Ethical Reminders

We need to remind ourselves to be ethical. It isn’t something that happens automatically. We have to think about our ethics in order to be ethical. This is why Humanists are always encouraging people to think before you act.

I know for myself, my initial gut reaction to things I experience can sometimes be quite negative. In order to be ethical, I have to interrupt my negative thinking and replace it with more ethical and compassionate thinking.  I have to remind myself to behave in a more ethical way.

This isn’t easy to do because it requires practice and, well, thinking. And it’s hard to think well when we are experiencing negative emotions.  This is why we need to be reminders to be ethical. This is why it benefits us as humans to talk about and discuss ethics with each other.  Every time we read about or talk about our ethical values, we are reminding ourselves to do better and to try harder to be the best most ethical person we can be.

The reward for our ethics is that if we can bring ourselves to behave better we will not only get better results, we will also feel better about ourselves in the process.  Is it hard? Yes. Do you have to constantly remind yourself to be a better person? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.