13 immutable laws for living
I
Forgiveness is more Powerful than Perfection
I hear it all the time. "They're not doing it right." My translation for this is you disagree with the way things are being done. Somehow that doesn't surprise me because few of us control anything.
Let me reinforce that.
We can't change the past.
We can't predict the future with any real certainty.
We can't slow down the present in order to hold it still to control what happens at all.
So, things don't go according to plan and plans are made based on inadequate intel. All plans. As a consequence, most results of human endeavor are flawed because most people are flawed and most of man and woman's daily toil don't always work out "just right." That shouldn't really surprise you. But here's the other thing. We're all different and we all like to have things our own way. Thus, if six people get a chance to do something, they'll likely do it six different ways. Does any of that surprise you? Can you pull back a minute and agree that different people see things differently? Then why is it "wrong" the other way? Because you know better, right?
Then here's a challenge. Change everything you can to agree with your own world view. Get educated, work your way up, find a way to get yourself placed in charge. Then make all your changes and let other people critique it for you. Then you'll find out just how flawed things can be. If that takes too long or you lack the ambition to take over, the best way to deal with "them" and "their way" is to deal with it by rationalizing it and accepting that different isn't necessarily wrong. If you can't change it, work toward accepting it. Happy people have lower expectations. I'm sorry, but that's a fact. You want to be miserable? Fine. Find fault, complain constantly, whine about "the man" and "those people" and feel superior, if not consolable. Besides being miserable adds to the tone of complaining so nicely. Don't expect sympathy though. There are alternatives.
Let the past go. Now. Start fresh. Clean your mind.
Thou shalt forgive and strive to forget.
Let it go. Begin with your parents, who, trust me, are flawed. Your siblings got more time, attention, money, love, trust, education, warmth, whatever.
If you trust others, and you should because trust is essential to forgiveness, then you come to realize that we are all struggling to please and struggling to succeed. We often don't "win" (whatever that means) because frailty is a human trait, and mistakes are inevitable. Science bears this out by the way. The smartest and best motivated humans can generate about a 96% error free record of achievement over time. Maybe some phenom somewhere can do 99%, who knows? But by rule that means sooner or later they're going to screw up. And that's the best of us. I don't know about you but I often find myself with the rest of us somewhere down below a constant 96%.
So begin by trusting yourself to achieve and almost always in a different way than others. But that achievement will not always be at everything, every day, either to your own or to other people's standards of perfection. Begin to accept missing the target now and again. You may not be a ninety-six per-center, you can work on that but allow for errors, because we know they're inevitable. Then start to forgive yourself. We all fret and worry over those errors in judgment, in calculation, and in disappointments we afforded ourselves or others when we screwed up. We lost money. We failed to perform to expectations. We're not welcomed there any more because of what we said. We have to find a new job, a new car, a new house, a new spouse, a new life, whatever. So what's the first thing you do to make today the best day it can be? Forgive. Thou shalt forgive. Once you learn to forgive yourself, understand that others expect the same courtesy. Why not give it to them and begin to see how much easier it is to live and how much more comfortable everybody else is to be around you. Don't stop striving. Don't stop encouraging others to try. But expect screw-ups. Don't get excited when they occur because they're going to occur.
You're afraid if you don't push yourself and others past the breaking point you'll lose your power?
There is more power in forgiveness than in perfection. You can quote me on that.
I
Forgiveness is more Powerful than Perfection
I hear it all the time. "They're not doing it right." My translation for this is you disagree with the way things are being done. Somehow that doesn't surprise me because few of us control anything.
Let me reinforce that.
We can't change the past.
We can't predict the future with any real certainty.
We can't slow down the present in order to hold it still to control what happens at all.
So, things don't go according to plan and plans are made based on inadequate intel. All plans. As a consequence, most results of human endeavor are flawed because most people are flawed and most of man and woman's daily toil don't always work out "just right." That shouldn't really surprise you. But here's the other thing. We're all different and we all like to have things our own way. Thus, if six people get a chance to do something, they'll likely do it six different ways. Does any of that surprise you? Can you pull back a minute and agree that different people see things differently? Then why is it "wrong" the other way? Because you know better, right?
Then here's a challenge. Change everything you can to agree with your own world view. Get educated, work your way up, find a way to get yourself placed in charge. Then make all your changes and let other people critique it for you. Then you'll find out just how flawed things can be. If that takes too long or you lack the ambition to take over, the best way to deal with "them" and "their way" is to deal with it by rationalizing it and accepting that different isn't necessarily wrong. If you can't change it, work toward accepting it. Happy people have lower expectations. I'm sorry, but that's a fact. You want to be miserable? Fine. Find fault, complain constantly, whine about "the man" and "those people" and feel superior, if not consolable. Besides being miserable adds to the tone of complaining so nicely. Don't expect sympathy though. There are alternatives.
Let the past go. Now. Start fresh. Clean your mind.
Thou shalt forgive and strive to forget.
Let it go. Begin with your parents, who, trust me, are flawed. Your siblings got more time, attention, money, love, trust, education, warmth, whatever.
If you trust others, and you should because trust is essential to forgiveness, then you come to realize that we are all struggling to please and struggling to succeed. We often don't "win" (whatever that means) because frailty is a human trait, and mistakes are inevitable. Science bears this out by the way. The smartest and best motivated humans can generate about a 96% error free record of achievement over time. Maybe some phenom somewhere can do 99%, who knows? But by rule that means sooner or later they're going to screw up. And that's the best of us. I don't know about you but I often find myself with the rest of us somewhere down below a constant 96%.
So begin by trusting yourself to achieve and almost always in a different way than others. But that achievement will not always be at everything, every day, either to your own or to other people's standards of perfection. Begin to accept missing the target now and again. You may not be a ninety-six per-center, you can work on that but allow for errors, because we know they're inevitable. Then start to forgive yourself. We all fret and worry over those errors in judgment, in calculation, and in disappointments we afforded ourselves or others when we screwed up. We lost money. We failed to perform to expectations. We're not welcomed there any more because of what we said. We have to find a new job, a new car, a new house, a new spouse, a new life, whatever. So what's the first thing you do to make today the best day it can be? Forgive. Thou shalt forgive. Once you learn to forgive yourself, understand that others expect the same courtesy. Why not give it to them and begin to see how much easier it is to live and how much more comfortable everybody else is to be around you. Don't stop striving. Don't stop encouraging others to try. But expect screw-ups. Don't get excited when they occur because they're going to occur.
You're afraid if you don't push yourself and others past the breaking point you'll lose your power?
There is more power in forgiveness than in perfection. You can quote me on that.
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