Do No Harm

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope … and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples … build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy

 Wow, “a tiny ripple of hope” … that when combined with other ripples can “build a current,” one that can knock down oppression and resistance.

Those are powerful words and while I’ve been thinking about this blog for a while it’s taken me a very long time to get started writing it.

You see, what I want to write about isn’t about hope, it’s about what happens when evil and destructiveness are involved in the midst of something that’s supposed to be good and healing.

You may know what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a few examples.

Have you ever been involved with a group of people that was trying to do something good for a cause? And all the while the group is trying to do it there is one person, or a handful of people, who just continue to bring negative energy into the situation. There’s bickering amongst the group and soon few people show up to help.

I think about jobs I’ve had where one supervisor continuously said bad things about his supervisor to his staff. I felt the tension and negative energy in that situation and I often wondered if it bled over on the project we were doing. 

It’s the same thing in some churches. Those who claim to be doing God’s work are often not really doing that at all. Because if they were really doing what God commanded there would be love in their hearts instead of constant gossiping, lying, judgment and just overall bad feelings. How can a person say they are serving God and praying for good things to happen, when they spend more time putting down others and lying?

It happens at jobs, clubs, churches, and in families.

Do no harm

We’ve all heard that over and over and I discovered that it’s used in some religions as well as in the oath doctors used to take:

• The Golden Rule in Buddhism is: Do no harm.

• When John Wesley gave the General Rules to the people called Methodists the first thing he told them was to do no harm, and

• The original Hippocratic Oath, once sworn by all doctors required that its adherents “do no harm” to their patients.

It’s used in many more places than I listed, but the point is made, it is used in different religions and by the medical community.

How do we do harm? We don’t do harm by focusing on love which encompasses all things good, but we do harm when we focus on all that is wrong. We talk about it to whoever will listen and we keep the evil energy alive.

We do harm when we don’t show love. If I look someone in the face and smile really big at them when I want a favor, yet I won’t give them a passing glance when I don’t need something, that’s not love and I find it unlikely that many folks would think it was.

It’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar, and so it is with people, with success, with doing right.

We do what we know is right to do, even when it would be easier to do wrong.

What I’m saying is that if a small act of kindness — a ripple of hope — can spread out and have a snowball effect for good, then too, can a negative act have the same impact.

To me, if there’s negativity behind the scenes, then the energy from that is going to show in real life.

If sending up prayers can heal, then can’t also speaking evil harm? Does it harm even if the person spoken about never knows it was said?

It takes just as much energy to say a bad thing about someone as it does to say a good thing, maybe more.

Another thing to remember: the majority is not always right.

Just because you may have found a group of people to befriend who support your negativity, that doesn’t make it right.

Most people would probably say that it matters not what they say or do in private, that it doesn’t reflect upon their public work. I disagree. I think that our negative energy shows up in our lives and causes us not to succeed where we are most striving for success.

I implore you to always strive to do the right thing no matter what. Yes, we all fall short — I never claim to do the right thing all the time. But I do know that the attitude of frustration that says if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, has never worked for me even though I’ve followed that path before.

Do no harm in person or behind another person’s back.

Finding Yourself

How many of you reading this have spent most of your life trying to find what it is you were meant to do on this earth?

Some of us struggled through a lot of different avenues until we found the right thing. It might not pay what we wish to make, it might not even give us a lot of recognition, but it is the thing we were meant to do.

And have you ever struggled with self-esteem? Have you managed to find a place in your life where you feel pretty darn confident — finally?

Once you have found yourself through whatever means it took. When you’ve found what it is you feel you were meant to do, AND you feel good about yourself, do you notice others who are anything but excited for you?

They say you are self-centered, selfish, egotistical, and anything else they can throw at you out of jealousy or some other inferior feeling. Maybe they see confidence as arrogance.

It’s difficult when you are confident in yourself to not be arrogant. Perhaps it happens from time to time that you do come across that way. If so, step back and try not to let that happen anymore. Maybe it’s from all of those many years — a lifetime even — of feeling less than and unable to ever feel loved and accepted just the way you are.

So you love yourself. You learn to be proud of yourself no matter what “they” think. And when you finally do find peace and harmony in your life, when you find confidence in who you are, you do not have to ever let someone put you down for finally feeling confident.

We aren’t perfect. Nobody is. So if from time to time others see you as too confident, try not to be that way, but don’t let go of who you are.

And also remember that you have no idea what the other person feels about who they are. They could be suffering with their own self-esteem issues.

It’s really not an easy road to come out of low-self esteem into a place of confidence. It takes years of stepping forward and moving backward. Many tears are cried. Lots of pain is felt.

But my message to you is don’t give up. And don’t ever let someone steal what you have gained. Hear them out, feel what you need to feel, but know that who you are is who you were meant to be and something that you have given your life to achieving, even when often there was not a cheering section on your side of the field.

Just remember there will always be those who wish to burst your bubble. Usually it’s someone you care about the most who does it in a way that hurts the most. Don’t let a temporary hurtful remark stop your progress in anything.

And don’t forget, my book, “Living Life Inside Out,” is available for purchase at BarbKampbell.com.

My Many Hats

Sully the Beagle Pup

My life feels much like a whirlwind. But I am not complaining; I’m just regrouping.

It seems I wear many hats now. I have my “mom of a wild and crazy puppy hat,” which cleans up a lot of poop and pee and doesn’t get much sleep. But I am adored and the feeling is mutual … while eagerly awaiting puppy teeth to go away.

Then there’s the writer/reporter hat that I’ve worn for about 10 years, only now I’m supposed to do what I did in 40 hours in just 32.

I’ve got my Game and Fish Commission hat that I wear mostly on Saturdays and also on days off from when I wear the writer/reporter hat.

And then there’s the hat of many colors: the author, publisher, marketer hat. Yes, I’ve been peddling “Living Life Inside Out,” for a couple of weeks now. Sales have been good so far, but stretching outside of my circle of friends is going to take a lot of work, not to mention stepping way outside of my comfort zone.

I’m not a salesman. I never have been one. I’ve tried it briefly as a profession, but I just don’t bullsh*t well. And while my self-esteem has grown a lot over the past few years, I certainly don’t enjoy selling myself. Since so much of me is in my book it’s just difficult for me to push it.

My theory is that if someone reads it they will want to buy another for a friend or family member. I’ve already had a few comments from people telling me how a particular meditation for that day spoke to them and how they needed to read what they did.

I told my mother that I thought I’d send one to Oprah. She said I dream big. Maybe. But why not?  I told a couple of other people the same thing. One said, go for it. The other said: Oprah may never see it, but one of her staff that does could be the person that’s supposed to.

The way I see it, I was led to write the book. What it is or what it becomes is out of my hands, but I do have to get it out there so those who need it will have the opportunity to be led to it.

So I wear all of my hats proudly. Some I like more than others. A few I won’t even mention here because many would tell me that’s too much information.

Multiplying Good

“What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?”
—Julia Cameron

We all know people who are always experiencing the “poor me” syndrome. They will go on about how tired they are; how bad their lives are; and numerous other things. Even when we reply in a positive way they still come back with “but” and start on another tangent about how bad things are in their life.

We certainly go through times in our lives that are more difficult than others. Often when one thing goes wrong for us, another may soon follow, and sometimes they just continue for a while. But if we dwell on the negativity we’ll get more of it.

I believe that we ought to be grateful in the midst of our losses. I had a series of things happen to me once. I lost a young pet to disease; then soon after that a friend passed away; a storm caused me to lose things that needed to be replaced at a time when money was already tight; and then I busted the storm door on my house by accident.

It seemed that everything was going against me. However, the storm did not hurt me or my home and pets. Even though I was unhappy at my job I did still have it in a time when many people were losing theirs due to a failing economy. I had good health even though I was watching friends die or suffer with cancer. There is always a positive within negative things that happen.

I choose to focus on the positive and turn away from the negative in life. I don’t bury my head in the sand, but I do believe in the wonder of gratitude and I practice it.

We all have things that go wrong in life, whether they happen in close succession or with long spaces in between, they are tough to deal with. We can better handle all of what life throws at us if we look for what is good in life instead of living the “poor me” lifestyle.

Try to multiply good rather than burying yourself in how bad you think things are.

Live Each Moment

“To live each moment to the full, because the moment never comes again.”
—Shabnam Paryani

“Live each moment” was the message a friend of mine wanted passed along at his memorial service. A man with a fighting spirit, who truly did live each moment, ended a fight with cancer that lasted nine years.

Many times we live our lives waiting on a particular thing to happen so we can do something. We think once we get married we’ll be happy. Or once we get to a certain pay level life will be good. Whatever our thinking, if it’s not focusing on our happiness at the moment, it’s probably futile.

Time flies quickly. We seem to blink and our children are grown and out of the house. When we are 20 years old we think people who are 50 are old, and then before we know it, we’re 50 ourselves.

A person who has looked death in the face numerous times, such as my friend who had cancer for nine years, gets a new outlook on life. They don’t worry about missing an hour of sleep to spend time with a friend or family member. They don’t work non stop in order to make another buck, because they value their time more than riches.

None of us knows when our day will come to pass on from this life. Some of us will go quickly and others will spend their last days with a terminal illness. But we all have this moment. Every second we are alive is living. And we should not discount the moments of our lives just because we don’t have everything we think it takes to make us happy.

Stop each day and ask yourself where you would be at that moment if you knew your life would end soon.

Hope Rather Than Doom

“No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities — always see them, for they’re always there.”
—Norman Vincent Peale

Without hope we die. It may be a slow drawn out death, but to not have hope is moving more toward dying than living.

There’s always at least a small amount of hope available in every situation if we only believe. If we have a life threatening disease and we give up hope we are bound to die more quickly than if we believe we can be healed and fight for life. The same holds true in other things less tragic in life.

What we believe will happen often does. We may say over and over that we cannot do something and that will come true for us. Living in the shadows of gloom and doom do nothing but bring us down. Sometimes even in the midst of pain and grief when we don’t have the energy to get out of bed we have to pull ourselves up. Go for a walk, go to the gym. Moving our bodies will brighten our outlook on life and bring us more opportunities to find hope.

We never know when that thing that we have wanted to happen that never has is going to come to us. Usually when we throw up our hands and give up, turning it over to God, we soon find what we have been trying to get falls into our lap.

Sickness and death happen, but until we actually take our last breath there is some hope. And on a much simpler level when what we want seems always out of reach if we keep the hope we will someday find ourselves getting that which we wanted.

Possibilities exist if we believe they do.

Cynicism

“Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.”
—B.C. Forbes

Many of us have become jaded over time by the treatment we have received from other people. Lies, manipulation, cheating, unfairness, and other things can cause us to become cynical about relationships.

We continue to punish ourselves if we let the past dictate today and tomorrow. It hurts when people treat us wrong, but we don’t have to let that hurt continue. We can move on from the person who we have lost faith in.

When we continue to carry these issues as a chip on our shoulder, we miss out on lots of opportunities to meet and love other people. We will get hurt again because people are human, just as we’ve been hurt, we have hurt others. From time to time we’ll put ourselves out there and find ourselves getting kicked in the face. But hopefully we will also find love and friendship in other relationships.

We must choose to frame things in a positive way. We aren’t going to get very far if we constantly lament about how bad someone treated us. By being suspicious we close ourselves off. Instead we can say, “I was hurt by that person, but that does not mean that everyone is out to get me.”

The truth of the matter is that most people are not intentionally trying to cheat us, or hurt us, or cause us any kind of pain or harm. Maybe we just need to toughen up and realize if someone is an unkind person we really don’t want them in our lives anyway.

Living a suspicious life only keeps you from finding good.

Recognizing Gifts

“With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”
—Wayne Dyer

We learn from mistakes, pain, and heartache, at least we should learn from these things. In the book, “Quiet Strength,” by Tony Dungy, he writes about a son he and his wife, Lauren, adopted who cannot feel physical pain. Someone with this affliction never learns to not eat something right out of the oven, or even not to touch the hot oven again, but for most of us, we learn this lesson early on.

There are those who have suffered severe injuries which cause physical disabilities, yet those people rather than feeling sorry for themselves go on to achieve great things. A person with a missing leg uses a prosthetic leg and runs marathons, or plays wheelchair basketball. Someone born without vision becomes a great musician. The list could go on and on.

And so it is with life issues including those that begin with our family of origin. For positive people who insist on growth rather than blame, the bad things that happened to us as children are just incentive to be better people. It is a gift if we choose for it to be. And if we choose to live in blame we will continue to live under the oppression that was placed up on us in our younger days.

We ought to each take what we are given and use it for good and not lament that which we do not have or which was taken from us too soon. Each day of life is a gift and ought to be treated as such. It is our choice and making the right decision on which side to look at will make or break our lives.

Choosing to learn rather than wallow in pain is always the best option.

Choose Optimism

“The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; they pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.”
—Kahlil Gibran

Living in the world we do it’s very easy to become jaded. For those who used to be optimistic and then were just beat down to a point where everything turned sour, it’s easy to see why they aren’t too enthused about life in general.

But there really is a better way. Living the life of an optimist is really much lighter than its opposite. When there are only clouds hanging over us and we portray that in our actions and speech, all we do is continue the gloominess.

Yes, sometimes optimism is a kind of denial, a lie even, I suppose. To say “I’m good” when things are really not going well may be stretching the truth, but if we look at what is right in our life we truly can say that. There are very few times in our lives that every single thing is just as we want it to be. When that does happen it’s fantastic and usually lasts a short time until a new issue comes around. But also there is always something positive in life even in our worst of times.

As someone who in the past lived under a cloud of pessimism I can attest to the fact that a positive, optimistic look at things is clearly the better route.

We all know people who only see the thorns in life and those are the folks we hope to not get stuck talking to. Sure, from time to time, we all have it rough and we need to lean on each other for support. We can’t always see sun on a cloudy day. What we can do is begin the practice of optimism and it will grow in us and become a part of who we are. People will be attracted to what we have and our lives will become better.

Optimism is not putting on blinders to what’s wrong; it’s simply facing things from a healthy perspective, one which offers us an opportunity for success. Gloom and doom thinking can become a part of us just like positivity can. 

Choose optimism over pessimism and life will be better.

It’s An Inside Issue

“Wherever you go, there you are.”
—Earnie Larsen

Wouldn’t it be great if we could walk away from our troubles? We could leave a job because we don’t like our boss, but the next one may be worse. We might get a divorce or leave a relationship because “they” don’t do things the way we want. But is our happiness or distress really caused by others or is it something inside of us? Is it our behaviors that get us into the messy relationships and situations?

Most likely it’s a combination of things. And we ought to look at what is the common denominator in our life. It is us. We can’t always fix a problem if the other person won’t do their share, but we can always work on our own issues. Geographical changes rarely fix our problems.

There’s an amazing thing that happens when we pray for others. When in a situation with someone that causes us stress and problems the first thing we should do is pray for the other person. Pray for them to have peace, joy, love, whatever good we can think of. If they get those things, don’t worry, we aren’t going to miss out on the same good stuff.
Next we can pray for ourselves. Prayer can calm many storms, both internal and external, and it can help us keep ourselves out of further arguments and misunderstandings.

Thinking that the world is against us and all of our problems are because of “them” is not a solution. Looking within at the one thing that we are responsible for will help us. Trying to constantly escape our self is not a solution because we are still there.

Look within and solve your own problems because you can’t escape yourself.