Archive for the 'Character/Values' Category
What is a Life Philosophy?
What is a life philosophy?
I suppose this question can be answered thousands of different ways. To be more specific, what life philosophy allows you to get, be, and achieve as much as possible in your life? Or, what life philosophy allows for the most personal success, however you choose to define it?
Few people think this through anymore, much less understand the value of doing so. Introspection and self-reflection are no longer valued traits in our externally-focused culture. If you’re too quiet or too deep a thinker, people can shy away from you. Such seriousness tends to make people uncomfortable.
Even in institutions where thinking is supposedly valued, such as schools and universities, metaphysical topics like “life philosophy” are rarely discussed. Education generally consists of memorizing facts and figures with little or no discussion about what significance they might have in a person’s life. For these concerns–the most important concerns of all, I would argue–we are left largely on our own. And this is true even in fields that should specialize in such questions, like philosophy, theology, and psychology.
I’d like to share what I think makes for a successful life philosophy. My hope is not for people to adopt my own ideas and beliefs, but to understand the way I’ve arrived at them and thus, arrive at their own. It’s not terribly difficult, as we already know what most of our beliefs and values are, even if we haven’t given it a lot of thought. Mostly it involves fitting them together into a cohesive picture so you have a “map” to guide you through life. Here are the three major steps:
- Determine what’s important to you: family, career, friends, leisure time, personal development, fitness, etc. Make a list of as many things on it as you can think of. Then put them in order of priority.
- From this list, determine your values: kindness, loyalty, tenacity, honesty, self-sufficiency, success, wealth, health, etc. Again, list your values by priority. If there is some overlap with the first list, that’s okay. The main thing is to prioritize what’s important to you and be as honest as you can.
- Revisit this list on a regular basis of your choosing. Every six months is a good interval to start with. Yearly is also fine. After doing this a few times, you will learn which of your values are up for change and which aren’t–and you will understand yourself and your motivations on a much deeper level.
Once you know what’s important to you (in the concrete) and what your values are (in the abstract), you have a road map for life. Everything you do should flow from your basic values; in fact, everything you do does flow from your values, whether you are aware of it or not.
Your values determine:
- Your religious/spiritual, political, and aesthetic views. We do not have to live by the beliefs we grew up with if we don’t agree with them. We are all free to choose our own views about these things, and in fact we must choose our own views if they are to be truly ours (and this is true even if they end up being what we grew up with). If we don’t understand the connection between our values and our spirituality, our values and our political beliefs, or our values and our aesthetic preferences, then we don’t really understand our values at all. Without such understanding we are far more susceptible to the fads, faulty reasoning, and charlatans out there vying for our attention and money. We are not people of conviction.
- Your goals, both short-term and long term, and the daily activities that will allow you to achieve them. (Note: This is right out of the Franklin Daily Planner philosophy, which has fallen from popularity since the advent of computers, but is still a good resource for help in this area.)
- The kind of relationship you want with family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers. For example, if you value kindness and compassion, you will want to be kind and compassionate in your dealings with others. If you value honesty and loyalty, you will be honest and loyal in your relationships and seek out people who are honest with and loyal to you.
- What’s important to you in a romantic relationship. Believe it or not, it is possible to have an attraction and not act on it if the person’s values are not in line with yours. If more people based their romantic involvements on values rather than on superficial qualities, there would be much, much, much less suffering in the world.
- How you want to be perceived by other people. Do you want to be seen as kind? Intelligent? Hard-working? Competitive? Honest? Easy to talk to? If you behavior is consistent with your values, then other people’s perception of you should also be consistent with your values.
- The areas in which you want to learn and grow, including your free-time activities. I would hope that continuous self-improvement would be at the top of everyone’s list, but there are so many ways to develop yourself that it is important to be specific about what you want to work on. Do you want to be physically fit? Financially successful? More spiritual? Healed from childhood pain? More positive? More helpful to others? A better parent, friend, or employee? Do you want to spend your free time more productively? Read more? Pursue a creative dream? Or are you a Type A who wants to learn to relax more? The better you understand your values and their relationship to your behaviors and choices, the better you’ll be able to set useful goals and daily activities–which means you are more likely to grow and develop in the directions which will make you feel good about yourself.
- How you want to deal with and express your emotions. Most of us can always improve in this area, whether we are afraid to express ourselves or are prone to sharing “too much information.” Emotions do not happen in a vacuum; we can choose how we express them, and this choice is directly related to our values. Do we want to be more expressive? Less expressive? Have better boundaries? Develop a longer fuse? Understanding our values will help us do all of these things.
In summary, a good life philosophy involves knowing your values, tying them to your beliefs and behavior, and developing the habit of subjecting anything and everything that arouses your interest to them–performing a “values test.”
Modern life is complex. We are saturated, inundated, bombarded with information and choices every day. This is a good problem to have, but it can lead us down poor paths if we choose badly or give our attention to the wrong things. If we are to be successful in the face of such overabundance, we must, must, must understand our values and let them take the lead. We might be wrong occasionally, we might make mistakes, we might have to correct our values and views, but that’s okay, because the process itself is like fine-tuning an engine. It ensures that we have a system to correct errors and thus move ever closer to perfection–and it will result in a consistent life philosophy. Without such a system, we never get out of the starting gate.
Recommended Reading:
If They Aren’t Consistent, They Aren’t Values
Setting an Example
Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.–Jim Rohn
Another way to help people is by setting an example. How you lead your life is often the most powerful way to influence other people. They see something in you that they want, and they mimic you to try and get it.
External trappings of success may be the first thing most people notice and want to learn from you. But it is just the first thing–and after people get to know you a little better, these external trappings may or may not remain impressive to them. Whether they do or not is largely based on your character. In fact, character–a person’s moral and ethical quality–is the primary, and maybe the only, determinant in the kind of example we set for other people.
This is one reason it’s soooo important to be cognizant of your values and how you express them (both outcomes of yet another introspective process). Everything you do, every day, affects others. People know this is true for children, and will take care what they say and do around them. But it is just as true for everyone we come in contact with, and just as important to conduct ourselves according to the values we believe in. Our conduct tells other people not only what we think of them, but what we think about ourselves, the world, and our place in it. It belies everything we stand for and believe in. Just as self-awareness is a window into the souls of others, our conduct is the world’s window into ours .
People don’t have to want something from you to be affected by your character. Every single person you’ve ever had contact with was somehow influenced by your character, and vice versa. If you think about it, you could list several people you barely know who have had some impact on you, positive or negative. We are all bumping up against each other all the time, like molecules. Every interaction is an opportunity to make a good impression or a bad one, to be useful or detrimental, to offer hope or squelch it, to express kindness or disdain. We all have the power to influence others with our character. And speaking of impressions, people usually remember the negative ones more than the positive ones. This is because people tend to have a bigger emotional reaction to negativity than positivity–and yet another reason to take character building seriously.
And if there is a discrepancy between words and behavior, we always respond to the behavior. This is true whether we’re aware of it or not (and maybe especially if we’re not aware of it), because character can only be disguised for a short time, and it cannot be faked. If our character is poorly chosen, or base from a lack of interest in developing it, this is impossible to hide. When it comes to character, actions really do speak louder than words.
But probably the most important reason setting an example has so much potential to influence others is because it is proof that character is something we choose. We are truly sovereign over how we conduct ourselves–we have more power over our behavior, in fact, than over what we think and believe. This is because we can’t always control the thoughts that go through our minds, or the myriad factors that influence our beliefs, but we can always control our behavior; we can always choose our response. I know sometimes it feels as though we can’t, but this is a belief that must be challenged–and the sooner and more rigorously we do so, the better.
So when we behave with dignity and treat other people with respect, we are doing much more than acting with common courtesy (although that is important in and of itself). We are spreading the message that such behavior is possible. We are telling people that they, too, can choose to behave this way if they wish to, regardless of occasions or circumstances, regardless of upbringing, regardless of status, regardless of feelings, thoughts, or desires. Nothing about dignified behavior is magical or out of reach. It is within the reach of anyone who wishes to adopt the values and develop the character to be the person they want to be–and that anyone who has developed good character is living proof of this.
If They Aren’t Consistent, They Aren’t Values
Wikipedia defines values as “broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes.” This can apply to both individuals and cultures. It defines individual (personal) values as “an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc…Values generate behavior and help solve common human problems for survival by comparative rankings, the results of which provide answers to questions of why people do what they do and in what order they choose to do them.” Cultural values are those largely shared by a culture’s members, often identifiable by “noting which people receive honor and respect.”
In short, values help individuals and cultures (which are really just groups of individuals who share a similar background) determine what’s important and why, which in turn determines actions. Whether aware of them or not, values–both those foisted on us (cultural) and those we choose (personal)–underlie all of our thoughts, habits, opinions, and behaviors. Values are, in essence, the building blocks of all the choices we make in life.
It follows, then, that the more carefully we choose our values, the better our choices will be. Better choices will inevitably result in a better life, “better” in this case meaning more likely to achieve the outcomes that are the most important to us–those outcomes with the most value, that is.
I think this is all fairly well understood by most people: Values, consciously chosen and deliberately acted upon, are integral to a life well-lived. But what about applying those values consistently, in all areas of life, across all situations?
This is a little trickier. Yet, I believe, just as important, because without the capacity to apply one’s values consistently, it is questionable how well understood or deeply held a value really is–or if it is, in fact, really a value at all.
What really got me thinking about this is listening to people’s political opinions. Without getting into political beliefs, which aren’t the point, I’ve noticed that many people, including “expert” pundits and even politicians themselves, hold wildly inconsistent political values. As an example, let’s take individual freedom. Most Americans would agree that individual freedom is an important cultural value: that people should be free to live as they choose as long as they don’t infringe upon other people’s right to do the same. This value is so important, it is the primary founding principle of the country, guaranteed in writing in our Constitution, and the basis from which all other American freedoms and rights are derived, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble, freedom to own private property, the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to bear arms, and so many others.
Americans may differ on which of these guaranteed rights and freedoms are the most important, but few would argue that our freedom is absolutely essential to the American way of life, to “the pursuit of happiness.” Yet almost everywhere you turn, you hear people stating opinions that are completely antithetical to the idea of personal freedom. The classic example of this (for me, anyway) are drug laws. Today, the idea of “legal” and “illegal” drugs is so commonplace and accepted, few people question the morality of why possession of certain drugs risks imprisonment. Yet before the late 19th century, the idea of an illegal substance was unheard of. All drugs were legally obtainable because people were considered capable of being stewards of their own bodies–further, we are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to be. How and why this changed is a fascinating study in how politicians usurped the rights of American citizens, and how it paved the way for the gradual, continuous erosion of personal freedom now so ubiquitous that most no longer notice it for what it is.
If you ask people what they think about “illegal” drugs, most will say something like “Well, maybe marijuana should be legal, but drugs like heroin and cocaine should be illegal.” They will base this opinion on the fact that these drugs are “dangerous” and that keeping them illegal saves lives. This is absolutely not true, of course; it’s actually easier to obtain illegal drugs than legal (prescription) ones, particularly for minors; the “war on drugs,” after spending hundreds of billions of dollars, has done next to nothing to stop the flow of narcotics into the country, much less squelch people’s desire to use them. But the larger point is that such a view, held by the majority of Americans, is in direct opposition to the value of individual freedom.
There are many other examples of this. People who claim to value freedom of speech oppose pornography. People who claim to value the pursuit of happiness oppose gay marriage. People who claim to value freedom of religion want Muslim mosques restricted. People who claim to value civil liberties support the Patriot Act. And on and on. Inconsistency, and yes, hypocrisy, in political values is so widespread and normal now that it is barely recognized anymore as such.
People often lay claim to values until those values clash with an opinion they hold, then chuck them out the window like a piece of trash. But if you only hold a value until it applies to someone or something you don’t like, then it isn’t really a value at all. It’s just a convenient opinion not tied to any deeper meaning, and a poorly understood one, at that. Because often, the test of our principles is how well we’re able to uphold them when applied to aspects which we find distasteful. We may hate pornography, for example, but if we don’t understand that it is protected by our right to free speech, then we aren’t really standing against pornography but rather, against the principle of free speech.
This idea is equally important in our personal lives because our values determine our actions and ultimately the outcome of our lives. What we value makes us who we are. If those values are well thought out and consistent, we’ll have conviction in applying them, confidence in their rightness, and a clear path to achieving our goals; we will also be credible, dependable, principled people whom others respect and trust. Conversely, without consistent values, we’ll have or be none of these things. Our beliefs and actions will shift with the prevailing winds and we’ll mimic popular opinion, guessing at what’s right and at what we want. Inconsistent values are not values at all.
Living a principled life means understanding your values to the point that you can apply them consistently and universally. If you come up against an idea that seems to clash with your values, it is not the idea you must question or dismiss, but rather, the value itself. If you don’t learn to do this, the result will be an illogical, conflicted worldview that lacks grounding in any deeper principles and has little power to propel you successfully forward. Just because this is the norm today doesn’t make it right, and certainly not a desirable way to go through life.
Stop Complaining!
The other day I overheard part of a conversation that stopped me cold and made me see an un-pretty trait in myself. (I wasn’t eavesdropping; the discussion had nothing to do with me. But I was also unable to avoid hearing what I heard.) One of the men was doing most of the talking, the other most of the listening. The listener would ask a question, and the talker would go off on a long tangent that even I, in my limited knowledge of the subject matter, could tell was not a useful answer. The listener seemed to be trying to solve a problem or set a strategy for some business issue, while the talker seemed bound and determined to avoid solving the problem or setting a strategy. He did so in a number of ways. He changed the subject; he told a joke or story; he compared the situation to one in the past; he agreed that it was a good question but failed to elaborate with an answer. Mostly, he blamed circumstances and other people for his situation.
Nothing was his fault. If he looked bad, it was because somebody else was unavailable, or incompetent, or uninterested, or unwilling to do their job. He painted himself as the masterful genius who was constantly being let down by those less talented people he had no choice but to depend on. The more the listener tried to re-direct the talker to the problem at hand, the further away they seemed to get from finding a solution. Finally, the listener begged off, saying he’d see what he could do to help. Even though he showed no sign of frustration, it was apparent to me he’d given up. He couldn’t get through to this guy.
Maybe it was the contrast in the two men’s styles, but something about the conversation struck me hard. The listener was totally focused on solving a problem, on accomplishing something useful with the conversation. The talker was focused on making himself look good. The listener saw himself as a responsible agent. The talker saw himself as a victim. The incongruity was jarring.
In the quiet following the conversation, the message “Stop complaining!” flashed in my head like a neon sign. I’d like to say I identified with the listener, but the truth is that I identified with the talker just as much. I do believe that people are responsible for solving their own problems, and I’d like to think I do this to the best of my ability. But in the complainer I also heard myself. Oh my god, I thought, I do that. I do that! And I realized that, even though I do take responsibility for my actions, I often take the long way around to it, after a fair amount of whining, bitching, balking, irrititation, and, yes, complaining.
I never thought of myself as a complainer, but of course, I am. How could I not be, when I grew up with two of the most negative, mean-spirited, judgmental, shaming examples a child could have? I remember once as a teenager my boyfriend told me, after picking me up for a date, that my parents talked worse about people than anyone else he’s ever known. I’m not blaming my parents for my unattractive trait; I know it’s mine to deal with. But having grown up with complaining being so second nature, so much a backdrop in my life, I see now that it would be a difficult thing to see in myself. The good news is that I have seen it in a way I never had before, so I now have the self-awareness to do something about it. The bad news is that these lessons never, ever stop coming. But that’s not really so bad; I would rather know than not know, because this is the only way I become capable of change.
And sometimes, complaining is actually the agent of change. Sometimes, we need to “complain.” If viewed objectively, with kindness and understanding toward yourself, complaining can be the beginning of greater self-awareness. When we complain, it’s because we feel powerless and frustrated. Complaints could well be manifestations of underlying issues that need to be dealt with. Such complaints, when voiced and paid attention to, can lead us to solutions. It is only when complaining becomes chronic, lacking the desire for a solution, or about pointless, minor things that really have no relevance, that it is problematic–and decidedly unattractive. So while freeing myself of the need to complain is a positive goal, it’s also helpful to be aware that sometimes, complaining means I need to address some deeper source of frustration in my life.
That guy will never know what he did for me. Seeing myself in him was unnerving, but I’m so glad I did. I would like to remove chronic complaining from my repertoire entirely. It serves no purpose except to keep me in a negative state of mind and divert me from solving whatever problem I don’t want to deal with. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but keeping negative thoughts to myself and letting them die the quiet, unattended death they deserve is certainly a goal worthy of daily renewal.
So thanks for that, stranger!
How Do You Spend Your Time?
We may profess to love our children, our spouses, our work, or our spirituality, deeply, but the proof of this is in how much time we devote to the thing we say we love. Do we spend more time playing with our children than we do watching sports? Do we spend more time working, or chatting with friends on Facebook? Do we meditate, or do we nap? Do we read, or do we go shopping? Do we watch documentaries, or do we watch sit-coms?
The pull of what I call the non-challenging is strong for most people. We need the down time of fun, mindless activity to recharge. And there is nothing wrong with relaxing and enjoying yourself, or with having a variety of activities in your life. That is not what I’m talking about.
Years ago, I was standing with a group of women once, chatting after a meeting. The subject turned to grocery shopping, and one woman began pontificating–lecturing, almost–about how important it was to her to eat organic food, how she only shopped at whole food markets, and how she was struggling to get her husband to do the same. She was very adamant about how important it was to her to put only high-quality, healthy, politically correct food into her body, and about how important she thought it was for the rest of us to arrive at the same conclusion. But as she was talking, she was–and this is the absolute god’s honest truth–eating a bag of corn chips from a vending machine! And she had no idea how ridiculous she sounded.
This is what I mean about paying attention to how we spend our time. It can tell us a lot about ourselves. This woman really believed that she was committed to eating only healthy food, even as she stuffed her face with junk food. Like her, many of us really believe things about ourselves not because they’re true, but because they’re what we want to believe. Taking an honest look at how we spend our time can expose many surprising facts about ourselves. We may not like all of them, but knowing the truth is a better, more honest, more loving, more tolerant, more forgiving way to go through life. And it feels better, even if the process of becoming more self aware hurts a little.
I struggle with writing. I’m lucky if I get in four solid hours of writing a day, and I’m trying to make a living at it. I love writing, but it’s hard, and it takes a lot out of me. One day when I was feeling bad about myself, I remembered this Scott Peck quote, and I felt just awful. Am I fooling myself? Do I just believe I love writing and secretly hate it? Or am I just lazy?
But I know I love writing, even if I struggle with it. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, though, and I realized, after a great bit of self-reflection, that yes, I have to push myself, but I also have to be honest about my own limitations. I’m not lazy, but I am easily overwhelmed, and I struggle with believing that I can be successful at something I love. Because of my upbringing (and this is said not to place blame, merely to understand), I will always be easily overwhelmed, will have difficulty seeing myself as a successful person, and will have trouble believing in my own abilities. Writing has been an uphill battle for me–but that I’m able to take it on at all is nothing short of a miracle, or at least a testament to the great amount of work I’ve done on myself over the last twenty years. Many people who grew up as I did spend their lives struggling with depression, anxiety, addiction, abusive relationships, and worse. They never get out of the starting gate. And sadly, this is a large number.
So there are caveats. We don’t have to spend all of our time doing the things we love; sometimes, it just isn’t possible. And we don’t all have to want to change the world to feel okay about ourselves; sometimes we just want to enjoy ourselves, and that’s okay. The important thing is to arrive at honest conclusions about how we want to spend our time–the only time we have!–so we can lovingly lead ourselves down the best possible path, even if the going is sometimes slow.
The Importance of Respect
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
– If, by Rudyard Kipling
Respect is the most important thing human beings can give each other.
It is more important than love or kindness. It is more important than tolerance, patience, understanding, or education. It is even more important than any help or material goods you can offer someone (unless a person is in an emergency situation).
This is because respect contains all of these elements. Within respect can be found love and kindness, tolerance, patience, understanding, education, and help. If you give a person respect, then you are giving him all of these at once.
By respect, I mean allowing a person the dignity to make their own choices and behave as they see fit. You may not like the choices she makes. You may think she’s screwing up her life or hurting the people she cares about. But if she is an adult, and she is not causing harm to anyone except perhaps herself (your emotional anguish from watching notwithstanding), then it is your obligation, as a respectful person, to let her make her own choices.
This is the key concept: you don’t allow people the dignity to make their own choices because they are respectful; you allow people the dignity to make their own choices because you are respectful. Other people may or may not be respectful; if they are doing things that drive you crazy, chances are they haven’t learned a lot about respect yet. But if you hold respect as a value, then you will behave respectfully towards all people, whether they deserve it or not. Respect is what we choose for ourselves, regardless of how other people behave. We may not always achieve total respect all the time (doing so is hard), but we should understand why it is a worthwhile ideal to work toward.
If you conduct yourself respectfully, you will command respect from people. Such respect is powerful. People will perceive you as trustworthy. They will believe you to be honest, straightforward, and kind. They will feel “safe” talking to you, like they won’t be judged or told what you think they want to hear. Such an image of respect has what Stephen Covey would call a powerful “circle of influence;” that is, the areas of our lives over which we have some control. When you behave respectfully, everyone from your children to your bosses will want to know your thoughts and opinions. Respect is the basis for all satisfying relationships, personal or otherwise, absolutely essential for true connection and intimacy. And when that person who’s “throwing her life down the drain” is ready to change, she is going to go to the most respectful people in her life for the help to do so.
Respect, both getting and giving, is a big deal. All effective human interaction is based on it.
What does being respectful look like? Pretty simple, really. Good manners are a large part of it, which makes sense if you consider that manners are all about treating others in ways that make them feel comfortable in social situations. Being kind, honest, and tolerant. Being a good listener. Making an effort to understand what people are saying and what they want. Not imposing your views on someone who didn’t ask for them. Offering help, but not insisting on it. Forgiveness. Also, in heated situations, not reacting in kind to other people’s bad behavior (no matter how much they provoke you), or even excusing yourself. In short, being respectful is about behaving with dignity no matter what the situation may be.
Simple as the idea is, it is a difficult thing to carry out consistently. We all get anxious and scared and lose our composure at times. Being respectful doesn’t mean we can’t be human, it only means we maintain control over our reactions while in the presence of others. The respect we get from other people will grow according to our ability to do this, as will the respect we have for ourselves. We should always forgive ourselves when we fall short of respectful behavior, as we inevitably will, but we should also recognize respect for the important value that it is, and continuously strive for an ever greater ability to practice it in our everyday lives.
Still, We Must Make an Effort to Help…
The only way to truly help another person is to become a Whole person yourself.–Lama Everest
Having said all that, I want to be clear that I don’t mean we should throw up our hands and give up on people or on making the world a better place. The fact that change is a choice which can only happen inside of an individual does not mean there is no point in trying to help people. Actually, if you understand this basic principle of personal change, then making an effort to help people becomes more important than ever.
Change happens internally, by a subjective process unique to each individual. But this doesn’t mean that external stimuli don’t have an influence. Indeed, external stimuli have a huge, vast, tremendous influence on our internal, subjective lives. Everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and feel will affect our worldview. Every idea that evokes a response in us will have an influence on the path we travel, the direction we take in life. Some of these influences are small and insignificant, while some of them are profound and life-changing. But the external world “gets in;” everything we experience has an effect on us.
These external ideas and opinions by themselves don’t have the power to transform our views. For that to happen, these ideas and opinions have to be fed through our internal processes, some of which we are aware of and some of which we aren’t. (It’s important to know we aren’t fully aware of our processes for a couple of reasons. First, it can push us toward a greater desire for self-awareness–something which can only benefit us–and second, knowing that we never have full control over our internal processes keeps us humble–we all have blind spots and nobody completely understands himself, much less the external influences that make waves in our psyches. So we should humble ourselves accordingly.)
Anyway. External influences matter. They have a big effect on our internal world. If we understand and believe this, then there are (at least) two significant implications to consider:
1. What we’re exposed to will have an effect on our thoughts, feelings, opinions, and choices. Thus, we should choose carefully the influences we expose ourselves to. In this day and age of “entertainment saturation,” where the choices are overwhelming and banality and titillation abound, it becomes more important than ever to be conscientious about how we spend our free time. We don’t have to spend every waking moment in the pursuit of happiness or personal betterment; in fact, we shouldn’t. But we should be aware that how we spend our time will, indeed, have an impact on how we think, what we believe and, indeed, who we are. If our pasttimes are primarily banal, we will inevitably be banal. If we never challenge ourselves, we’ll never get better at anything. If we don’t spend time learning how to love ourselves and other people properly, we’ll never get good at it. If we eat too much and don’t exercise, we’ll get fat. And so forth. As a friend of mine used to say, “If you hang around a barber shop, you’re gonna get a haircut.” She was talking about staying away from bars when you’re trying to stay sober, but the idea works for any situation: hang around a good barber, you’re gonna get a good haircut. Hang around a bad barber, you’ll get a bad haircut. But the choice is yours.
2. How we behave will have an effect on others. We should act as if we are examples to other people, because we are. We are their external influences. We should not take this responsibility lightly. We should act, to the best of our ability, as though we knew that everything we said and did was being observed and soaked up by other people, because it is. If certain principles are important to us–kindness, respect, tolerance, and personal development, for example–we should act with those principles always in mind. We should strive to be examples of how we believe people should live their lives. This is the greatest influence anybody can have on another human being–the influence of our example.
If we extend this second implication a bit further, it becomes easy to see why coercion doesn’t work to induce personal change. If we practice coercion, or believe that it’s morally correct for a political, religious, or other social body to practice coercion for purposes of individual change, then we are saying that we believe in the principle of coercion. We are setting an example of coercion. Which means we believe that not only is it okay to coerce others into doing what we believe is right, but also that it’s alright for others to coerce us to comply with standards that they believe are right. That is, if coercion is condoned for one person or group, then it is okay for all persons and groups. And where does that stop? Who decides which person or group is right?
Besides its terrifying implications, such coercion is generally responded to with resentment, which is never an incentive to personal change. But it can be hard to see until we become the ones being coerced–which is going to happen in a society that condones social control and the attempt to legislate morality. Considering all of this, is coercion–aside from prevention of force and fraud–really an effective way to evoke change?
Since none of us knows, for sure, what’s right or best for anybody but ourselves (and even for ourselves, what’s right and best is often sketchy), the wisest course of action can only be to allow people the freedom to make their own choices. Once such an environment exists, people may or may not choose personal betterment, but having the freedom to make such a choice (or not) places the principle of freedom above the principle of coercion. This is the most respectful thing one person can do for another, or a government for its people. As such, it creates an environment that allows for the greatest possibility for personal change.
Where would any of us be if there weren’t people who’ve helped us along the way? Helping others is crucial, not only to their well-being, but to our own. We don’t have a lot of control over the myriad external influences out there, but we do have a lot of control over the ones we expose ourselves to, and even more over the influences we present to other people. We should use our power of choice wisely in both arenas.
Is the Internet Making Us Stupider?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. — French proverb
Anytime we think the problem is out there, that thought is the problem. — Stephen Covey
Recently, I got into a discussion with a friend about technology in general and social networking in particular. His beliefs are that technology had made us less critical thinkers (which is what I mean by “stupider”), and that social networking, with its powerful allure to the banal and mundane, has elevated that problem by great proportions. Because of social networking, he and similar minded people believe, we have become less tolerant, more impatient, more opinionated, more narcissistic, less able to discern fact from fiction, less capable of having meaningful relationships in real life, and even that our physical well-being will suffer because of our “addiction” to the Internet and social networking; it’s such a simple, instantaneous source of pleasure, how could it not have detrimental effects?
I can understand how people would think this. All you have to do is look around you to see problems caused by technology. Pollution from factories and cars, for example. Overpopulation caused by better living conditions and longer life spans. Weapons that can destroy the entire planet. And video games, cell phones, smart phones, the Internet, and now, social networking to distract us from more serious pursuits and fill our heads with banal, pointless entertainment that can only be bad for us.
But this attitude is exactly backwards.
It is a mistake in reasoning to think these problems are caused by technology. Technology can’t cause problems. It is inanimate, it has no agency, and it is unable to perform any action, positive or negative, on its own. The problems of technology are, at their heart, the problems of humanity. The nature of our problems isn’t pollution and annihilation, it is greed, self-centeredness, shortsightedness, hatred, and fear. Technology can’t create these issues; it merely exacerbates the issues that are already there.
Yes, this creates some problems. To take an extreme example, if a power-hungry ruler wanted to wipe out an enemy country 150 years ago, it would have been very, very hard to do. Today, all he needs to do is get his hands on a nuclear weapon, and not only could he wipe out his enemy, he could wipe out the entire planet.
This is a serious concern. And having grown up in the shadow of thermonuclear annihilation, I know how much fear and anxiety the possibility can cause. But does this mean the ability to control atoms is bad? After all, radiation also kills cancer cells and creates cheap energy for millions of people. And more importantly, does it mean that nuclear energy is immoral? This is like asking if the sun is immoral. The answer, of course, is no. It is only the people who use the technology who can be appraised in terms of morality and value judgments. The power-hungry ruler may have immoral motives, but the nuclear bomb is no more moral or immoral than the garage it sits in before the ruler decides to use it.
Even so, you may say, the possibility of destroying the world is bad, so therefore, nuclear energy is bad. And in the same vein, you may say that the Internet has created a generation of mindless, instant-gratification zombies who are incapable of thinking for themselves, so it’s bad, too. But if you say these things, you are getting the causality backwards.
You are also getting the causality backwards if you think that 150 years ago, people had longer attention spans or a greater capacity to think critically. They did not. Then as now, the majority of people got by on the minimum amount of energy and effort that they could. It’s just that they had to work much harder back then to maintain their subsistence level of existence, and they had far fewer opportunities for entertainment of any kind. It’s true that if the Internet had existed then, people wouldn’t have used it the same way people do today–but that’s only because most people were illiterate. Thanks to technology, poor people today have much more comfortable lives than they once did, and much more free time to enjoy themselves. They also have access to education that was unheard of back then; today in an industrialized country, everyone gets the opportunity to learn how to read. If anything, more people have become critical thinkers than in the past, thanks to technology, and yes, the Internet.
And if you think that the Internet and social networking has created a desire for the banal and inane, you have got that causality backwards, as well. People have always gravitated toward the banal, the inane, and the sensationalistic. Think of lions killing Christians, or public hangings, or gambling, pornography, and prostitution. There is nothing new in entertainment that appeals to the lowest common denominator of human interest. Banality is fun, it’s entertaining. And everybody wants fun and entertainment in their lives.
Has the Internet taken this too far? I suppose if people cease being able to support themselves and make their way in the world because of their Internet and social networking usage, they would need to look seriously at how they’re spending their time and make some different choices. But until then, people should be left alone to spend their free time how they want to, even if it’s not what we would choose for them. This is what “personal freedom” means. Often, that freedom means the freedom to meet the minimum social and personal obligations, and otherwise to be left alone.
Some people do develop obsessions with the Internet that cause problems in their lives (although pornography is usually involved, not Facebook). But once again, this is a human problem, not a technology problem. Technology may have intensified the problem–because that’s what technology does, whether problem or solution–but it is still a human problem, and one that can only be solved on a personal, subjective, internal level. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step to getting sober is admitting you have a problem.
You see, “external” solutions don’t work for personal issues. They may force people to conform, and in the case of laws to protect us from other people’s greed, self-centeredness, and violence, this is a good thing. But when it comes to protecting us from ourselves, external laws don’t work. They can’t squelch desire. Rather, they tend to create greater desires, and black markets to fulfill them. This is human nature. People have always done what they want, and they always will do what they want. In fact, technology exists largely because of people inventing better ways to do what they want!
So, the Internet is not making us stupider, i.e., less critical thinkers. It just appeals, in a big way, to tendencies that already exist. Technology makes the problem look new, and worse, but neither is the case. And it never has been. The older generation has always worried about the younger generation’s trends, fads, and crazes. Before social networking, it was video games. Before that, it was rock and roll and drugs; before that, it was jazz. And before that, it was something else, ad infinitum. It is almost the job of the older generation to criticize the younger one. But the truth is that every generation manages to reach adulthood pretty much intact and unscathed by their “dangerous” pasttimes, able to graduate from college and go on to have families and create new and better technology for future generations. There is no evidence whatsoever that this pattern of human life won’t continue for many generations into the future, or that there is any cause for alarm.
Oddly enough, I actually do think people have gotten stupider. Or at least ruder and more narcissistic. But I know that a lot of this is that I am now part of the old guard, looking down at the younger generation and seeing all their foolishness and short-sightedness (youth truly is wasted on the young!), and I try to keep in mind that, even though I didn’t have the Internet and even though I was a pretty serious kid, I had my own ways of rebelling and screwing off that horrified my parents. And I turned out alright, just like everyone else in my graduating class (which I now know for a fact thanks to Facebook).
And if people actually have gotten stupider, ruder, and more narcissistic, which is entirely possible, it is not because of technology. It is because of a gradual migration away from values, from an internally-derived sense of self that is so crucial to happiness, confidence, integrity, and everything else that makes life worth living. I’m not certain how this migration is occurring, if it is at all. One theory is that the vast success of technology since the Industrial Revolution has shifted the focus of modern cultures so far to the external end of the spectrum that people have ceased to look within for solutions to their problems. We’ve come to expect that technology will solve all of our problems, so we’ve moved away from reliance on our internal self–our values, emotions, and ability to develop ourselves.
I suppose on the surface this seems like an argument against technology. But this is not so. It’s more an argument that values are equally as important as technology, and it is more important than ever to develop them. To paraphrase the great physicist Richard Feynman, “science can create technology, and it can tell you what you can accomplish with it, but it can’t tell you the right or wrong of those accomplishments. Only values can do that.” In other words, technology is, in and of itself, completely neutral and absolutely benign. Only human thought bestows value on it. So if we do not have a good sense of our values, then technology is going to cause problems for us. Thus, because technology yields such tremendous power and offers such a vast array of choices, it is more important, not less so, to have a strong sense of who we are, what we want, and why.
The problem is not too much technology, it’s too little introspection. If there is one single message the world needs to hear, one single message that will change everything for the better, this is it. People are not getting stupider. But if they don’t figure out that everything that matters happens inside of them, and not “out there somewhere,” they are never going to get any smarter, either.
Happiness is Not a Birthright
Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.–Sam Levenson
That which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.–Ayn Rand
Happiness is not a birthright, although the pursuit of it should be. There’s a lot of confusion about this idea, and about happiness in general. It’s a big topic, but I’m going to try to say something meaningful about it anyway.
With the presidential elections swinging into full, nauseating force, there is more than the usual political rhetoric inundating us about how much the government can, and is supposed to, do for its citizens. If we were to believe everything the politicians said, then we would believe that the government should provide for the safety, security, economic well-being, physical health, mental health, and, yes, happiness, of its citizens. In fact, this idea has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that few people question it anymore. Problems that arise in society are automatically expected to be solved by the government. There are so many laws, ordinances, prohibitions, and regulations now that it’s impossible for the average person to keep track of them; to know, for sure, whether or not he is adhering to the law or breaking it, or possibly doing both at the same time. Tax laws alone, now more than 20 volumes long and growing relentlessly, are so staggeringly complex that even trained IRS officials and accountants don’t always know if they’re violating rules by following others. And don’t even get me started on the laws meant to protect us from ourselves, the drug laws and gambling laws and tobacco laws, for example, that prohibit us from doing, buying, and ingesting what we want even when nobody else is hurt by our choices. And all in the name of our own good–because no law has ever been passed with the intention to harm citizens, at least not overtly.
In a very real way, the government has taken on the role of moral agent, the arbiter of right and wrong, in the lives of its individual citizens. At the very least, the federal government exercises social controls far beyond its province–gay marriage being the prime current example (and abortion being the classic one). You see? If people didn’t view the government as a moral agent, if this wasn’t the accepted norm, it wouldn’t occur to us to demand governmental action for the behavior we want restrained or reinforced; it wouldn’t occur to us that anyone had the right to such a brash approach to ideals they disagree with, but are unharmed by. Instead, it is so ingrained in our thinking that such action is rarely questioned; debated, yes, but questioned, at its roots, as the audacious violation of personal freedom that it is, no. The government now decides the right and wrong of many, if not most, of our societal, and even personal, dilemmas. With such far-reaching powers, it has become the default agent by which many citizens have come to believe that they can find happiness.
Not only is this morally wrong, it is rationally wrong. It can never work. Nobody is responsible for anybody else’s happiness. Happiness is an inside job, something we can only achieve by our own grit, sweat, and determination. And it is a by-product, as the quote at the beginning says. Of what? Of good moral choices. And if moral “choice” is decided for us by outside entities like the government, then it ceases to be a moral choice, as the other quote establishes. If the right and wrong of things are dictated to us rather than voluntarily chosen, and if we adhere to that right and wrong out of obligation or fear of retribution, then right and wrong have become moot points, and we have become like children waiting for our elders to tell us what to do.
Such a moral code will never produce happiness. It is the very antithesis of the kind of moral code most conducive to happiness.
If we are to find happiness, then, we must do so in spite of this paternal system, not because of it. We must transcend this urge, happily indulged by those who seek power over others (and politicians are only one segment of that population), to relinquish our moral agency. We must instead embrace our own moral agency for all it’s worth. And it is worth everything.
This is a hard thing to do. There is so much pressure to go the other way, to give in to external “assurances” of security and well-being. If we are to be free moral agents, and thus, if we are to have a shot at real happiness, we must go against convention on many, many levels. We must reject not only our government (at least its paternal aspects), but our education, our religion, our families, and our comfort zones. We must question all authority, all beliefs, all established ideas of morality and happiness and what matters in life. We must dissect them, examine them, digest them. And only after we’ve gone through this process, and decided for ourselves what’s important to us, what feeds our spirit and what detracts from it, what holds meaning for us and why, and where our passions lie, can we truly own ourselves: our histories, our spirituality, our families, our lives. And only then, after arriving at our own moral conclusions–for if they are not our own, they are not morality, but simply rules–do we have the opportunity for happiness. Real happiness, that is, the kind that is a default view of life, that stays with us, day in and day out, despite our changing circumstances. The kind we earn, the kind not to be confused with temporary elation or excitement. I might even say that undertaking this process is happiness itself, or at least the basis for it. Yes, it’s hard, but living any other way is far harder, regardless of how it might appear–and also far, far emptier.
Why empty? Because the larger, underlying truth is that our safety, security and well-being are always up for grabs, no matter who holds the reins. It is an illusion that the government (or any other external entity) can, or will, protect us from anything beyond its own moral province, that is to say, from force, fraud, and foreign invasion. And even in these cases, outcomes are uncertain. Ultimately, there is no real safety and no real security in life, and our sense of well-being is best had by coming to terms with those simple truths and learning to take care of ourselves as best we can in the face of them. Nobody can do that for us, no matter how much we want to believe they can.
Happiness is not a birthright in the same way that physical fitness is not a birthright. It is something we must be willing to work for. Once upon a time, Americans understood this, and their pursuit of happiness created the freest, wealthiest, most abundant nation ever imagined, with the highest standard of living and the greatest opportunity for all (flawed even as it was). This is all a government owes its people: an environment in which we are free to be our own moral agents and thus free to pursue our own passions and create our own happiness. This is the only happiness that really matters, the only kind that truly resonates with our human nature. In our deepest selves, we all know this to be true.
We’ve gotten so far away from that. We’ve gone so far down the road of government paternalism that, as I said, few people even recognize it as such anymore; it’s simply the way things are.
I did not mean for this to be a political essay. But politics are a huge part of the choices we make (or don’t make), in a way I’ve only recently realized. People need to be aware of this and to think seriously about it, even in areas of their personal lives that, on the surface, have little to do with politics. I strongly believe that if we continue progressing down this paternalistic path, we are going to end up in a totalitarian world that will squelch all possibility of moral choice, and thus, of true happiness.
It won’t be an iron-fist fascist regime, no. But it will be a totalitarian regime nevertheless, slipped into by fear, indifference, and intellectual laziness. As such, it will be a voluntary one, and thus, I believe, far worse.
And sadly, we will have deserved it.
First Principles and the Personal Mission Statement
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.–Victor Frankl
If you’ve never read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
One of my favorite exercises in the book is creating a personal mission statement. You know what a mission statement is: it’s a statement used by some entity, usually a corporation, that boils down their business philosophy into a few short phrases or a bulleted list. A typical mission statement might read something like, “To provide optimum goods and services to our customers, to treat customers and employees fairly, and to act in an ethical and responsible manner in all our endeavors.” You might think a mission statement is meaningless business speak made up by company executives so that their employees and customers think they have morals. In some cases, I’m sure that’s true. But when done in a true effort to distill beliefs down to essential “first principles,” a mission statement can be an immensely worthwhile effort.
Covey explains the purpose of a personal mission statement, which falls under the Second Habit: Begin With the End in MInd. He says, “The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focuses on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.” He goes on to compare the personal mission statement with the Constitution of the United States, saying that “The Constitution of the United States is the standard by which every law in the country is evaluated. It is the document the president agrees to defend and support when he takes the Oath of Allegiance. It is the criterion by which people are admitted into citizenship. It is the foundation and the center that enables people to ride through such major traumas as the Civil War, Vietnam, or Watergate. It is the written standard, the key criterion by which everything else is evaluated and directed.”
This is how a person should look at creating a personal mission statement. It is your Constitution, a statement of deeply held personal beliefs and values that guide you through your life, help you live by your own chosen standards, and enable you to pursue and achieve the goals that are most important–because they are based on your values–to you.
How do you go about creating a personal mission statement? Without stealing all of Covey’s wonderful details, which you should read for yourself, I will say that you must begin with personal responsibility, with the idea that you, and only you, are responsible for the beliefs you hold and the actions you take. Whether or not your beliefs have been influenced by others is irrelevant at this point. You can deal only with what you have at hand, and it is your responsibility to do so. If you do not invest in this idea, you won’t really be able to soul-search in the way necessary to come up with your own most deeply held beliefs and principles.
Once you accept ownership for your life, then you must ask yourself, What do I want to do with it? What’s important to me? Why? What do I need to look at more closely? What do I want to change? What makes me truly happy and proud?
This process will not (and should not) be quick, and it should not be easy. As Covey says, “the process is important as the product.” Going through this process forces you to think through your priorities deeply. It heightens self-awareness and makes you think through your daily, routine actions with a new perspective. Ideally, it will help you align your behavior with your beliefs. It should take weeks or even months to write a personal mission statement, and in the end you should have a document of principles and values that will largely determine your desired path, will guide you down it, will steer you back to it if you stray, and will provide stability and even comfort in times of crisis. Your personal mission statement should be to you what the Constitution is to the United States.
As your personal Constitution, the mission statement should address your important concerns, but it should address them from a universal rather than a detailed perspective. It should be based on principles like honesty, perseverance, kindness, continued self-improvement, and the like. Goals and details about how to achieve them are important, too, but they must come after the mission statement, which provides the foundation for determining and achieving them.
I read The Seven Habits in 1994. I’d forgotten what a great book it was. Looking back now, I see that many of my beliefs about personal responsibility and the importance of leading a value-based life (or “principle-centered,” as Covey calls it) came from this book. In fact, I was so impressed with this book that I did something I almost never do: I took Covey’s advice and wrote my own personal mission statement. I took my time and put a lot of thought into it, just as he said, and when I was satisfied with it, I printed it and framed it and hung it over my desk, where I could read it every day. And I did, indeed, use it as a guide and a reminder about what really mattered to me.
My life has changed a lot since I wrote my personal mission statement in April of 1994, and I’d long since packed it away and forgotten about it until recently. There are a few things I’d change, but for the most part, it still stands as a “constitution” for my personal conduct and values. I’ll share it now, as an example of what a personal mission statement might look like:
I will:
Strive for personal growth.
Be here now.
Forgive myself.
Think positive.
Live in the solution.
Be a loyal friend.
Remember that people are the most important.
Use my pain to help others heal wherever possible.
Eat right, exercise, and take care of myself.
Be honest.
Be helpful without seeking reward.
Be willing to work toward goals.
Forgive.
Strive for ever deeper levels of love for others and myself.
Be tolerant, compassionate, and nonjudgmental.
Take risks and expand my horizons.
Be financially responsible.
Practice gratitude for all that I have, and all that I don’t have.
Believe that I’m doing the best I can.
Be a good worker.
Be true to my own ideals.
Build people up, not tear them down.
April 1994
