Emotion, Attitude, and Perspective

I have become very interested in the differences between emotion, attitude, and perspective and how they relate to behavior. I think that "attitude is everything" but I have begun to wonder what attitude really is and what order they come in response to life events.

It seems obvious to me that events are nothing but a set of circumstances, totally objective on their own. We add perspective to those events, which guides our response. But, our emotions guide the perspective...don't they? If emotion is defined as how we feel, like my emotion is angry or sad or happy, then that mood state, or emotion, informs the perspective of the event. I may experience the same event at another time and have an entirely different response. Did my perspective change or did my emotion change?

Then, attitude gets thrown into the mix. I think of attitude as a more global sense of being. For example, I may have an attitude of gratitude, an attitude of negativity, and attitude of judgment or hostility, or an attitude of forgiveness. Is the attitude intertwined with the perspective? Is my perspective informed by attitude? If so, now where does emotion fit in?

Perhaps if a friend does something that hurts my feelings, my emotions will impact my perspective of the situation, but will my general attitude more frequently trump the emotion? (or, will the reverse be true?) So, if I'm already in a bad mood because I didn't sleep well last night, I'm tired and my emotions are on edge, I may take everything the friend says or does personally. On the other hand, if I have a long-standing relationship with this person, I have the possibility of a perspective based on previous experience. In this case, where does attitude fit in?

It seems that emotions are more automatic, less in our conscious control, than either perspective or attitude. I have a choice of perspective and the way I make that choice is based on my attitude. So, when my emotions get out ahead of my perspective, I can consciously (or maybe not so consciously) use the intentionality of my attitude to choose a perspective that leads to healthy behavior choices.

All this is to say that I think we are responsible for our own behavior as well as for our own happiness. We can't always choose the events or circumstances of our lives, but we can choose our perspective, based, I think, on our attitudes. Thus, cultivating positive attitudes is one of the most important things we can do.