the difficulties that are presented to them. If we are faced with some people who are extremely hard to endure, it may be that there is a lesson in there for us to learn about the problems that others face in their lives. It may be that we can stretch our minds and our hearts to incorporate compassion and understanding into our relationships and make things better for ourselves and others. Learning to look past some of the initial problems we see in others and find that silver lining in their cloud is a great talent and an ability that can define a leader. This was the kind of leadership that our 16th president embodied and why he became such a great emancipator for so many people.

Another great quote that expresses the essence of a positive attitude is by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson once said ?The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitos and silly people.? Emerson's words are a real wake up call for many people. They may think to themselves, have they ever felt the need to wake up every morning and see the first glimmer of light as it begins to glow in the night sky? Have they noticed how fast the sky begins to brighten up upon the first evidence of daylight? Have they noticed how long it takes after that before the actual sun can be seen on the horizon? Have they noticed the magnificence of those first sun beams as they peak over the horizon and burn a bright fire against your eye?

These things that can be witnessed each morning by everyone on the planet are more than often ignored by millions of sleeping people. This amazing and monumental event is seen as nothing because it happens everyday and has been pushed into the background of our subconscious mind. The sun indeed provides all life to the world and is an amazing phenomenon too great to even imagine its intensity. Still, somehow this is all lost to us against a long list of other problems and concerns that plague us each day.

Keeping a positive attitude each day is something that can only come through discipline and effort at first. Once we have created a lot of bad habits and negative attitudes, they take a concerted discipline to overcome. Once we overcome them, however, we may begin to see great things in both the people we thought we could never like and the magnificent sun that we never noticed before.