Next time you’re in a group setting take a vote by show of hands. Ask who thinks attitudes precede actions and who thinks actions precede attitudes. A number of people will grumble if you lay down the law and insist that they can only vote for one; nothing in the middle.

But my informal polling through the years indicates most people think attitudes precede actions, by significant margin. And why not? It just makes sense that our outer lives will be an expression of what’s inside us. I couldn’t agree more – other than when I disagree.

So I have to admit, the non-commits are probably right. Sometimes attitudes precede actions, but often actions precede attitudes.

Want to help a teen feel compassion? You can teach all the principles of generosity until you are blue in the face with little result, but take that same young person on a mission trip and he or she will come home feeling compassionate. Want to get excited about losing weight? Don’t read another diet article. Just lose a few pounds and you’ll tell everyone you know more than they ever wanted to know – and maybe more than you’ve actually figured out yourself – about your eating and exercise habits. Yep. No question. Action precedes attitude.

But there are too many exceptions to make a hard and fast rule on the topic. In 1968 Robert Rosenthal of Harvard published Pygmalion in the Classroom, the legendary study that showed how teacher expectations positively or negatively impacted student achievement – the law of self-fulfilling prophecy where attitude goes before action.

So what comes first in the state of the US economy today? Do fundamental metrics change, causing investor, business, and consumer confidence to lift and turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives growth? Or does the negative news cycle spin, which many are complaining is compounding problems, have to change before investors, businesses, and consumers break free from the current inertia? Will attitude or action come first in turning our economy around?

These questions can apply to morality … patriotism … service … marriage relationships … happiness … and the list can go on and on.

I’d ask for a show of hands but I’m not sure how I’ll vote myself. And your vote my change my attitude for me!

A friend in my age range – let’s not get too specific and just say somewhere between age 49 and 51 – just got a major tattoo.

I was at one of my 14-year-old’s AAU basketball games a couple Saturday’s ago and the mom of one of the players from the other team had also recently got ‘tatted’ up; a shoulder to wrist floral arrangement on both arms. Naive as I am, I kept thinking she had some sort of arm-nylons on under her sleeveless t-shirt. That’s what I explained to Amy who elbowed me because she thought I was looking over there too much.

Imagine tat!

Of course head for the local high school or even middle school and you’ll see a large number of young people with low ride jeans, high-rise shirts, and lots of tattooed skin. And then there’s the girls.

What do tattoos tell us about a person? Anything? (Is there an age limit on when you can get your first tattoo?)

The old adage claimed that “clothes make the man,” which seems way too superficial, just as getting worked up about tattoos seems judgmental, turning a matter of taste into a moral issue. Right?

Along those lines my grandpa insisted you could tell everything you needed to know about a potential job candidate from his shoes: “you don’t have to be rich to have your shoes shined.” He obviously hadn’t anticipated casual Fridays and Ecco comfort shoes.

But back to tattoos. Just in case you were wondering –

* 15% of Americans have been tattooed – about 40 million people
* 38% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 40 have been tattooed
* Democrats(18%) are more tattooed than Republicans (14%) and Independents (12%)
* Geographically the West (20%) outpaces the East (14%), Midwest (14%), and South (15%) among adults with tattoos
* About 20% of those who have been tattooed regret it, with the number one cause of regret being the person’s name in the tattoo (16%); 11% admit “it was stupid”
* Of those with tattoos 26% feel more attractive, while 5% feel more intelligent; 29% feel more rebellious and 57% of those without a tattoo agree that those with tattoos look more rebellious
* On google searches, more people are interested in Angelina’s tattoos than any other celebrity

I think the numbers speak for themselves. Besides proving that Democrats have a higher propensity toward rebelliousness, that Brad may or may not find tattoos attractive depending on which news source you take most seriously in the grocery store checkout line, and that the 5% of those who are tattooed may not be smart enough to know that ink on skin didn’t make them more intelligent, the conclusion really is quite evident and irrefutable … kids, the answer is still no … under no circumstance are you to get a tattoo!

Not even if you want a heart with Mom and Dad inside it.