Joy Truth Life Love Peace. Kaizen(Continuous Improvement, Adaptivity) Faith Evidence Passion Health Wealth Sensitivity Courage Will Forgiveness Humility Acceptance Focus Networking Seeking Learning Creativity Discipline Patience Balance Spinning(Increasing Positivity) Hope
JOY Joy is a feeling of satisfaction for life. Happiness is getting what you want. Joy is wanting what you have. Joy is appreciation of what was, passionate satisfaction with what is, and hopeful welcome of what will be. Keeping virtue in times of suffering and challenging circumstances lead to joy. To want what you already have, learn what you have and who you are. To discover your self and your place in life, explore your environment, and accept both the kindness and harshness of nature as it reveals itself. And, contemplate who you are, your position in life, and what it is you really want. In doing so, remember that actions speak more loudly than words. After you have contemplated your self, contemplate others the same way. To accept joy, accept your position and accept your self, and finally accept others the same. Then, you may reach your potential, and we may reach our potential. When you share goals with others, you will be one with others. Challenges are better overcome when our personal virtues and values are minded. Challenges. Handling challenges well brings joy. Success requires overcoming challenges, working hard, and getting dirty. Accept challenge, power through the work, and welcome the dirt for success. To know your self in full, challenge virtues and values to their limits. Simplicity. Simplifying helps discover joy. We may reduce the complexities of life to reveal the world in a more pure form. To simplify we may develop priorities, organize clutter, and avoid extravagance. Freedom and independence. How free and independent are those with great accomplishment? Accomplishments begin with freedom and independence. We are born with goals natural to us. But, our environment and its people have goals for you to consider. It is your choice to adapt them. When these goals are right for you, adapt them. When these goals are wrong for you, refuse them. Live your own life, not the lives of others. If it happens to be the same life as your family or community or society or culture or authorities expect, the many of you become one of us, and that is fine. If not, there can be appreciation for diversity and challenge, and that is fine too. Accomplishment. Accomplishment, success, and victory lead to joy when well done. To accomplish, both think and feel before you act. Confidence. Being confident about now and the past leads to making confident choices. Choices define the future. For the future, a more positive and realistic, and less negative spin build hope and may justify optimism. Possibilities. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible. Dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go, be who you want to be. To reach your full potential, allow every good want its chance for success. Opportunity. Everyone who wishes to achieve goals have the opportunity. Occasionally you have only one chance for a goal or it may never happen. Those who attune to opportunities discover them, and those who attend to their goals discover joy.
TRUTH Truth sometimes may hurt. Truth always may set you free. Truth leads to accomplishment. Truth invites questioning, because questioning leads to truth and gives us confidence when due. If placing other values above the truth, you may not be able to handle the truth. For knowledge, know your self. Knowledge is half the mission. Know who you are to begin to accomplish your goals. Then, accept who you are to accomplish your goals. For truth, know those around you. For truth, know your environment, as information is by your perceptions. Ignorance is bliss for moments, knowledge is power for generations. The most important knowledge may be that you know nothing. You know nothing until you know everything because the one thing left to know may be how you are wrong about everything else. By learning who you are, you can with less difficulty learn your environment and learn who others are. Learning increases the ability to accomplish goals. Truth may be discovered with exploration, instinct, and logic. All virtues are grounded in truth for pure joy we have true life, true love, and true peace.
LIFE Life is opportunity to achieve and experience joy. Experiencing life is living in the present. To experience the present, just be. To just be, you may want to first notice the many parts of your body, and their connections and senses. Sense and value past experience, so you can then chose a future. Then, joy may be achieved through changing your self. The greatest opportunities of life include the challenge to your virtue and values. Be the change you wish to experience. There is a time to live in the moment. There is a time to remember the past. There is a time to invest in the future. Meaning of Life. The meaning of life is an experience that may be indescribable in words, so its meaning must be explored and discovered individually. If there comes a time when you want nothing and have more than that, you may experience the meaning of life. Why live? Life is choices, and you may chose what you want, perhaps chose to not live, and may chose to live other people’s lives instead by caring for them more than your self. If you aren’t living your life, you’re living someone else’s life. Lounging around as a fixture makes you into a fixture. Life is like a puzzle. When the puzzle is solved, there may always be another puzzle. The next puzzle may be a completely different challenge. When our solution is done, and our mission is done, our life is done, and a new life may be found. Live free or live not. The carbon rule of life is to live and let live. Our family and friends may be an extension of our life just as as we are an extension of life to our family and friends.
LOVE Agape, a caring love. Love shares enjoyment of life. Love admires life. Love begins with love for your self. Then, you may love others as you love your self. Love spreads love. The ‘golden rule’ is to treat others as you your self would like to be treated. Generosity. Sharing is caring. Helping others by sharing our ways of life and our resources with no strings attached. It can hurt to love but be unloved in return. It can hurt even more to love someone without courage to tell them how you feel. So, consider many ways to reveal your feelings. Evil and Suffering. People want choices. When people have choices, bad choices must exist. The better choices are good and the worse choices are bad. Bad choices are the source of evil and suffering. We can experience more pain than imagined possible or considered fair. At least equally so, we can experience more pleasure than we imagine to be possible or deservable. Regardless of how bad things are, things can get worse. Regardless of how good things are, things can get better. Why do bad things happen to good people? There are no good people. There are no bad people. There are good behaviors and evil behaviors. So then, why do bad things happen to well behaved people? In a world where everyone receives equal unconditional love by God, it is just as bad for bad things to happen to badly behaved people as well behaved people, in allowing justice outside of time. Consider a world where people all receive equal and unconditional love by God. Why do bad things happen? People want chances. When people have chances, bad chances must exist. Bad things will happen in a world with freedom and also a world with chances. Left must allow right. Up must allow down. Good must allow bad. Love must allow hate. The opportunity for good and love is also a chance for evil and hate. Hate is a misguided love, so we may become that which we hate. We are born sinners as our motives are only altruistic or pure to our ideals. Helping others may cause you to feel good. So, you are gaining personal benefit by helping others. But if someone does not have such a pleasure in helping others, let’s not hold it against them, as they have a right to chose to help only them self, and to chose their own values and goals. Live and let live. A fountain of pure and unconditional love can be tapped within all those who seek it.
PEACE To just be. Peace releases us from guilt, sin, and suffering. We may accept even what we cannot change. We may accept by tolerance even what is only for others to control. Four paths to peace include forgiveness, courage, humility, and acceptance. There are many ways to peace. For peace, find a time to confront and forgive all who have wronged you and your cared. Find a time to apologize to all who you have wronged. Forgive those who are not sorry, but do not apologize for those who are not sorry. Find a time to forgive all wrongs by all people. Apologize for all wrongs. After you apologize, do what you can to compensate your victims and right your wrongs. Discover courage to confront those who have wronged you directly without hesitation, or anger will build. Fighting your feelings is fighting peace. Peace is a refuge from your troubles, but not an escape from them. If trouble comes up and you do not take care of it with time, it will become a burden. Burdens may grow until damaging you. So, take care of trouble as it arises with time. Accept your limitations and weaknesses. War works more in theory. Peace works more in practice. War may or may not be justified, but peaceful resolution is always justified. The best path to peace is by peace. Meditation. To meditate, just be. Accept your self and accept all others, as God accepts you and God accepts all with mercy and forgiveness. Confess your sins to all those who you have wronged. Accept others for who they are as you would wish to be accepted for who you are. For peace, be humble, as standards are mere words of imperfect people. As you tolerate and accept your self, be tolerant and accepting of others. Avoid judging others until you are ready to be judged on the same terms for all your wrongs. Disputes. Doing nothing in cowardice is neither peaceful nor a resolution. For peace, allow people who do wrong against you a chance to make things right without first advertising the issue to the world at large. Advertising a conflict increases the scale of the conflict. So only when complaint fails to cause improvement, consider the most minor step first in expanding the dispute to involve more people. The scale of disputes can be personal, among friends, among community, global, or other levels as you define. When you have an issue with someone, always to take issue directly with the person at issue before increasing the scale or seeking resolution other ways for better resolution. If still unresolved, you may seek a mediator such as a mutually trusted friend. The best mediator is someone who you both trust to help negotiate the resolution. If still unresolved, an arbitrator is a good final chance for peace. The best arbitrator is someone you all trust to render a final judgment that you will accept without knowing in advance and regardless of the outcome. You may even agree to a mutually trusted person to use force to resolve the issue upon arbitration. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Live by peace, die in peace.
KAIZEN You can get better, stronger, and faster at many things, if you put your heart and mind to it. If you can’t get strong, you can become less weak. If you cant get good, you can become less bad. Few people reach their potential because they don’t know their self, they don’t accept their self, and they don’t attempt to improve them self constantly. Virtues and values can be strengthened, tuned, and attended to. You may constantly improve your self. Bend rather than break in adaptivity. Attributes without attention may become weaker over time. You can accomplish more than what you are doing now. You can do so by force of will, and you can do so by learning more and training more. Everyone is capable of great improvement by spending time. However, if one does not know their self, they may be improving a worthless ability or behavior, or even working against their own goals. To improve your self, first discover your self. Network with others who share your goals. Learn from mistakes by listening to supporters opinions and by continuous evaluation of goal progress. Mistakes happen, but will you let them happen twice? To improve, seek and make room for improvement. Track your achievements and progress to goals so you can use that information to improve. Every writing can be improved. Write a new beginning. Write a new middle. Write a new end. Many people think their actions are uncontrollable. Even coughs and sneezes can be controlled with training. If you were offered an incredible reward for changing your life course, could you do it? For example, if you were offered a solid gold statue to stop eating for one day with good food there for you to eat, could you do it? One hour? One minute? Or, if you were offered an incredible punishment to avoid the behavior, could you do it? If someone were going to kill you with no exceptions for eating, could you stop eating for a day? An hour? A minute? These are two tests of choice. If you wait to be ready for change before you do change, you may be waiting forever. So, don’t always wait to change. In Kaizen, don’t just survive, but thrive.
FAITH Dreams can lead to hope. Hope can lead to faith. Faith can lead to confidence to face our fears and press on. Intuition is the instinct that allows animals to succeed in life even without the skill of logical reasoning. So, faith is an intuition that allows people to find joy in life with or without logical reasoning. The less information available about something, the more the belief about it rests on faith. Evidence lowers the need for faith in a belief. Because some beliefs cause harm to our selves and others, we have a responsibility to discover evidence. So, seek and welcome information to strengthen well placed faith and to replace misplaced faith. Our faith is often put to the test, but you may avoid many trials by putting your own faith to the test. Build courage to welcome information about beliefs that contradict your beliefs. The more different perspectives and opposing views you know of or adapt to, the less wrong or more confident you can feel about your beliefs. Absence of evidence is not evidence, but faith. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains as improbable, is a faith. Logic is limited in reach because all lines of reasoning eventually lead to the unknown. So, logic rests on a foundation of faith or instinct. Science and logic often require more time than what is available to reach a confident conclusion, leaving us to our instincts to form a decision or belief. Also, science can sometimes lead a researcher in logical circles, which is invalid logic. Logic only works in lines of reasoning, not in circles of reasoning. Where we have little evidence, we may have faith, and when we have faith, we have hope.
EVIDENCE Feeling right is good, being right is better. Evidence enables us to better learn what works and what is correct even when opposing our beliefs. Evidence includes experience, statistics, and logic. Our own experiences or senses are one of many ways of evidence. And, these experiences are incomplete without logic. Often times things work against how we would expect and in ways that seem to make little sense. Those circumstances are when logic, statistics, and other forms of reason may be helpful. Statistics. Statistics are patterns in numbers that give us information. Statistics enable confidence in truth. False statistics give confidence in lies. Statistics require many more resources than other ways of finding truth. Asking an opinion from a friend is easy, while collecting evidence is challenging. Ignorance is easy. The more time and resources spent in discovery of the truth, the more one is likely to know the truth. Ignore people who spend time to seek the truth at the cost of your own ignorance. Logic. Logic is a tool to understand patterns of our universe. Logical reasoning is used to consider cause and effect, to question the consistency of a belief, to determine if an argument is valid, and whether a fact is correct. The simplest explanation is the most likely to be true. However, it is also easy to wrongly assume the reasons for why things happen. If it is true most of the time, then it is true in general. However, it is not necessarily true in specific. When two people disagree, at least one of the two is wrong. For example, Muslims are entirely certain that Christians are wrong while Christians are entirely certain that Muslims are wrong. Some opinions can be wrong. Logic ends traditions that are shown harmful. For example, it is now known that sharing the same food bowl spreads sickness more easily. Instinct & Science. Instinct did lead to science. Science leads to truth. However, science is neither superior to instinct, nor may it rightfully claim a righteous authority on truth. Science is one tool of many for truth. Critical thinking. Our instinct is to look at other ways of life and notice their flaws and their mistakes. In looking at other ways of life, we see that those wrong beliefs cause harm. Considering other ways of life can be wrong, our ways of life may be wrong. So, explore your own ways of life to discover flaws and mistakes, then take action. Independent thought. Blind faith in such things as popular beliefs, official stories, magic, superstitions, and the supernatural enable crime and tempts wrongs. Learn to sort evidence to your maximum ability to determine truth. Blind faith is bad faith. Fallacy. It is much easier to be wrong than to be right. There are multitudes of ways to reason wrongly. It is wrong to presume that because someone is admirable they are right, and equally wrong to presume that because someone is of poor character or poor intelligence that they are wrong. It is wrong to presume that because a belief is popular it is right. Learn fallacies and to avoid them as much harm in the world is due to fallacy. Rumormilling. People grinding others down by rumor, dishonor, or ostracism with no evidence cited or weak evidence cited are them selves as dishonorable and disgraceful as the behavior they are condemning. Disrespecting someone by act of rumormill is as bad as the alleged wrong itself when, as is often, the opposite of the rumor is often more accurate. Accuse someone of a wrong only at your own risk of dishonor. To do something such as disassociate with someone because of such accusations promotes the evil of false accusations. The court of public opinion is more corruptible than formal court in a culture of rumors and innuendo. Upon hearing such a rumor, one has a civil duty firstly to ensure the accused has been informed of the allegation, and secondly to ensure the accused has been given a public platform to respond to the accusations. Only God knows.
PASSION Follow deep desires to deep joy and pure spirit. To find joy, discover and own and embrace your passions, and live by your passions. Learn who you are by identifying all your goals. People may believe they want something, but are wrong about their values, leading to dead ends. One who believes they want to learn another language, but go by a long time without expanding knowledge of the language, is wrong about wanting to learn a new language. If one wishes to learn a new language, but is not willing to put the energy into it, there may be dishonesty to passion. Or, one may not yet be ready to learn the new language. Wanting something you cannot have or are not ready for is a wasted want. If you are not accomplishing what you want in life, it may be because you don’t really want what you think you want. If you want something, then you will put the energy into the thing to get it. If you discover you are not putting energy to accomplish what it is you want, then re-evaluate whether you actually want it. Also re-evaluate whether it is worth the energy to get. You are who you think you are when all of your actions match all of your beliefs. For example, if you believe you want to gain strength, and are gaining strength, then you are who you think you are. When you gain that strength and keep it, then you were who you thought you were. But if you don’t accomplish what you thought you would accomplish after you have gained the strength, then you didn’t really know yourself and didn’t really want the strength. You may always start over if something goes wrong. The act of starting fresh may give a boost in confidence that helps you move forward. Set your ventures based on your deepest desires. Seek and keep notice of your innermost desires. If achieving what you want isn’t something entirely positive, then re-evaluate your ventures. Discover great satisfaction by immersing yourself in something you find interest in or by learning more about your interests.
UNITY We are all connected. We are all one. The joining of love and peace enable unity of people. Unity is a harmony. Everything is connected. We are individuals. We are one. Move closer with like-minded people in cooperation to pursue goals together. There is strength in unity and stength in numbers, as the whole may be stronger than the separated parts. Belonging with others adds rather than removes personal responsibility. Collectives by force are division and disharmony rather than unity. Power. Unity brings power. With power is responsibility. Following the commands or ideas of others is a choice until the laws of physics take away the choice. Supporting rules or laws of people are a choice until the laws of physics take away the choice. Some goals prove worthless to our joy and those false empty goals may involve idolatry, coveting, jealousy, bullying, selfish manipulation, and vampirism. Independence and freedom enable us to submit to others and adapt their goals as ours while maintaining a healthy relationship.
HEALTH If you value your self, then value your health. The human body is complex and builds many different compounds. The more different parts you give your body, the more complex parts your body can build for itself. So, give your self variety of foods including vegetables with green leaf, variety of prepared roots, and variety of seeds and fruits. Carefully seek food variety far and wide and listen carefully to which variety your body wants and which food your body rejects compared to others. Its very difficult to be both healthy and full because the most healthy foods generally have low energy, while the least healthy foods have a high energy level. For example, while the most healthy foods are green leafy vegetables, they have the least energy in them being mostly free of sugars. So eating healthy is difficult, but there are more healthy and less healthy foods. Work towards a healthy diet for your full life and receive the rewards of good health. When your mental health suffers, your physical health suffers. As you tend to your physical health daily, also tend to you mental health daily. Keeping your brain challenged as you keep active with your body increases mental health. Broad participation in, spiritual development, physical innovation, civil discourse, and philosophy increases mental health. Hygiene. To prevent sickness, wash your hands before you eat or cook, preferably with soap and hot water, or rubbing harder with cold water. Avoid smelling badly to some degree you chose, so others know you value health. Avoid sharing partially eaten food to avoid sickness. If you begin to stink, clean your self and clothing. If you are sick or coughing, either don’t go out in public or wear a mask covering your mouth and nose, and touch public surfaces only with a cloth. Surfaces touched by multitudes of people have germs, so if you are not healthy don’t touch them without a cloth, and if you are healthy in a crowded place its okay to still use a cloth and possibly avoid getting sick at least once.
WEALTH Financial wealth. Money may be traded for time, so, time is money. Money cannot solve personal problems but it can solve resource problems. Money cannot make someone satisfied with life, but it can take away worries about life. Saved money breeds more money, so the universal way to money is by saving. People’s handling of money reveals who they are. Money is only most important in a culture of money. A culture of prosperity creates a culture of kindness, not a culture of money. Wealth is best stored widely in the pockets of your most kind and most honorable friends than in the vaults of callous bankers. Never put all your eggs in one basket but instead spread your belongings in many places. For financial freedom, little should be in your name only, and should be in the names of the ones you care for. Money makes barter easier, and barter helps us live well. Trading is win-win if done in a voluntary way. So, one person values what they receive more than what they give. Then, the other person also values what they receive more than what they give. It is nearly always true that one person will get more value than the other, but concerning one self with being the bigger winner does more harm than good. The only good use for a loan is to create more wealth than the cost of the loan. Loans to pay ongoing expenses are a sign of trouble and are not needed by financially well people. So, if you want something expensive then save your resources or go to friends for help, or both. If you wish to become financially wealthy then work hard to invest a lot of your resources early and often. When you are financially wealthy, your resources will work for you, as your investments will return resources to you. Choose who to trust wisely enough and your resources will all return when invested in others. Wise investment is to wisely choose who can manage resources well. Investment is a balance of risk and return. A low risk means a safe and definite return, while a high risk means a possible great return or great loss. If you lose your investment and are much worse off, you likely took to much risk. A wealthy culture is one that uses wealth to build investments that create more wealth rather than to simply transfer resources from one person to another. We must pick and choose which goals to achieve first, so allocate your time wisely. Trying to make more time than nature allows leads to problems. Rushing often leads to mistakes. Doing something in a rush uses more energy than doing the same thing more slowly, so notice your energy before rushing. Sacrifice of sleep leads to foolish mistakes. Working smart is more important than working hard. Staying up late will add hours to one day while taking them away from the next and also causing disharmony with nature. The price of staying up one hour late is often more than one hour of time in the future. The early bird gets the worm.
SENSITIVITY Sensitivity is to balance attention and focus internally to your body and your mind and also externally to your environment, in a rhythm. To accomplish this, attune yourself to the rhythms of nature, diet, and resting. You are what you eat. You are what you breathe. Attune yourself to your mind, its perceptions, environments, and its effects on the world around you. Tune your mind. The mentally ill may become mentally healthy, and the mentally healthy may become mentally strong. Sensitivity reveals truth and magnifies life. Signs. There may be meaning in everything, but discovering its meaning takes time. So, there is a balance between reading signs too much and too little. Strange coincidences, synchronicities, are signs to be contemplated. Empathy. Empathize with others by imagining to be in their position, with their features and goals. If something in that position pains you, it probably hurts the person too. If it pleasures you it likely pleases the other person as well. Empathy’s limit is where people do have different priorities which we don’t know of. People prefer foods over foods, smells over smells, and romance over romance. In that case, we can be sensitive by learning the values of others. Sensitivity ends where action begins, as people are beings of both listening and doing. A still quiet of the mind allows maximum sensitivity for our minds. During a conversation allow moments of silence for good sensitivity. Spend time each day to attune yourself to nature, to your body, to your environment, and to others. A sensitive person may perceive intricate vibrations of the universe and see God molding it to his preference… splitting the universe in different directions in any and every dimension, and merging in the same direction. In many such possibilities, life is even more fragile than we imagine it to be. We may be living as a simple nastalgic thought of God as a moment of the distant past.
COURAGE Confrontation brings us peace, resolution to conflict, and personal progress. Courage enables us to confront beliefs, confront fears, and confront opponents. If you cant handle the truth, you live in fear of the truth. If you live in fear, you don’t live well. To live, face your fears. If you can’t confront your fears, your fears instead may confront you when you are unprepared. To seek God, you may first need to face your fears. Confrontation is an opportunity to resolve conflict. Hesitation in conflict decays our energy and burdens us with stress. When you live by fear, your mental health will suffer. Underconfidence is sometimes cowardly. Overconfidence is always foolish. There is a middle ground of confidence, but a middle ground of tolerance is only a higher conflict. Tolerance that leads to peace is tolerance for other beliefs, but intolerance of harmful behaviors. Avoid letting even most bad manners go unannounced and unresponded to build your courage. Fight or flight. Reject or accept. You may accept by agreeing to disagree or you may reject by conflict, but it must be one or the other. Running away in strategy is a partial victory, while running away in cowardice is a total defeat. To those who help, take high risk and be a hero of good, or take zero risk and be a zero of good. Learn the fine line between bravery and stupidity. Face your fears with acceptance, knowing life may go on, even if yours does not. When others bother you, confront others. When your behavior bothers you, confront your beliefs. When your life bothers you, confront your self. Some respect is earned by being kind, but much of it can only be earned by being courageous. So, learn your fears. Confront your fears. Fear of death is fear of fear. Sometimes the greatest fear, is fear itself. Sometimes the greatest fear is the truth. When you are governed by fear, you are governed by evil. At some point in your life, the sooner the better, confront each of your fears. Confronting our fears brings us to a higher existence… with life, truth, love, and peace. So, there is reason to welcome a conflict and enjoy a new phase of life.
WILL Succeed by force of will. Your greatest accomplishments will be as great as your will to achieve them. Your will to achieve will be as strong as your energy level. Will is the energy level of your passions. So, maximize your mental and physical energy by carefully directing your passions. Tenacity. Develop clear goals. Pursue goals rigorously and continuously until all hope is lost or all victory is gained. Consider pushing other instincts and other priorities aside in order to will something into happening. Learn when to give up. Learn when to press on. Ambition. Despite spending our days estimating and guessing, people often estimate wrongly. We underestimate what we can accomplish in life, and overestimate how much we know.
FORGIVENESS Peace is achieved through forgiveness. The first step to forgiveness is admitting a wrong is done. Confess your wrongs to those who you have sinned against. Confess your wrongs to all who wish to listen. Confess your wrongs to God. In forgiveness of others, you may need to forgive your self first. People who cannot forgive should not expect to be forgiven. Forgive and forget, or forgive and don’t forget. If you cannot achieve forgiveness from others, settle for forgiveness from your self and from God. If you wish ill on those who have wronged you, then you have not forgiven them. When people wrong against you, it is burden upon both you and them. They have a duty to make things right, and you have a duty to confront them about the wrong. Your duty is not avenge or revenge, but instead to prevent further harm. Their duty is to compensate you for the wrong. Even as you take action to prevent further harm, you don’t need to act in anger against your opponent. Acting against your opponent in anger hurts them but also hurts you. Act instead against your opponents with an attitude of forgiveness. The most effective way to punish opponents may be to punish them with kindness under an attitude of forgiveness. If you decide to sulk and allow your self to become depressed by a wrong, you allow the wrong to be further harmful. Instead, write off your losses and move on with life. Let the past be the past.
HUMILITY The mentally retarded can live long, happy, and fulfilled lives. That is better circumstances than someone smart living a financially successful, but unhappy, and unfulfilled life. Perspectives. You are great. You are a part of greatness. Greatness is a part of you and is growing inside you. You are vomit. You are a piece of vomit, because potential vomit is a part of you and grows inside you as you eat. Different perspectives can both be accurate, but some are more useful than others, and all are likely to be useful as situations change. A celebrity is happy to be a celebrity. A dog may be just as happy to be a dog. A flea …a flea. A stone …a stone. All are special, and all are individuals. But, we are one, we may be divided, and we are nothing. God may have a special plan for you, and you may be a speck in that plan. Yet this small existence would be a noble and great. People may be nothing more than the imagination of God, as a passing thought of God. There are good and bad behaviors, not good and bad people. Some people are be better at many behaviors than others, but that does not make them better than others. We are no better or worse than any other person or other part of our universe. “Better” is a word that always carries the question “better at what?”. The reason no human is better than another is because one can only be better than someone else at specific things. We are what we are, and we are who we are, no more and no less. Every part of a person may be either lost more easily than gained. You deserve nothing unless another has agreed you deserve it. You earn nothing unless another has agreed you earned it. Deserve and earn are opinions of little value. All that you might deserve is the property of another first. All you earn may be property of God. So, all you have may be borrowed from God. To be humble is to accept reality. You are made of multitudes of parts making you significant, but compared to the multitudes of parts in the universe you are a small speck. When we see the largest of the large, we are humbled. But we should be humbled as much when we see the smallest of the small because on a scale of scales, a fly is only a tiny bit smaller than a human. To a toddler their father is a giant, but the difference isn’t noticed on the scale of scales. Ego and Self. Respect is to be earned and given at will, not to be demanded. You are special only as others are also special. Help. We all need help at times, and there is no shame in asking for help. Fame. Being famous may be helpful. Those who are famous are famous because of their accomplishments, so just wanting to be famous is an empty goal. One and all. We are all individuals. We are all one. We are all divisible. We may all unite.
ACCEPTANCE To achieve harmony and peace, accept your self and accept others. Acceptance is to embrace your natural instincts and passions, your chosen goals, and own to your position and challenges in life. Rarely reject instincts, only do so when you can be confident that rejection is beneficial for both you and others. More often, allow your instincts to run their course. In acceptance of your self, you can accept others and tolerate different personalities and different cultures. Accept others as you accept your self. Accept yourself for who you are. Accept others for who they are. Accept your self despite your weaknesses. Accept others despite their weaknesses. Accepting all people is helpful, while accepting all behavior is harmful. A perspective of personal responsibility for behaviors that may change over time leads to community of harmony and peace. Good things may come to an end. Accept it when they do. Of course God accepts you, God created you. So, you can always be at peace by the grace of God. Tolerance. Tolerance is a path to acceptance. Even if one can’t accept, one may yet tolerate. Tolerance is to acknowledge that different people may have different values, and this is the way of the universe. Avoid the perfect getting in the way of the good. Accept imperfection. Strive for perfection, but accept less when you are not yet able to achieve it. Opinions. Our freedom of belief provides that everyone has the right to any opinion on any topic. So, opinions can be wrong. One opinion is that the root of existence, God for example, may begin in the middle, or the end, but not the beginning. Furthermore, this is why God is said to have no beginning and no end. This is an opinion, yet it may be either right or wrong. Accept that others have different opinions from yours. Complaining vs Whining. It is time to complain when you are having troubles going further on your own. Whining is when you continue to complain soon after already having a response to your complaint. Acknowledge your challenges or problems and move on. Acknowledge the past without dwelling on the past. Ready the future without dwelling on the future. The here and now is your moment to unify with the universe, and this moment is a happier one when you accept things as they are.
FOCUS Your focus becomes you. The more one focuses on something, the more likely it is to occur. Even the impossible may seem to happen simply by focus. Focus on your goals second on how your actions are achieving them or failing to achieve them. Considering carefully where to put resources: time, energy, money, etc. Frequently consider what should be focused on more or less. As soon as a problem, issue, or challenge is noticed, address it right away unless there is a good reason to delay. If you delay, consider if it is worth addressing later, and if so how you will later remember to come back to address it. Knowing what to do and when is a great challenge in accomplishing your goals in life. Victory. Winning. Win what you desire by quietly and relentlessly working. Time winning is spent in focus on doing, not complaining, fantasizing, or bragging. Winning feels good, but can be over-rated. It can fail to make you a better person, making you happier only temporarily. Just because you didn’t win does not mean others then lose. If you have lost, it does not mean others have won against you. If you try to do too little or try to do too much, you will feel unfulfilled, as your goals you have won’t be accomplished. At many times, even throughout the day, notice whether you are focused on what you planned to do, or whether you are distracted. Focus by noticing all your senses and creating a home for your mind independent of your location. Focus by concentrating and timing your goals. Make time for that which you hesitate to do. Be aware of the past. Be aware of the future. Focus on the here and now.
NETWORKING To achieve unity and strength, seek and build relationships with like-minded people who share in your goals. If there is a place that is best to network with others in cooperation to achieve shared goals, then consider to move there. Such moving creates community, forming unity as a shared purpose, and establishing examples of what these values might achieve for a group of people. Networking may enable others to succeed in your place while you reap benefits with less resources used. To a degree, joy is contagious. To a degree, suffering is contagious. So, seek and build relationships with joyful people who find satisfaction in life. People dislike whiners. Yet, nagging works because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So, carefully balance how often you bring up any given challenge with others to maintain an attitude of joy. Friendship. The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit by without saying a word. Your best friend is the one you have the least secrets with. When you eat, have company. Avoid eating alone. Have the courage to talk to strangers. Romance. Create a spark and send it to your prospect. If your prospective partner is not adding fuel to light the fire, consider moving on. Romance begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a tear. Consider preparing your self for both beginnings and endings of your interactions with others, as all things come to and end. Ending Relationships. If any kind of relationship is going badly, try something different with the relationship. If either other people are not seeing progress or you are not seeing progress, then end the relationship. If you are trapped in a relationship, then end it any way, because starving to death on the streets of a foreign place feels much better than a sufficiently bad relationship. In a bad relationship, you are living someone else’s life, not yours.
SEEKING Explore virtues and values. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened. Seeking begins new life. Identify opportunities and explore information to develop character or otherwise succeed. I think, therefore I am. Meditation. A seeking meditation is to calm your body, then quiet your mind, and finally focus on the point of the meditation. First be mindful of all of your body, calming your heart, breathing intentionally. Be mindful of many of your body parts in specific and finally as a whole. You can be just you or you and those who are part of a larger whole. When you begin to shift focus away from the senses of time and space, you are in meditation. In that state you may better explore your purpose and meaning or that of others.
LEARNING Learning is discovering information to help you get what you want. Reason. Discover information by way of reasoning. The most simple explanation is more likely to be the correct one. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The spiral of success. Start by setting your goal one notch higher than what you have done already. When you fail, lower your goals until you are again achieving. When you are achieving, raise the goal until you fail. Learn to accept what you have so you can accept failure. The more you learn, the more you learn of your own ignorance. Ignorance is opportunity, so while being ignorant may be bad, discovering ignorance is good. Intelligence. Study what actually works with the attitude that you will change your mind. Fool me, then shame on you. Fool me twice, then shame on me. If you learned something from a debate, then you won it. Have the courage to question anything and everything, otherwise expect to be subjected to wrongful manipulation by others. Problems. A good way to solve problems is avoid them in the first place. Keep your solutions as simple as you can make them. Break larger problems into smaller parts to solve them more easily. Brainstorm by trying to think of unusual solutions, including bad solutions. No criticism should be done while brainstorming, either constructive or destructive. Solve both backwards and forwards by looking at how things are now compared to how things should be in the future. But also look at how things are in the future compared to how things are now. Then, form the steps that will be in the middle to accomplish your goal. What would be closer to your goal without reaching it? Events are in long chains. Trace the cause of the problem down the chain of causes to find deeper problems that may be easier to solve. Study for patterns that relate to the problem. Consider changing things around you to make the problem easier to solve. Consider expanding your toolbox. Some things simply cannot be learned by mere words, they must be experienced.
CREATIVITY Creativity is a fresh perspective, like a fountain of youth. Creativity reconnects us to our instincts and our goals. Creativity relieves stress and solves problems. Creativity is a product of adaptivity and sensitivity. To be creative, be adaptive and sensitive. All subjects may be both an art and a science, and all may be developed creatively. Attune to your instincts to allow nature to guide you. Attune to your environment and its finer details. Things are most often not as they seem. When setting out to accomplish something, you may ask yourself “Is there another way?”. While traditions help us connect with others, they should avoid restricting creativity. There are multitudes of ways to accomplish a goal and to perceive your surroundings, so contemplate different ways of accomplishment and perception. Ideas and advise are worth a pittance. Knowing which ones are good is worth a treasure trove. We are all born artists, and we can reconnect to that artistic spirit to refresh our selves, realize our independence, and discover who we are. Brainstorming. To accept creative ideas, stop rejecting ideas. Learn to accept any and all ideas for at least a moment, or you cannot consider them even if they are good and preferred to others.
DISCIPLINE When angered, take an effort to remain calm, even when threatened or bothered. Be slow to anger, and when angry do not lose control of yourself. Express disappointment rather than trying to hurt the other person in revenge or punishment. Kaizen by discipline. If you cant do three, try two. If you cant do two, try one. If you cant do one, you’re in deep trouble and need help. Try, and try again. While our bodies are well adapted to our environment as a whole, our bodies may not be adapted to our local environment including local culture. For this reason, replace instinct in cases where culture or environment give advantage with alternative behaviors. Use new events to your advantage. Self Discipline. Often times, the disciplined actions will be painful, but successful discipline brings more pleasure than pain. Being your own boss is more than a metaphor. You can both punish and reward your self for self-improvement. As with Kaizen, you can learn to control your self well to accomplish your goals. If you want to learn fasting for example, try skipping one meal. If not, then half a meal, and so on. Then move up your goal higher for the next try, and ever higher. When you fail and revert to your old behavior, simply start over and know you will soon return to your position if it is God’s will. If you fail, simply start over. Try and try again, never give up, unless you know when to give up. When you agree to submit to a leader, then submit without hesitation, so long as you are not asked to do something against your principles. Your leaders may make mistakes, and it is your duty to enable them to learn from mistakes. When your leaders are in error, speak up while also submitting as a servant. If your leaders still fail to learn and improve, then their leadership is decreased and your leadership is increased. Preparation. Before you begin a journey, check that everything you have for the journey is ready. Before you do a task, check that everything you need for the task is ready.
PATIENCE Good things come to those who wait. Physical exercise builds muscles. Mental exercise builds the mind. Try one. If you cannot do one, give up and seek help. After one, then two. After two, then three. For every two steps forward there may be one step back, or you may fall down the stairs. Rest and start fresh… do not relent until all is lost or all is gained. Know when you have lost, know when you have gained. Track your accomplishments so you know your self. Reward your self. Punish your self. Forgive your self. Rest, regroup, press on. Have a plan, change your plan, and make your plan match reality. When temptations defeat you, remove the temptations. Envision what it is you want throughout the day. Stop and just be throughout the day. Stop and reflect throughout the day. Great patience leads to great rewards.
BALANCE Life is a balancing act. Balance is tuning to self and tuning to environment in a harmonic rhythm. Tune to your self frequently. Tune to your environment frequently. After joy comes suffering. After suffering comes joy. Balance work and play. All work and no play make Jonny a dull boy. All play and no work make Jonny an obnoxious jerk. To deny work, is also to prolong suffering. Balance work and rest. Excessive work leads to the unworkable. Excessive rest leads to the restless. Balance expectations with reality. When often disappointed, expect less. When often achieving, expect more. Balance faith and logic. Faith is intuition. Logic may challenge intuition. Intuition may challenge logic. Think before you act. Feel while you act. Balance environment and self, inner focus and outer focus. Consistently examine your own state of mind. A mentally healthy person will in most circumstances be generally happy and have energy. If this is not the case, always consider changing your self and your environment. Ensure that some of your day is dominated by logic and some of it emotions. Life is a game. Life is serious. There is a time to be quiet, there is a time to speak up. Managing Time. Chose your missions because you cannot chose all of them. People who have consistent schedules tend to be more successful than those who get up and go to sleep at random times of the day, as they develop a rhythm of life more easily. Avoid letting the perfect get in the way of the good. Avoid overthinking your decisions. Make a decision and stick to it, unless overwhelming signs tell you otherwise. Balance risk and return. Balance whole and part. Balance imagination and perception. Balance future and past. Learn from history to avoid repeating it. Learn to observe and accept the past, learn to predict and will the future, and learn to just be.
SPINNING (Increasing Positivity) Think positive, be positive. Good thoughts lead to good thoughts. Bad thoughts lead to bad thoughts. So, thoughts can spiral. As good times come to an end, bad times come to an end. By acting intentionally, we may find positive balance in joy if not in happiness too. Frequently act and speak in ways that stop negative spirals. Frequently act and speak in ways that create and maintain positive spirals. Network with others who do the same, and help those who can’t do the same. Regardless of how deep your are in a negative thought, it may all come to an end in a single instant with a sufficiently good thought, but its much easier if another person provides that thought for you, and likewise to provide those thoughts to others. Panic. A negative feedback loop can lead to panic and terror. The moment you can identify panic you can end it by accepting the present, acknowledging the future, and making the best of the situation including by imagining the opposite. Delirium. A positive spiral can lead to careless ignorance. When having a good times, stay mindful of your environment. Aikido. Redirect the energy of your opponents against them. This enables positive use of negative energy. A positive attitude can convert the harshest of reality to a softer melody of life.
HOPE Everything is possible. For when our wills our tested or challenged, hope is an optimistic mindset for success. When we know the odds of winning are low but we want to press on, hope is the motivation we use to continue. In times of suffering and low energy, hope is a mental energy motivator we use to continue to a goal. If you find yourself not doing what you believe you want to do, then contemplate what you want, wait a moment, and try again. You can repeat this many times to discover resolution. In times of need, consider to share your hope with people you admire and share your hope with God. If and when hope is given to you in return, it is time to continue. If hope isn’t given to in return, it is a sign to shift your goals. If someone asks you for hope, they seek help. Choose the energy you will put into helping them wisely. It may be that people’s imaginations alter reality to some extent by will alone. Simply by putting our mind on something, it manifests into being to some extent. There is no shame in hope regardless of the impossibility of what it is we want. But hope can weigh us down against our other goals creating imbalance, so keep a balanced life, and cut loose the hope when your time is better spent on other ways. As I wrote this, it was raining yet sunny, which may be a sign for hope.