Look for the Good

I realized something about myself recently, a trait that isn’t pretty and one which I hope to change.

For the most part it seems I see the bad in people. I can trace this back to things and people in my life and blame it on that, however I won’t change if I do, so I choose to move forward and not make excuses. I want to see the good first and foremost.

It’s so easy to turn against a person, to see things from our own vantage point, and sometimes with negative input from others. If enough people tell us that a person is a failure of sorts, or a problem, whatever it may be, we start to believe it.

I watched the movie “Doubt” for the second time recently. I won’t give away the ending, but in the movie the nun who leads the school accuses the priest of doing something inappropriate with a male student. She sees the bad in the priest. The nun has black and white thinking, she is certain that she’s right. And he can do nothing right in her opinion including how much sugar he uses in his tea, the length of his nails, and so on. You get the point.  

When we only see the bad, when that’s what leads us, rather than finding the good first (and always) it’s easy to be led down the wrong path.

My eyes were opened to this whole concept when I found that I had developed a negative attitude about someone who once had an important place in my life. I only heard one side of the story: the negative side. And I heard it a lot. As we all know there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.

I walked in this person’s shoes just long enough to get it, to realize what a mistake I had made.

I encountered the beast firsthand, the same monster that had been attacking this person. That’s when all the pieces fell together … sort of, although it was anything but immediate.

If you haven’t walked in someone else’s shoes, you won’t know where they have been, what their struggles are, why they behave in a particular way, and especially how they feel.

But if you face the same monster as another it opens up a whole other side. It gives you knowledge that is missing when you only hear the negative about someone.

You may wonder about this beast, monster to which I refer. It’s comparable to watching a bear play from your picnic table. The cute bear you see is like Winnie-the-Poo. He eats honey and seems sweet and loveable. But he’s not Winnie-the Poo. He’s actually a very real bear who is just who he is, but you don’t want to be in his path when he’s angry, or have him mad at you, because that’s when he becomes a monster, a beast that is unrelenting and will take whoever he must in his path to get what he wants.

When the monster first attacked me I didn’t see outside of myself, it was all about me and my pain. But through the grace of God I was given insight via a conversation or two and the light bulb came on with a very high wattage.

It was a knowing that you know that you know moment. Having faced the wrath of the beast, I knew exactly why others behave as they do having experienced it too. It makes perfect sense.

So here I am a while later having made amends where necessary for any part I played in the monster’s game. I learned so much. I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders and the world shines more brightly.

Now I have the opportunity to carry this knowledge and wisdom with me into the future. I hope I do. I pray that I don’t forget the lesson of seeing both sides before making a judgment.

I hope I see the good first and always.

Lies and Those Who Live By Them

I have trust issues. I won’t try to pretend that I don’t.

I’ve known three pathological liars in my life; probably more, but these I was close to. One was a high school friend, another was a relative, and the third was a boss I had for a period of time.

It usually takes a while to figure them out, but once you do it’s impossible from that time forward to believe a word they say. It’s a sickness for sure. But since I don’t play the blame game I believe that they are responsible for what they do. They can seek help. If they don’t know they lie, then it’s really serious.

The high school friend and I would often experience things that most teenagers do. I was often surprised to find that what I witnessed happening on our escapades was much more boring (but real) than what happened according to her. Things that we did were embellished beyond recognition. And if that weren’t enough, there were additions that never happened.

Sometimes I thought I had Alzheimer’s (not exactly that because I’m not sure it was a diagnosis in the late 70s, but maybe I just lost my memory). It wasn’t too long before I got tired of it and moved on with my life and left the lies behind.

About the relative, I better not go into too much detail about him. I realize that posting on the Internet is offering my words to millions if they were to find them. And since others in the family wish to keep what he does secret, it’s best for me to not post it on my blog. It’s their sickness, not mine. I have discussed it plenty and still do — I just don’t want to open a can of worms with the family.

And for the third of the liars I’ve known well: this one really takes the cake. It took me a while to figure out her lies. But from the moment I got it, things were never the same. She would show up late for work and say she had car trouble. Twice the same exact thing happened to her vehicle when she was in Texas and could not get home as planned to return to work.

She would lie about one employee to another in order to turn us against one another. Instead of working as a team, we were always at odds with one another.

One of the biggest lies and something that we laugh about to this day was when she said the reason the police from a neighboring jurisdiction came to see her at work was because she’d turned in a supposed drug house, meth lab or something, and they needed her to sign some paperwork.

The truth of the matter was, she had hot check charges and they were there about that. Once she was no longer with the company we continued to get numerous calls from those who held bad checks and were trying to locate her for payment.

Often I’d hear her phone conversation where she’d ask people on the other end of the phone if they could loan her money to pay the electric bill (or some other bill) as it had been shut off. She’d then fly out of the office telling us that her child was sick. This happened numerous times as well.

I learned long ago never to lie about something and use an illness or a child in the lie. Once, at another job, I needed a day off. I said I had a stomach virus. I was really rarely sick. So I had that Friday off. The problem was the very next Friday I had a stomach virus. It was so weird, that I will never use a lie to get a sick day at work. I may say I don’t feel well … but I’ll never give a specific diagnosis. I do believe in mental health days, especially for those who are rarely sick.

If you’re one of those people who lie and think you’re getting away with it, think again. We know your lies. It never takes that long to figure them out. Children may not get it while they’re young, but the day they do, your lies won’t work with them anymore.

And besides that, when you lie continually nobody believes a darn thing you say anymore even when you do tell the truth.

If you see yourself in the people I have just written about, please get help. Your lies damage all of your relationships, especially those closest to you. If you have children, you are teaching them not to trust. I can tell you from experience that having trust issues as an adult is a very difficult thing.

Punishing Others

“Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.”
—Alexis Carrel

There are occasions in our lives where we have all either punished someone or been punished by someone. We punish one another for simply being who we are, or for being honest. We often hurt other people to punish them for hurting us, even when the infliction of pain was not intentional, more likely it was inevitable since none of us are perfect.

We punish others for being human. We see someone make a mistake, or ignore us in some way or simply not do something the way we think they should. But rather than love them in their humanness, we punish them. We talk behind their backs, we cut off communication with them hoping we’ll “show them,” or we in some other way chastise them either directly or indirectly.

When we are in relationships with others there will from time to time be conflict, sometimes relationships end because they just are not meant to be. But to move forward in such a way as to hurt someone because they left us does nobody any good. Talking badly about someone to “get them back” because they hurt us will not heal; it will just cause further pain and expend wasted energy.

A better way to deal with the pain is to look inside to see if we may have caused anything to go wrong with the relationship. If we find some defect of character that is causing us to have a lot of problems in relationships, then we need to work on that. If we look at ourselves honestly and don’t find a problem, then we can just move on and know that if it was meant to be it would have been.

We ought to also monitor our behavior towards others to ensure that we do not seek to punish when we feel wronged. Instead of hurting someone to get back at them, we can operate out of a place of love and think of healing rather than hurt.

Punishing someone else really just hurts you in the end.

Love is the Answer

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
—The Bible

It is often written and discussed that people operate out of two things. One of those is love and one is fear. When we are envious, boastful, rude, self-seeking, and angry, among other negative acts we are coming from a place of fear. When we want good for others, when we are honest, hopeful, faithful, kind, and true, we operate out of love.

Whenever we find ourselves in a situation where we feel uneasy and unhappy, we can think about love. We try to react in a loving way rather than out of fear. If someone is irritating to us and we let it get under our skin we will end up reacting and making matters much worse. But if we think of a way to react in love we will most likely find at least some peace in the moment.

Instead of talking bad about another person we can either keep our mouth shut or try to think of something nice to say about them. We all have good things and not so good things that we do. If we focus on their bad stuff that’s all we will see, but if we attempt to see them through the eyes of love we may discover something better.

Often if we are loving to another person, especially those who aren’t all that loveable, they will start to change. It may be a very gradual change, but if we keep at it they will change. Most likely the ones who seem so unlovable are that way because they don’t have self-love.

And maybe that’s true for us too. Maybe when we operate out of fear it’s because we don’t have enough self-esteem. We don’t love our self enough to love another. In that case, we need to work at treating our self from a place of love and not fear.

Treat yourself and those around you with love and see your world begin to change.

Watch Yourself

“Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.”
—George Gurdjieff

As with anything familiar, we sometimes forget to observe our own behaviors and thoughts. But it is important to stop and watch ourselves, listen to what we say and think during our daily routines.

How do we treat others? Are we kind and loving, or do we just expect those kinds of behaviors from others when, in fact, we are being mean and hateful? Do we offer thanks and compliments to those who do things for us or who we observe doing things for others? Do we do simple things like letting someone into traffic or holding doors open for others? Are we constantly making fun of someone else or gossiping all the time?

How we behave is symptomatic of what’s on the inside of us. And we may not even realize what’s on the inside — our anger, fear, pain, etc. — until we see ourselves acting out in ways that are not how we really want to behave. If we observe our actions consciously we may be able to change something about ourselves right away, or what we see may trigger in us a new area we need to work on.

Another thing to be aware of is how we treat ourselves. Are we eating right and getting exercise? Do we get enough rest and sleep? Do we balance socializing with alone time? When we are healthy physically and emotionally we will treat others better. It’s difficult to have good emotional or physical health when either one is being neglected.

Observing ourselves with honesty and without judgment is the best way. We don’t do it to beat ourselves up, but rather to know what’s really going on within us, which may answer some questions we have about what’s going on outside of us. We learn from watching and from there we make whatever changes are necessary to be the person we wish to be.

Self-observation can answer a lot of questions and bring about change.

Character Shows Itself

“Every man has three characters: that which he shows, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.”
—Alphonse Karr

No matter how much we might try to convince others of how good of a person we are, it’s our actions that speak most loudly. If we do what we say we will do we become trusted by others. If we fail to do what we say often enough we show that we have no character and nobody believes us.

There are times when we have legitimate reasons for not doing a thing, but when it’s a habit to not do what we say we will do, that’s when it becomes a problem because nobody believes us.

Are we kind to those who are unkind to us? Do we talk badly about others when they aren’t around just to put them down and build ourselves up? There’s a difference in venting and getting our feelings out and just downright gossip.

The words we speak about others and the things we do in our lives are huge character giveaways. It really doesn’t do any good to gossip about what we see as defects of character in others. Those are their issues. Our issues are to be true to our word and to be positive in our actions.

Character requires that we keep our word; that we say what we mean, and mean what we say. Those with great character are honest and trustworthy. When someone asks for their help, they know that they can count on that person to do what they promise.

Those who don’t have much character may think they are fooling others, and they may for a while, but it doesn’t take long for a person’s true character to show.

Examining our character from time to time is a good idea to keep us on track.

Sabotaging Relationships

“Trouble is part of your life, and if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you enough chance to love you enough.”
—Dinah Shore

Some of us have issues in our past that may cause us to unconsciously sabotage relationships. We may be afraid on some level to enter into new relationships and that fear can manifest in different ways. We might not even realize that’s what it is, but when we overly find fault with others and things start to change drastically in how we feel about another person, with no apparent reason, we need to look at what is happening.

If we grew up in a dysfunctional family, we most likely have carried many issues into our adult lives. Our issues are carried over into any relationship we have no matter how intimate or casual. Some of our behaviors, many we learned as survival techniques, simply aren’t healthy in adult relationships.

In order to have healthy, fulfilling relationships we may need to look at our “failed” relationships and see what part we played in each of the endings. We can do this in different ways by talking or writing about the issues we had with the other person. We may discover that we are doing things that we aren’t even aware of. It takes some time and effort, but an inventory of ourselves is always a good thing, as long as we see positive and negative and not just the negative.

It’s important to learn as much as we can about who we are and how we operate if we want to have intimate, lasting relationships with others. Being open to feedback from others is a good thing too.

Look within to find answers to relationship problems.

Shine a Light on the Monsters

“Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues.”
—Hugh Prather

We all have things about us that we don’t like, that we would change if we could and we do try to change when we can. We may be greedy, dishonest, or bigoted. We may have problems with jealousy, or we may get too needy with those we are in relationship with too often. We may lie when the truth would be easier to tell. Some of us may have fears that we try to hide from others, even perhaps from ourselves.

Acknowledging our defects of character is always a healthy option for us. Once we acknowledge a defect of character we can bring it into the light and lessen its power. We can pray about it and take action over it. We also understand that this is part of who we are just as our loving, nurturing, generous or other good qualities are part of us.

When we live our lives in an open way we will find the defects shrink because we no longer work so diligently to try to keep them hidden. The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous walks us through this process. Many of us have already worked the Steps, but may need to revisit them. We can do this at AA or at other groups, such as Al Anon. There are other ways we can work on our character issues too, including speaking with clergy, a therapist, or a friend.

Pretending we don’t have any faults is not being honest with ourselves or others. And it only serves to keep the faults not rid ourselves of them. When we keep our less than admirable parts hidden it means being less than who we are, which makes our self-esteem suffer.

The important thing is to acknowledge our light and our darkness so that we can be whole.

Shine a light on character defects and watch them disappear.