Base on which ye stands
Our beliefs about ourselves, the world, and others will show in our action toward ourselves and others. A foundation may look strong until it is shaken up a bit by life circumstances. Is your foundation or the base of you, built on truth, integrity, honor, love, compassion, empathy, honest communication, and other positive virtues, or on superiority/inferiority, anger, frustration, bitterness, and/or hate?
Do you immediately forgive yourself when you do not accomplish your goals for the day? Do you continuously blame yourself or berate others when things do not go your way? Do you congratulate yourself for trying a new skill even if you were not as successful as you wanted to be at the skill? Or do you feel that you are incompetent when something does not turn out the way the picture in the magazine looked? Better yet, do you hold a grudge when someone does not do what they said they were going to do? Or, do you immediately forgive that person and ask what could you have done to help? Or do you just assume that, that person did not want to help anyway? Do we feel that it is important to communicate our feelings to our friends/love ones, or do we feel that they will not understand, and it is not worth sharing our feelings? Do we feel that others, especially our loved ones, are capable of empathizing with us? Are we quick to judge others? If yes, then more than likely we are quick to judge ourselves.
If we are quick to show compassion to ourselves when we do not achieve the goals we set forth for the day, then we are more likely to show compassion to others when they do not achieve their goals. Your internal dialogue will sometimes be the same conversation you have with others (mostly negative or mostly positive). It’s hard to be positive toward others if you are negative towards yourself, and vice versa.
If you motivate yourself when you are working on a project, then you are probably more likely to try to motivate others. If you feel that your emotions/feelings are of value, then you are more likely to share those emotions/feelings with your loved ones. They are your loved ones, right? Do we see people as capable of achieving their goals, or do we feel that we should always do things for them for the task to come out, right? Do we enable others to think for themselves and care for themselves, or do we enable them to depend on us for everything, and then we get mad and feel like “he can’t do anything himself?”
Does everyone have the basic right to live here on earth? Does everyone regardless of race, culture, religion, gender, (and anything else used to separate humanity) deserve the to be treated the same way? If you are hard on yourself and set expectations so high that when you do not achieve your goals, you may end of feeling anxious, depressed, moody, withdrawing from others, you are probably hard on others or will be most of the time. You will tend to have unrealistic expectations for others, and many times you will end up disappointed.
If you are dissatisfied with how you treat others, look at your foundation. How sturdy is your base? Here you will find the root of your behaviors. How you treat others may reflect how you feel about yourself.
Timika
Timika S Chambers 