BE HAPPY, DON'T WORRY! YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A PERFECT PERSON, YOU NEED ONLY TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE WONDERFUL PERSON YOU ARE!

BE HAPPY DON’T WORRY!

YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A PERFECT PERSON

YOU NEED ONLY TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE WONDERFUL PERSON YOU ARE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© February 28, 2014

If you will stop a minute beating up on yourself, the wonderful person within, crying to be released to the world, will surface to everyone’s joy.  As often as we are told “attitude is everything,” we are conditioned to interpret that to mean, “our attitude towards other people,” not our attitude about or towards ourselves. 

Next time you are down on yourself, next time you’re going through another watershed moment, which we all do several times in our lives, reflect on these little homilies:

To have a friend, you must be a friend, starting with yourself.

The greatest desire any of us has is to be needed, to be loved and wanted and appreciated.  By creating self-acceptance in ourselves, such feelings towards others surface naturally, resulting in our being loved and wanted and appreciated.

The greatest virtue is kindness, to express kindness towards others we must first show kindness towards ourselves.  It is impossible to love everyone, but it is possible to be kind to anyone.

Once we have a tolerance for ourselves, as we are, we will have a natural tolerance for others as we find them.  Then, we won’t find it necessary for us to impress them, but will allow them to impress us.

In order to accept anyone else, it requires that we first accept ourselves.  Self-acceptance is the same as liking ourselves, having a sense of humor about ourselves as we are.

Find joy in doing.  Such joy comes naturally in doing something that we enjoy.  Don’t let others tell us what brings joy, or decide for us what is worthwhile or joyful, and what is not.  Another word for joy is “enthusiasm,” and enthusiasm is nothing less than quintessential joy.

Recognize that with the positive there is a negative, with optimism there is pessimism, with love there is hate.  We are not made up of one charge, either positive or negative, nor should we always be optimistic when circumstances are clearly pessimistic, indeed, as loving as we are we are equally hating of some things, soma behaviors, and some developments.  This is called reality, and we shouldn’t apologize for having a firm grasp of reality, for with it, we lead, we are in charge, and we are secure in our person.

Courtesy is another word for self-respect.  It is as impossible to be uncivil to others as it is possible to self-respecting and still be disrespectful of others.  With self-respect, no person whatever his or her station is more important than any other person.  Respecting one’s achievements and station in life is one thing, to put those achievements or station above personal regard for others of more modest achievements or station is quite another.

To experience self-dignity has nothing to do with always being right, never being wrong, always succeeding never failing, always saying and doing the right thing, and never misspeaking or misbehaving.  Self-dignity is a personal reverence for being human and seeing others in the same light.

To listen is to learn, to always be talking is to take up precious time away from learning.  The highest compliment we can pay others is not only to listen to them, not only to hear what they are saying, but to experience the rhythm and tempo and music of what they are thinking, because when you do, you are connecting with a fellow human being in a way that is richer than all the gold in Fort Knox.

We disparage gossip and yet we gossip.  There would be no novels, no television dramas, no plays on Broadway, no operas or symphonies were gossip to disappear, as gossip is the language that escapes no highbrow or lowbrow, no scholar or scientist, no saint or sinner.  It is the running commentary of life speaking to itself about itself in the moment.  When gossip is malicious, it is evil, and since we are all sinners as well as saints, we can be malicious by accident as well as on purpose.  A word to the wise, then, is always be on our guard when it comes to gossip.

The old limerick, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” we know is garbage.  Words do hurt, and the words that hurt a hundred years ago may still hurt today, as do words just spoken.  That is because words have become weapons for good and evil, celebration and destruction.  When we become too sensitive to words, however, the danger is that words can become more important than what they refer to.  Then, we are no longer in charge and are obsessively compulsively worried about being politically correct when it comes to words.

The beauty of being human is that we are as conscious of being cheerful as we are conscious of being sad.  There are times when it is impossible to be cheerful, times when it is important for us to embrace our sadness and allow it to run its course.  This is not only wise it is necessary.  We need apologize to no one for this, including to ourselves.

We are told from an early age never to argue about race, religion or politics.  The word “argue” is an operational word that implies that whatever opinions we may have about race, religion or politics, or for that matter, anything else, we should keep to ourselves.  If each of us was living in a vacuum, that might be possible but we live in a society in which race, religion and politics are part of the dynamic of life.  A better operational word would be “to discuss.”  We don’t live in a vacuum, and we do have opinions on race, religion and politics, among many other things.  We grow as a society by open discussion and exchange of such opinions.  It would be as wrong not to be confrontational when someone says something harmful, or hurtful as it would be to retire into ourselves in submission.  We differ as individuals, and it is impossible to avoid conflict between us, as it is to avoid conflict within us.  With discussion, and good will, conflict can be managed, and the benefit of such management is that we find it is the glue that holds us together and to our purpose.

There is a place for deprecating humor, as where would late night television comedians be without it?  Self-deprecating humor, if it is used to create a sense of balance, is one thing, but if it is used as self-assassination is quite another.  Were deprecating humor excised from comedians, there would be no audience, as people love to have the high and mighty brought down to size with such humor.  The danger is when deprecating humor becomes a license to make racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, social or personal slurs.   Some euphemize the justification for this claiming it is only sarcasm, but behind every sarcasm is likely to be found a bully.   

The major problem in life is one we never discuss.  Is it because we assume we know the answer, or do we think the answer is self-evident?  Whatever the case may be the hardest person in the world to accept is ourselves.  Saying this doesn’t change anything.  But there is a key to penetrating this conundrum and that is by helping others to like themselves.  When someone says, “Thanks to your help, I feel better about myself,” we are on the road to doing the same for ourselves.
 

Likewise, when we succeed in getting others to talk about their dreams, their ambitions, their ideas, and opinions, we release them from their self-imprisonment, and in doing so, we release ourselves from ours.  

They say it takes many more muscles to frown than to smile.  Try smiling when you least feel like smiling, not for any specific reason, other than to reduce the tension in your soul.  A crazy thing is likely to occur, as you say to yourself, only an idiot would be smiling under the circumstances, and I’m smiling.  As this registers, you are likely to break into a broad grin, and possibly a ruckus laugh at such delightful insanity, for insanity is nothing other than “being out of your mind" in the moment.  

What goes around comes around, we simply cannot change that.  By doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, we get a little better, happier, and yes, wiser, one person at a time.  It all ends where it begins with the Golden Rule.