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.

No Excuses

“There’s right and there’s wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one, and you’re living. You do the other, and you may be walking around but you’re dead as a beaver hat.”
—Marion “John” Wayne

We have many opportunities in life to do the right thing or to do what we know is wrong. When we choose to do something that we know we should not do there are usually ways we can justify our actions.

Excuses and blame are easy to think of such as: I didn’t mean to; it just happened; it was her fault; I was just living in the moment; it was the alcohol; I didn’t plan it this way; and so on. And while there are times that we do things that we know we shouldn’t there is always the opportunity to stop moving forward with our mistake.

Just because we don’t see consequences of bad behavior today, it doesn’t mean there won’t be any or that when there are consequences we will know about them. Any time we are involved in behavior that could harm another person we need to step back and stop what we are doing.

Life offers us many temptations. We may feel justified in doing wrong because we are lonely, depressed, poor, or otherwise downtrodden. But doing wrong has no real excuses, at least not the kinds that absolve us of guilt.

Walking down the path of wrong will never bring us long-term fulfillment or happiness. It probably will cause us harm and hurt others too. It is our decision to do right or wrong, but excuses to justify do little if anything to right a wrong.

You can decide at any moment to stop a wrongdoing in process.

Time Management

“Avoiding the phrase ‘I don’t have time…,’ will soon help you to realize that you do have the time needed for just about anything you choose to accomplish in life.”
—Bo Bennett

We’ve probably all heard and used the excuse of not having time. Maybe we think of it as valid, and perhaps it is at times, but we have the power to manage our time. We can do the things we want to do if we truly have a desire.

Sometimes we use not having time as an excuse not to move forward. We may use it as a reason to not take a risk, a step that would offer us a chance to succeed in a new way, but also one that might allow us to fail.

Every person has the same amount of hours and minutes in a day. We have to decide how to spend that time. Most of us are employed so a certain amount of hours are dictated by our job. It’s what we do with our free time that makes the difference.

There are those who say they don’t have time to exercise, using that as an excuse for obesity. But these same people may be found in front of a television several hours a day. They choose to spend time there rather than walking or working out at a gym.

Some of us claim we’re too old to do things. We say that it’s too late to further our education or to pursue the profession we truly desire. It’s not too late, we’re not too old, and we do have time. We decide how to spend a great portion of each day. It is true that some people have more obligations on their time with children or caring for aging parents, but we still have choices.

How we spend the time we have is up to us. We can continue to use the excuse, “I don’t have time,” and never do anything. Or we can learn to take some time out of each day to follow a dream.

Time is an obstacle that you can use as an excuse, but you’re the one who loses out on your dream.

Reining in Anger

“If you kick a stone in anger, you’ll hurt your own foot.”
—Korean Proverb

So many times when someone angers us, we spin ourselves into a place that may feel out of control. Some of us throw things, others kick and scream, and sometimes we are so mad we want to hurt the other person. Hopefully we don’t proceed in an effort to hurt another because we’ve been hurt since that solves nothing.

It helps to remember that having anger does not take away what the other person did to hurt us. Nothing really makes what they did go away, although an apology from them and forgiveness by us will help a lot.

If at all possible we can ease the situation when we treat those who anger us with love, kindness, and compassion. Yes, this is a tall order and perhaps one of the most difficult things we can do, but it does diffuse the situation and can restore us to peace.

Holding onto the anger by letting it fester and by telling everyone we can how angry we are won’t do much to make it go away. We probably will just get worked up over and over as we tell it to anyone who will listen.

Anger is not a bad thing. It is a signal that something is wrong and often helps us to move on from a situation that is not healthy for us. It’s how we handle the anger that is good or bad.

When we find ourselves feeling crazy with anger we can count to 10; walk away from the situation and return after we’ve calmed down; or take a few minutes to pray even if the prayer is simply “help.” Or we can kick and scream and yell and gossip. It’s our choice really.

How you handle your anger says a lot about where you are in life.

Doing Things Differently

“To reach a goal you have never before attained, you must do things you have never before done.”
—Richard G. Scott

There are times in our lives when the desire to grow and move forward is a powerful force that cannot be snuffed out without doing it. We may not see that in order to reach a new goal or destination that we may have to look outside the box and do things in a way that we have never before done them.

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then we certainly know that we don’t want to follow that route so we must try things a different way. Most likely we will need to seek help in some way to do this. We may seek information from books, the Internet, or people, but if we don’t know how to proceed out of our routine it’s a good idea to seek such help.

Sometimes we get stuck in the rut that says “my way is the best way and it’s familiar so I will keep doing it.” Getting out of that mindset and trying something new and different can be a scary area to pursue, but well worth the rewards if we do it and reach the goal we seek.

We won’t get very far in life if we hide behind fear and “I can’t” thinking. What we will get is a safe existence for the most part, probably full of regret and envy of others who have forged ahead and found new experiences in their lives. Many times what we do in life is a risk of sorts; changing jobs, beginning or ending a love relationship, having or adopting a child, all these things require us to think and do something different than we did yesterday.

Do something different and see where it leads.

Opportunity

“You’ve got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.” 
—Steven D. Woodhull

Life is full of choices. If we are unhappy in any situation we have opportunities to get out of it. Sometimes that takes more work than at other times. And we may have to face many fears to make things different, but life is too short to stay miserable in a situation.

If we are in a job that we dread going to every day, we owe it to ourselves to find a new job. It’s very unlikely that we have no other options. It may seem that we don’t have a way out at times, but usually if we look closely there are other opportunities for us.

When we make a decision that turns out to not be a good thing for us, it’s never too late to turn it around. Maybe we made a bad choice in a relationship; this does not mean we have to stay in it. Hopefully we learned something from it and we will decide to move on. At other times we may have chosen not to act when given an opportunity, and while that situation may never come around again, we will be more open the next time.

Regardless of where we find ourselves in life it’s never a good idea to stay in a miserable situation. Life is short and the world is large. Living life in a place that keeps us unhappy is not living at all.

“You’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” is not a real option for those who know they have choices. But if we choose to stay in that bed we can; that’s an option too.

There are vast opportunities so staying in a bad situation is one we should avoid.

Winners

“If you want to be a winner, hang around with winners.”
—Christopher D. Furman 

No matter if you’re 12 years old or 72 years old who you spend your time with has a huge influence on your level of happiness and healthiness.

None of us would encourage or even allow our children to spend time with people who we know are bad for them, so it makes little sense that we would socialize with those who are a bad influence on us. We don’t have to continue to be in situations that are unhealthy. If it’s a work situation that we can find no resolution for, then we must seek new employment.

The world is full of people. If we find ourselves depressed and troubled by the company we keep, it’s our choice and responsibility to not spend time with those people any more. When we spend our time with healthy positive people, we will be more healthy and positive.

Winners are those who have a positive outlook on life, who meet challenges head on, albeit hesitantly at times, who look for good rather than bad, but accept reality. Winners try their best to be free of gossip and judgment, although they know they are human and fall short of perfection, they still try. Winners seek peace over turmoil, and love over fear.

If we want to gossip and find strife there’s plenty of it out there, but living that kind of life only brings on more of the same. Just as hanging with winners makes us winners; hanging with losers makes us losers.

You become your environment so make it healthy.

Be True to You

“This above all; to thine own self be true.”
—William Shakespeare

Being true to who we are is really the only way we can be if we choose to be healthy mentally and spiritually. Although some change is inevitable, and we can modify a lot of our behavior and thinking, we never do this overnight and some of who we are will never be different. Change comes with a lot of prayer, meditation, struggles, pain, and growth — eventually.

We cannot suddenly wake up one day and like the color yellow if we’ve always hated that color. We don’t just make up our mind that we should change our thinking and have it changed instantly. Certainly God is able to make a sudden change in us, but if that happens we’ll know it.

It’s okay to have standards for whom and what we allow into our lives. If we don’t want a certain career then we should not seek that no matter who tells us we should. And by the same token if we aren’t attracted to a particular trait or behavior in people we should not expect that we can be in a deep and caring relationship with a person who has that characteristic. We don’t have to try to be something that we are not just to mold ourselves into who we think others want us to be, or if we think there’s something wrong with us for being the way we are.

Each of us is unique. If we all liked the same exact things we might as well be produced from a cookie cutter. We don’t have to like what we don’t like and we don’t have to try to be attracted to that which we are uninterested.

We may think we are shallow minded for not liking certain things, for not being able to look past something, but trying to go against a core belief within us and pretending that thing doesn’t matter just won’t get it. We may work on the issue and change eventually, but pretending it isn’t there because we aren’t proud of it won’t make it go away. And in reality there’s most likely nothing to be ashamed of. We either like certain things or we don’t. That doesn’t make it right or wrong.

You cannot be true to yourself if you try to mold into what you think others want you to be.

Emotional Stability

“Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf.”
—Jonatan Mårtensson

We all have good days and bad days and many days that fall in between. Sometimes they are triggered by events, or other times by weather or physical changes, and even skipping a meal or losing sleep can cause us to get out of sync within our own emotional status.

When we have one of those days where nothing seems to go right, or when we are suffering from negative emotions, we need to remember that we will be okay. We can stop and pray or meditate to try to focus on what is right and also to find peace and serenity. Maybe we need to do something different if possible with our day, but often we are at work or handling some other responsibility and we just can’t walk away.

Playing into how bad things are won’t make them better. Thinking positively and staying calm will help. We can ride the wave of “poor me” or we can jump on our surf board and find some joy or peace in the struggle of the day.

All of us have days filled with internal turmoil and days that are full of joy. We tend to remember those less than fun days more than those that are easy and full of peace and calm. But we have both.

When grieving a loss or some other pain is part of our day we can remember that with time things tend to feel better; we won’t feel as raw and vulnerable as time passes. We may feel as if we have been sliced open at times and that we cannot make it through the next moment, but we can and we do.

Remember that life does not follow an even and steady path. There are peaks and valleys and everything that falls between. We can learn to keep or emotions in check whether we are on the high or low end of the spectrum.

We can’t always choose what the day will bring, but we can choose how we react to it.

Choosing the Route

“The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.”
—Samuel Smiles

There’s a mountain I like to climb near where I live. One side of the mountain has a trail that for the most part is pretty easy to climb even for those who don’t exercise much. The other side is difficult, a lot more so than the easy side.

No matter which side of the mountain is climbed, once you get to the top it’s the same. The same view, the same mountain. So if given a choice there is no reason to take the difficult side just for the view, unless you are looking for more challenging climb.

And so it is with life. We all have many challenges, hurdles, mountains even. We don’t always have choices about taking different paths to master those challenges, but when given an option to choose the easy side or the difficult side, we can choose to take the easy one, knowing that the view, the victory is the same.

Sometimes we make life more difficult by fighting it. We try to figure out the future or we live in the past. We hold grudges and fail to let go when forgiveness would be easier. We don’t do what we know is the right thing and instead choose to move forward in something we know is wrong. We try to make people into who we want them to be instead of letting them be who they are.

Choosing the easier route in anything we face in life, especially the most challenging, will help us reach our goals. We stop fighting what we don’t know and go with what we have experienced as means to an end for us. One person’s accomplishments may have been reached in a different way than ours, but that doesn’t make our way wrong. If it works for us, we ought to do it.

When given a choice, choose the path of least resistance.