Good
day, and welcome to the newest Tuesday in our world!
This day offers us plenty to do and to enjoy, and it
also offers
us the chance to rest and reflect--let's figure out
what's best
for us today, and take that path.
Begin each morning by resolving to find
something in the day to enjoy. Look into each experience which comes to you for some grain of happiness.
-
unattributed
The
ultimate value of life depends upon awareness,
and the
power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
-
Aristotle
Live a balanced life--learn some and
think some and draw and paint and sing and
dance and play and work every day some. -
Robert
Fulghum
A lot of our 'busyness' is a way for us to avoid
thinking about what is
most important. There's a difference
between being busy and being productive. -
Kristen Lippincott
Love yourself into health and a good life of your
own.
Love yourself into relationships that work for you
and the other person. Love yourself into
peace, happiness, joy, success, and contentment.
Love yourself into all that you always wanted.
We can stop treating ourselves the way others
treated us, if they behaved in a less than healthy,
desirable way. If we have learned to see
ourselves critically, conditionally, and in a
diminishing and punishing way, it's time to
stop. Other people treated us that way, but
it's even worse to treat ourselves that way now.
Loving ourselves may seem foreign, even foolish at
times. People may accuse us of being
selfish. We don't have to believe them.
People who love themselves are truly able to love
others and let others love them. People who
love themselves and hold themselves in high esteem
are those who give the most, contribute the most,
love the most.
How do we love ourselves? By forcing it at
first. By faking it if necessary. By
"acting as if." By working as hard
at loving and liking ourselves as we have at not
liking ourselves.
Explore what it means to love yourself.
Do things
for yourself that reflect compassionate, nurturing, self-love.
Embrace and love all of yourself--past, present, and
future. Forgive yourself quickly and as often as
necessary. Encourage yourself. Tell yourself good
things about yourself.
If we think and believe negative ideas, get them out in the open
quickly and honestly, so we can replace those beliefs with
better ones.
Pat yourself on the back when necessary. Discipline
yourself when necessary. Ask for help, for time; ask for
what you need.
Sometimes, give yourself treats. Do not treat yourself
like a pack mule, always pushing and driving harder. Learn
to be good to yourself. Choose behaviors with preferable
consequences--treating yourself well is one.
Learn to stop your pain, even when that means making difficult
decisions. Do not unnecessarily deprive yourself.
Sometimes, give yourself what you want, just because you want
it.
Stop explaining and justifying yourself. When you make
mistakes, let them go. We learn, we grow, and we learn
some more. And through it all, we love ourselves.
We work at it, then work at it some more. One day we'll
wake up, look in the mirror, and find that loving ourselves has
become habitual. We're now living with a person who gives
and receives love, because that person loves him- or
herself. Self-love will take hold and become a guiding
force in our lives.
Today, I will work at loving myself. I will work as
hard at loving myself as I have at not liking myself. Help
me let go of self-hate and behaviors that reflect not liking
myself. Help me replace those with behaviors that reflect
self-love. Today, God, help me hold myself in high
self-esteem. Help me know I'm lovable and capable of
giving and receiving love.
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Some criticism, no doubt, is constructive, but too
much is a subtle poison. A friend of mine told
me of a club he belonged to in his undergraduate days
at the University of Wisconsin. The members were
a group of brilliant boys, some with real literary
talent. At each meeting one of them would read a
story or essay he had written and submit it to the
criticism of the others. No punches were pulled;
each manuscript was mercilessly dissected. The
sessions were so brutal that the club members dubbed
themselves The Stranglers. This club was
strictly a masculine affair, so naturally the coeds
formed a comparable group of their own known as The
Wranglers. They too read their manuscripts
aloud. But the criticism was much gentler.
In fact, there was almost none at all. The
Wranglers hunted for kind things to say. All
efforts, however feeble, were encouraged.
The payoff came about twenty years later, when some
alumnus made an analysis of his classmates'
careers. Of all the bright young talent in the
Stranglers, not one had made a literary reputation of
any kind. Out of the Wranglers had come half a
dozen successful writers, some of national prominence,
led by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who wrote The
Yearling. Coincidence? Hardly.
The amount of basic talent in the two groups was much
the same. But the Wranglers gave one another a
lift. The Stranglers promoted self-criticism,
self-disparagement, self-doubt. In choosing a
name for themselves, they had been wiser than they
knew.
Awareness of the power of affection to unlock human
capabilities is at least two thousand years old
("A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love
one another.") But affection is not much
good unless it is expressed. What's more, I have
a notion that unexpressed feelings have a tendency to
shrink, wither, and ultimately die. Putting an
emotion into words gives it a life and a reality that
otherwise it doesn't have. . . .
Expressing confidence in a person's ability to
accomplish something actually strengthens that
ability. Once, visiting a college classmate who
has made an outstanding mark in life, I happened to
open a book in his library. It was a birthday
gift from his mother, and it was inscribed:
"With love and pride for my son, who has done
great things and will do greater yet." I
was reminded of this the other day when Charles Dumas
became the first athlete to high-jump seven
feet. His mother, apparently, was not
surprised. "I just told him," she said
later, "to go out there and jump seven
feet!" Whereupon he rose, you might say, to
the occasion.
Emerson, that incredible old nutshell-putter, has
said, "Our chief want in life is somebody who
shall make us do what we can." He might
have added that the best method for this somebody to
use would be simply to expect us to achieve and then
let us know about it. The human animal is a
strange creature: it will often make more of an
effort to please someone else than to please itself.
The expression of affection does a lot, I think, for
the person who expresses it; people who give
admiration and affection get them back--if what they
give is spontaneous and sincere. People are
irresistibly drawn to "warm" people.
And what is a warm person, except one who
instinctively takes the checkrein off his or her
emotions and enthusiasms when dealing with people he
or she cares about? Such warmth is
contagious. If even one member of an indifferent
family can recapture it, it will spread imperceptibly
to the others, until the decline of intimacy is
halted.
So, while I found no valuable stamps or rare
autographs in those dusty trunks in the attic, I took
away a legacy in the form of a question to ask myself
from time to time. To be manifestly loved, to be
openly admired are human needs as basic as
breathing. Why, then, wanting them so much
ourselves, do we deny them so often to others?
Why, indeed?
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
Always
be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of
a second-rate
version
of somebody else.
Judy Garland
Problems with Ethics
Ethics can be problematic. While most of us have the desire
to be ethical people and to live according to our sense of right
and wrong, it can be very difficult sometimes to follow our ethics
as a guide to our lives and our actions. Life isn't as
simple as we'd like it to be, and often we find ourselves being
pushed into situations in which we have to decide between doing
what we feel is right and doing what we know will be expedient and
convenient.
People encourage us to develop a strong sense of ethics, but very
often those same people will be the ones to criticize us when we
do our best to live by those ethics. Many of the decisions
that we make as ethical people will affect other people in
negative ways, and those people often aren't happy with us for our
decisions.
An interesting example: I was recently asked to submit some
paperwork to the state in order to secure funding for the school
where I work. The paperwork, with my signature on it, made
it clear that I intended to follow up on some very specific
issues--issues which I had no intention at all of pursuing (it had
to do with getting an extra endorsement for my teaching
certificate). I refused to sign the paperwork, for I knew
that in doing so, I would be making a promise that I didn't intend
to keep. My refusal, of course, angered the very
administrators who constantly tell us how important it is to
maintain extremely high ethical standards as teachers.
Yes, it is extremely ironic. But it also put me in a very
difficult situation, given that those are the same administrators
who evaluate me and who determine my employment status. The
bottom line is that due to this action of mine, I'm basically
being pushed out of the school district--and while it's something
that I accept because there are many, many other problems at the
district, it's also something that never, ever should happen.
Live
one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.
While I'm
pretty sure that I will consider my decision to be
the proper one for the rest of my life, I also know
that most ethical considerations should not be
written in stone--and I think that most of us
recognize this fact. Our ethics can help us to
make decisions that will be positive for us and for
our loved ones, but they are most definitely not
absolute.
For example, I value truth very highly, but I'm also
willing to bend the truth (okay, lie) when it seems
the most appropriate thing to do. I recently
saw a young person do something that would have
gotten her into a great deal of trouble, but it was
an accident and she definitely regretted it.
The trouble she would have faced would have been
grossly unfair to her for a very minor mistake;
therefore, it was very easy for me, when I was
asked, to say that I hadn't seen the act so I
couldn't say whether she had done it or not.
She and I had talked over the situation, and I knew
that I wasn't doing something that was going to make
her feel like she could manipulate me or the
truth. She's a good kid who made a mistake,
and I believe that keeping her out of the trouble
was more valuable to her than allowing her to be
punished harshly for a very simple mistake.
And I could be wrong. But it was an ethical
call that I made, and that I will stand by. I
see too many adults want to punish young people for
virtually every little misstep that they make, but
sometimes lessons are best taught and learned
through compassion and communication. Life is
not a black-and-white experience, and we live
through many shades of grey our whole lives long.
Ethics
is a code of values which guide our choices and actions
and determine the purpose and course of our lives.
Ayn Rand
Of course, I am
not advocating lying in any situation that we wish
simply to make life more comfortable for us.
Truth is a concept that I value very highly, but it
most certainly is not an absolute--there is no one
truth, no one way of seeing the world (there's
plenty on truth here). And if we are to be
ethical people, we need to recognize the fact that
if a person doesn't conform to our concept of truth,
that doesn't necessarily make them bad or
unethical. And such an idea isn't limited to
truth--if I find something on the street that isn't
mine, I make an effort to find the owner and return
it. In other cultures, though, it can be quite
normal to simply keep it, for keeping it isn't
anything at all wrong.
When we develop our own personal ethical codes,
though, we give ourselves a chance to live our lives
more fully and richly, for we're able to make
decisions that give us peace of mind and that allow
us to live comfortably with ourselves. When we
make decisions that conflict with our own ideas of
right and wrong, then we're setting ourselves up for
feeling torn, feeling that we've done something
wrong, feeling guilt that we've done something we
shouldn't have done.
Ethics
is knowing the difference between what you
have a right to do and what is right to do.
Potter
Stewart
Having a strong
ethical code can simplify our lives considerably,
but it's very important that we don't allow
ourselves to stagnate, to adopt an ethical stance
and never revisit it, never look at it from a
different perspective and consider the possibility
that we or our ideas have changed enough that our
ethics may need a bit of adjustment, too. We
shouldn't allow our ethics to function as a pair of
handcuffs that keep us from being and acting free;
rather, we should keep our ethics as a compass, one
that can help to guide us on our journey as we make
our ways through life. With enough reflection
and consideration, we can develop an ethical code
that allows us to live well while living honestly
and fully and abundantly.
Almost
any intense emotion may
open our “inward eye”
to the
beauty
of reality.Falling
in love appears to
do it
for some people.
The beauty
of nature or the exhilaration
of artistic
creation does
it for others.Probably
any high
experience may momentarily
stretch
our
souls up on tiptoe,
so
that we catch a glimpse of that
marvelous
beauty which is
always
there, but which we are not
often
tall
enough to perceive.
Margaret Prescott Montague
On the
Companionship with Nature
Archibald Lampman
Let us be much with Nature; not as they
That labour without seeing, that employ
Her unloved forces, blindly without joy;
Nor those whose hands and crude delights obey
The old brute passion to hunt down and slay;
But rather as children of one common birth,
Discerning in each natural fruit of the earth
Kinship and bond with this diviner clay.
Let us be with her wholly at all hours,
With the fond lover's zest, who is content
If his ear hears, and if his eye but sees;
So shall we grow like her in mould and bent,
Our bodies stately as her blessed trees,
Our thoughts as sweet and sumptuous as her flowers.
When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious,
complicated,
and opaque, it is usually a sign that he or she is
attempting to prove
as true to the intellect what is plainly false
to common sense.
Edward Abbey
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
