Category: dignity

When you first walk into the office, say hello before talking business. Never invite yourself, but you are expected to drop in unannounced where you are always invited. Even when you get home, announce that you’ve arrived. If you live alone, check in with friends often. Communicate. “Ping” your presence. If you’re not early, you’re late, but don’t knock before the meeting.

Inquire about meal plans when meeting within two hours of breakfast, lunch, or dinner. When inviting guests to a first-of-a-kind, tell them what you will be wearing so they can dress to the occasion. Even in the snow, take off your glove to shake hands. Nothing beats the gesture of going out of one’s way just to be friendly, even when it’s not necessary.

Always leave soon enough so people are hungry for more, it’s polite because it means you know your place. Don’t be too welcoming. Uninvited help is an insult except those rare moments when we can’t send an SOS. When taming a wild animal, let it walk all the way up to you to take food from your hand; if it’s a scavenger it will bite you anyway, if it’s a prairie dog or rabbit it probably won’t.

Always be kind and give respect, especially in the face of adversity. Do what it takes and then some. The older one should act like it, always act like you’re the older one. Don’t sweat the little stuff, it’s all little stuff. When traveling, be the first to wake, the last to sleep, and always help carry someone’s luggage. Leave everything better than you found it. Don’t mess with it if it’s not yours.

When you point your finger at someone, three point back at you. Good rules like this keep you on your toes in other areas. Learn them from older generations, especially people who have strong experience. Pieces of etiquette have roots in history and good ideas.

Don’t brush off wise traditions merely for seeming constraining or “unoriginal”. Write them down and keep training yourself. Read many more in the Book of Proverbs. Derive your own from the rest of the Bible as you read it daily. It’s called wisdom.

You can never please everyone, never. So, don’t try. Live an awesome life of love, excellence, fairness, compassion, happiness, patience, understanding, and kick your own butt. Whatever people like or don’t like, understand or can’t grasp, that’s all on them.

You are the Image of God. Every human is, but most humans don’t know it. This is something we each must be told, then we must accept. What exactly it means to be the Image of God—what all we are capable of and how we “should” act—is a deep question we will neither answer nor exhaust. The more questions you answer, the more questions you’ll have. The more you understand, the more you’ll tally how tiny your understanding floats in the ocean of all there is to explore.

So, when you encounter someone who has explored and learned what it means to be the Image of God, that person will naturally confound you, surprise you, irritate you, seem in need of your “fixing”, and do things that make no sense—to you. You’ll ask why, the answer will confound, surprise, and irritate you all the more. Expect this from people who know what they are doing and expect that you will seem the same way to others, the less incompetent you get.

Sunshine is healthy, killing bad things and creating vitamin D, but it will burn skin that lacks exposure. The sun would do no favor by not shining to avoid burning people. Don’t become foolish just so people can “understand” you. Stay steady and stay on target. The more stable and constant you are, the more people will anticipate what you do, the more they will understand you—all because your revamped worldview is spreading to the world around you.

There is great pressure to dumb down your standards and conduct—to stop living by financial smarts, shrewd stewardship, good chivalry, wise survival. People would rather you be dead—and them weeping at your funeral—than for you to not make instant sense.

Don’t give in.

Be charming. Use compassion. Elaborate when welcome. But, your life’s results are your best explanation. Living godly and strongly, even when misunderstood, is best for everyone.

If you want to have a strong life, you must draw a line in the sand. In self-improvement, there three main opinions: disdain for the entire topic, people who will take any criticism or hardship to improve themselves, people who want to impose change on the external world and are easily offended.

This book is written for the second category only. If you are in one of the other two categories, you hopefully won’t like this book because it conflicts with your worldview’s DNA.

This book’s approach to self-improvement is to hear-out criticism, search for “inner” strength, and deny yourself the right to claim “victim”, especially if you are one. If you’re not looking for that, don’t read this book.

If you are unhappy with your body, this book advises you to accept yourself from the inside and be physically healthy, not to do plastic surgery or other forms of medical treatment. If people treat you rudely, this book teaches you to find “inner power” to press on with your life, without policing or modifying or making laws to regulate what other people say. If you want want to medically alter your body in order to be emotionally satisfied with your body or if you want to protest about “hate speech”, then this book’s philosophy cannot help you because you seek a different type of “life coaching” opinion.

Know your approach to life. Recognize your mode of operation and put it into words. People have different philosophies about “being better people”, identify which group you fall into and do not judge the specific advice of a worldview you are not a part of.

If you don’t believe in the Bible, don’t critique the hermeneutics or theology of those who do. If you believe in the Bible, don’t criticize the morals or philosophies of those who don’t. If you’re a Republican, don’t criticize the politics of someone who is a Democrat. Learn to say, “We are in different schools of thought,” or, “I’m a Republican, you’re a Democrat,” or, “I don’t believe the Bible, you do,” or, “I deny myself the right to cry victim, even when I am one.” Then you can disagree with dignity.

It can take decades of learning and preparation for some things to take off. Don’t limit yourself with artificial time tables. You never know how long something may take.

If you can’t continue indefinitely, don’t begin. If you start something, but later decide it’s not worth it, then you have a serious problem with making decisions; you need no less than one week for reflection and at least five new rules to live by. Think about what you do before you get involved. A lengthy negotiation involves someone who doesn’t know what he wants. Whatever you are willing to compromise after twenty hours should be left at the door. It’s better to hold a visioning session with a life coach and hash out your mission with a negotiator who has no vested interest in your future.

Someone who tries to change your mind thinks you don’t know what you want. But, if you know what you want then manipulation tactics won’t affect you. If you know your mission, manipulative leaders will accuse you of rebellion; actually they’re just angry that they can’t assign your mission to you. Don’t be that kind of manipulative leader. True leadership helps others discover what they want and run for it.

There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going. Of course some things can be done more quickly, but that discussion returns to the matter of having your mind made up in the first place. We’re all wrong at times; capitalize on those times by reflecting on what will make you a better decision-maker in the future. Once you know your destination, you can choose the right path and keep going down it and reach destinations that most people are locked out of merely by their lack of attention span.

Commitment and wise decisions go hand in hand. You’ll never find out if you’ve gone down the wrong road if you never go down any road very far. Unless it’s clearly dangerous, press on just for the sake of finishing what you start. See things only seen with time. Then, you’ll choose your roads more wisely in the future and you’ll arrive to enjoy what awaits you at their end.

When someone accuses you, they want you to defend yourself. Don’t follow the debate agenda they set for you. Concede some of their points, explain yourself, but focus on the agenda you know is most responsible for you to push. Sometimes that means not defending yourself and admitting a fault, even when you must pay a punishment for it.

It happens when a power monger feels threatened in his fiefdom or a lazy farmer’s cash cow wants to leave the farm. No one accuses people without it affecting the accuser personally. People mind their own worries and chase their own dreamy ambitions until someone disturbs them; then they start searching for faults that they really don’t care about one lick, just to try to get rid of the “trouble maker”.

Accusers rarely care about what they accuse others of. Accusation either a weapon against competition, retribution for being outworked, or a way to distract from one’s own misery.

On occasion, someone will be genuinely injured and will thus seek justice. But, even then your responsibility must stay the same: Pursue the path of doing the right thing.

If you have wronged someone, don’t contend or defend. Confess, own up, make it right, tell the truth, and do the work of restitution to fix as much damage you caused as you can. In fact, take up the cause of the victim you victimized. Have your own “come to Jesus” moment—we all need those from time to time. That’s easy to figure out.

In the face of gossip, slander, and people who just want to stir up trouble, Paul had a lot to say about hate mongering. There’s a difference between seeking justice and smearing everyone for every little mistake ever made. Justice involves restoration toward hope and a future; that’s much more difficult when a gossiper has been out and about as a negative busy body.

When you confront accusers, your first question should be about “standing”—has the person been injured by you, otherwise it’s gossip, even in the name of “journalism”. Accusations are often an attempt to put people on defense, redirect them, then destroy them. Stay your course of fair, worthy pursuits.

The specific work you do in your life does not need to be planned, told, assigned, or felt wonderful about. “Chasing your dreams” went from mantra to controversy in the late 2010s. “Don’t chase your dreams, just make money” became the new slogan. To the contrary, don’t do either one. Instead, chase whatever your hands find to do.

Do whatever you can do well. Don’t do a thing only if you like it. Everything becomes boring eventually. “Chasing” one’s dreams is actually a form of being passive. It’s great to “make” your own dreams, but they must be God-sized and planned, otherwise you’re just fantasizing. Along the way, you will need to go down paths and roads to complete the dreams you grew in your heart. Those paths are the work that your hands find to do all on their own.

It really is amazing how quickly a skill will just fall into your lap that you didn’t choose. Such skills often start as odd jobs, childhood-adolescent obsessions, and more often than not some combination thereof. It’s up to you to be grateful for the odd job requests that come your way. Some people are grateful at first and ingrates later. Consider celebrity self-destruction stories. If you must learn early on to be grateful for the very doable work that comes your way, all the better. Romance is similar. Everything grows mundane sooner or later. Don’t let boredom be your lighthouse to steer you away.

Interestingly, some of the most profitable business sectors are the most boring and non-glamorous. Consider toilet paper, toothpaste, bad coffee, stationary, disposable razors, disposable pens, disposable… anything. Even the biggest, most evil corptocratic brands have found the secret to money: Boredom, it’s not going out of style and no one will notice it.

Few famous people are known for their daily work. Many acclaimed actors return to theaters. Paul Revere was a silver smith who started an insurance company after the Revolution.

If your hands have found something boring to do, all the merrier. Heaven probably played a role in it, so work like it. Heaven doesn’t reward us for what our hands find, but how well our hands work.