We present a general concept that is suitable for studying the stability of equilibria for open systems in continuum thermodynamics. We apply such concept to a generalized Newtonian incompressible heat conducting fluid with prescribed nonuniform temperature on the boundary and with the no-slip boundary conditions for the velocity in three dimensional domain. For large class of constitutive relation for the Cauchy stress, we identify a class of proper solutions converging to the equilibria exponentially in a suitable metric and independently of the distance to equilibria at the initial time. Consequently, the equilibrium is nonlinearly stable and attracts all weak solutions from that class. The proper solutions exist and satisfy entropy (in)equality.
