We welcome you
to the newest issue of our e-zine, and we want
to
wish
you one of the most beautiful weeks that you've ever
been
able to make
happen in your life. Take great care of
yourself this week!
As my study took me back through 200 years of writing about success, I noticed a startling pattern emerging in the content of the literature.
Because of our own pain, and because of similar pain I had seen in the lives and relationships of many people I had worked with through the years, I began to feel more and more that much of the success literature of the past 50 years was superficial.
It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes—with social band-aids and aspirin that addressed acute problems and sometimes even appeared to solve them temporarily, but left the underlying chronic problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again.
In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is representative of that literature.
It is, basically, the story of one man’s effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.
The Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.
But shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the Character Ethic to what we might
call the Personality Ethic.
Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction.
This Personality Ethic essentially took two paths: one was human and public relations techniques, and the other was positive mental attitude
(PMA). Some of this philosophy was expressed in inspiring and sometimes valid maxims such as “Your attitude determines your altitude,” “Smiling wins more friends than frowning,” and “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the “power look,” or to intimidate their way through life.
Some of this literature acknowledged character as an ingredient of success, but tended to compartmentalize it rather than recognize it as foundational and catalytic.
Reference to the Character Ethic became mostly lip service; the basic thrust was quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills, and positive attitudes.
This Personality Ethic, I began to realize, was the subconscious source of the solutions Sandra and I were attempting to use with our son.
As I thought more deeply about the difference between the Personality and Character Ethics, I realized that Sandra and I had been getting social mileage out of our children’s good behavior, and, in our eyes, this son simply didn’t measure up. Our image of ourselves, and our role as good, caring parents was even deeper than our image of our son and perhaps influenced it.
There was a lot more wrapped up in the way we were seeing and handling the problem than our concern for our son’s welfare.
As Sandra and I talked, we became painfully aware of the powerful influence of our own character and motives and of our perception of him.
We knew that social comparison motives were out of harmony with our deeper values and could lead to conditional love and eventually to our son’s lessened sense of self-worth.
So we determined to focus our efforts on us—not on our techniques, but on our deepest motives and our perception of him. Instead of trying to change him, we tried to stand apart—to separate us from him—and to sense his identity, individuality, separateness, and
worth.
Through deep thought and the exercise of faith and prayer, we began to see our son in terms of his own uniqueness.
We saw within him layers and layers of potential that would be realized at his own pace and speed.
We decided to relax and get out of his way and let his own personality emerge.
We saw our natural role as being to affirm, enjoy, and value him. We also conscientiously worked on our motives and cultivated internal sources of security so that our own feelings of worth were not dependent on our children’s
“acceptable” behavior.
As we loosened up our old perception of our son and developed value-based motives, new feelings began to emerge.
We found ourselves enjoying him instead of comparing or judging him.
We stopped trying to clone him in our own image or measure him against social expectations.
We stopped trying to kindly, positively manipulate him into an acceptable social mold.
Because we saw him as fundamentally adequate and able to cope with life, we stopped protecting him against the ridicule of others.
He had been nurtured on this protection, so he went through some withdrawal pains, which he expressed and which we accepted, but did not necessarily respond to.
“We don’t need to protect you,” was the unspoken message.
“You’re fundamentally okay.”
As the weeks and months passed, he began to feel a quiet confidence and affirmed himself.
He began to blossom, at his own pace and speed. He became outstanding as measured by standard social criteria—academically, socially and athletically—at a rapid clip, far beyond the so-called natural developmental process.
As the years passed, he was elected to several student body leadership positions, developed into an all-state athlete and started bringing home straight A report cards.
He developed an engaging and guileless personality that has enabled him to relate in
non-threatening ways to all kinds of people.
Sandra and I believe that our son’s “socially impressive” accomplishments were more a serendipitous expression of the feelings he had about himself than merely a response to social reward.
This was an amazing experience for Sandra and me, and a very instructional one in dealing with our other children and in other roles as well.
It brought to our awareness on a very personal level the vital difference between the Personality Ethic and the Character Ethic of success.
The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: “Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.”
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One reason why we have such poor health is because we carry such a low health ideal.
We have been steeped in poor health thought from infancy.
We have been saturated with the idea that pain, physical suffering, and
disease are a part of life; necessary evils which cannot be avoided.
We have had it so instilled into us from infancy that robust health is the exception and could not be expected to be the rule, that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition of things as a sort of fate from which we cannot hope to get away.
Children hear so much sick talk, are cautioned so much as to the dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that
they grow up with the conviction that physical discords of all kinds are a law of
their being. They grow up in the belief that at any time disease is liable to overtake
them and ruin their happiness and their careers.
Think what the opposite training would do for the child; if he
or she were taught that health is the everlasting fact and that disease is the manifestation of the absence of harmony!
Think what it would mean to children if they were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full, complete, was
their birthright! Think what it would mean for
them to expect this during all their growing years, instead of building into
their consciousness the opposite, instead of constantly hearing about sickness and being cautioned against disease and the danger of contracting it!
A child should be taught that God never created disease, suffering, never intended that we should suffer; that we were made for health, abounding health and happiness, made to enjoy, not to suffer—made to be happy, not miserable, made to express harmony, not discord.
Mental activity and a healthy mental attitude have the most of all to do with happiness. The quality of the thought determines the quality of the life.
We cannot get healthy thinking from a diseased brain or nerve cells.
If the vitality is below par, the life will drop to its level, and the power to enjoy will respond.
The happier you are the less energy you waste, because added happiness means added harmony, and the system wastes no energy while it continues in perfect harmony.
The less energy you waste, the more vitality you will possess, and the greater your supply of vital energy, the less liable you are to sickness.
When your system is absolutely full of vital energy, you will contract no disease.
We should early form the habit of erasing from the mind all disagreeable, unhealthy, death-dealing thoughts.
We should start out every morning with a clean slate.
We should blot out from our mental gallery all discordant pictures, and replace them with the harmonious, uplifting, life-giving ones.
A celebrated German physician says that there is something in
people that is never sick, that never dies.
This something is the person God made, the God image.
This can never be discordant. It is independent of circumstances.
This is the seat of health that is an everlasting fact.
This
is not the distorted image which wrong thinking, vicious living, have made, but the
person God made.
And, if we appeal to this wholeness, this completeness, this perfection (this something in us which can never be sick, never die), and know that it is one with the immortal creative principles, all our discords will disappear, and we shall be at one with Principle, at one with Truth.
This is life, and the life that is truth. Then we shall touch power.
Then we shall come into our birthright, into perpetual harmony.
People suffering from nervous or mental disorders are usually filled with fear, and fear
comes from a sense of helplessness due to a feeling of separateness from the great Divine energy which creates, heals, and sustains us.
When we regain the consciousness of our oneness, our
at-one-ment with the Divine, with Infinite Life, when we get in tune with the Infinite, we feel a sense of wholeness, and assurance which drives away all fear.
The Joys of Living (1913)
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
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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.
A
miracle is nothing more or less than this. Anyone who has
come into
a knowledge of his or her true identity, of one's oneness with the
all-pervading
wisdom and power, this makes it possible for laws
higher
than the
ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him or her.
I get very concerned about motivation, mostly because of the fact
that I teach. I see many, many young people these days with
almost no intrinsic motivation at all--they expect all of their
motivation and fulfillment to come from outside of
themselves. This is what we get, I suppose, from developing
a society that thrives on passive entertainment and lack of
personal achievement. These days, if it's not on the
Internet it's not worth doing, it seems, and most of the young
people I work with don't see much value at all in what they do,
because there is no admiring world to give them likes or
thumbs-ups.
Another big problem is that many young people are becoming
convinced that money is the most important thing in the world, and
they're motivated only by the desire to make a lot of it, thinking
that with tons of money will come tons of happiness. And
while money certainly can't cause unhappiness, it can't cause
happiness, either--it may lower some stress levels and it may be
very helpful in difficult situations, but happiness is something
that isn't caused by something like money. Thus the
motivation of money is one that is bound to lead to disappointment
and a sense of emptiness once one realizes that what he or she has
chased for so long really doesn't do what they thought it would.
People who are unable to
motivate themselves must be content with
mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
Andrew Carnegie
One thing that
I notice over and over again among my students is
that those who are able to motivate themselves are
those who end up having a stronger sense of purpose
than their peers have, who end up feeling better
about themselves and who never sit around bored,
wondering what they could possibly do with
themselves. To them, there's always something
interesting to do next, some new hobby to try, some
old task to finish up. They take up things
because they want to learn new ways of doing things,
new perspectives on life. And they don't need
someone else to tell them what to do--they're open
to suggestions, usually, but they can find plenty to
do on their own.
I spend much of my time as a teacher trying to
develop a sense of intrinsic motivation in my
students, for I know that if they're able to
motivate themselves, they'll be able to accomplish
pretty much whatever they wish in life.
They'll be able to learn material in school because
they want to know it, not because they have an
assignment or because they're going to have a quiz
on it. And they'll learn well whatever they
need to learn; they won't settle for performing on a
quiz and then forgetting what they've
"learned."
Unfortunately, parents these days seem to be more
and more distracted all the time, and they don't
spend nearly as much time with their kids as parents
used to. Because of this, most of them depend
on extrinsic motivation in order to teach their
children the life lessons that parents generally
teach kids. And their extrinsic motivation
usually consists of threats or rewards, neither one
of which help the children to learn about motivating
themselves, so that by the time they get to school,
these kids really don't have any idea of what it
means to do things because they really want to get
better at whatever they undertake.
You
can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary.
The only lasting thing is self motivation.
Homer Rice
How do you
motivate yourself to do the things that you need to
do? If you're filing, do you want to keep the
files as clear and neat and accurate as possible, or
do you simply want to get an annoying task out of
the way? When you're cleaning, do you want the
area to be as clean as it can possibly be, or do you
just want to get done so that you can move on to
something else? When you're finishing up a
report, do you want to make it as accurate and
effective as you possibly can out of personal pride,
or are you just doing the bare minimum that you need
to do to get by?
I've sat through presentations that obviously were
the results of someone who wasn't at all motivated
to give us the best they had, and I've sat through
others to which someone obviously took a lot of
pride in what he or she was doing. As a
participant, I really appreciated the fact that
someone was motivated enough to give us his or her
best, for it helped me, too. The other
presentations are usually nothing more than a
handout or a Powerpoint presentation that I could
have read myself and gotten everything out of the
presentation.
If you hire someone to work for you, do you want
someone who is self-directed and who is able to find
work to do even during slow times? Most of us
want to have the self-motivated person who isn't
going to be coming to us all the time trying to find
something to do, or who finishes one assigned task
and then starts texting their friends or just
hanging around doing nothing. And if you're
the self-motivated person, you'll find that doors
open to you because people appreciate not having to
monitor you constantly--they can leave you on your
own and do the work they need to do.
Where
did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make
children do
better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last
time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like
cooperating or doing better?
Jane Nelson
What's going to
motivate you today? Are you going to do your
work because you want to do it well and have some
pride in it, or is your paycheck going to be your
major motivation? The answer to that question
tells you a lot about yourself, and it tells others
a lot about you. It also indicates your
relationship to life, too, and just how much you're
getting out of life. Our lives are full of
opportunities and wonderful chances to do wonderful
things, and it's only the self-motivated person
who's going to find and enjoy most of those great
opportunities. The person whose motivation has
to come from outside him- or herself is only going
to uncover the treasures that others direct them
to--and believe me, others won't direct us to too
many treasures when they could keep them for
themselves.
We get to think of life as
an
inexhaustible well. Yet
everything happens
only a
certain number of times, and
a very small number, really. . . .
How
many more times will you
watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it
all seems limitless.
Jacqueline Bisset
Rules
for Being Human Cherie Carter-Scott
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or
hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in
a full-time informal school called “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth
is a process of trial, error, and experimentation.
The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the
process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are
learned. A lesson will be presented to you in
various forms until you have learned it. When you
have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no
part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If
you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be
learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than
“here.” When your “there” has become a
“here,” you will simply obtain another “there”
that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You
cannot love or hate something about another person unless
it reflects to you something you love or hate about
yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need. What
you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to
life’s questions lie within you. All you need to
do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this. You can remember
it if you want by unraveling the double helix of
inner-knowing.
Do not be afraid to
love. Remember dear old Don Quixote, viewing the
world
with love. He saw many beautiful things no one else
saw. Try being
dear Don Quixote
for a day. You'll see that love improves your vision and
allows you to see more than
your eye has ever seen before. But be
forewarned:
Those who look on the world
with love will need a handkerchief,
not to use as a blindfold, but
to blow their nose and dry their tears.
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.
™
