No Promises

As a Humanist life skills coach, I will never tell you how to get rich quick. That’s because, very few people get rich quick. Even overnight sensations spend years slugging along before they get their big break. My husband and I joke that it will probably take me 8 years of hard work to become an overnight sensation. And even then, I might never be.

Image: "Try Win Lose Dice"
by Stuart Miles

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This doesn’t discourage me though. Even though there is no magic formula to succeed in life, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. While it would be nice if I could wish upon a star and get my dream’s desire, in the real world, reaching your dreams takes hard work and quite a bit of luck. 

I can control the hard work. It’s the luck part that is frustrating. But I don’t allow that to discourage me. Here’s why.

1. I know that if I don’t at least make a good faith effort, I have no chance of success at all. So if I want to be successful, I have to make an effort. No good is going to come to me just from wishing.
2. Even if I never achieve my dreams, the journey is still worth it.

We all have things we want to improve in our lives. Whether it is our finances, our love life or our looks, there is always something that could be improved. And, as a Humanist, I think we should absolutely be taking constructive actions to improve our lives.  However, I also think that we would be fools to wait until our lives were perfect before giving ourselves permission to enjoy life.

Whenever I am struggling with something or frustrated and ready to give up on some project I ask myself one simple question. What am I doing with my life?  The answer is always the same. Living it.  While I have short and long term goals, my ultimate goal is to live my life to the fullest. Even if I don’t ever accomplish my other objectives, as long as I’ve lived life fully and did my best, I’ve succeeded.  If I manage to help other people in the process - bonus. 

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If you want to learn more about how to live life successfully as a Humanist and without all the magical nonsense about how just improving your thoughts can improve your life - check out my life skills course - Living Made Simpler

Bullying and Personal Ethics

How do you want
to be treated?

This post is in response to the video of a group of middle school students bullying and taunting a school bus monitor in Greece NY.  It’s a very difficult video to watch. This post isn’t about what can be done to stop such things from happening. (That post is here). This post is about what this incident tells us about personal ethics.

To be ethical, you must first recognize that the people you interact with are real people. The reason why the rest of us got so upset is because she’s a grandma and a widow and her son killed himself and the kids taunting her didn’t take any of that into account. She didn’t deserve to be treated that way. No one does.

It is clear from the video and from conversations with one of the dads, the kids, who are 13 – 15, weren’t thinking about what they were doing. They were just one upping each other and it was a game to them. Of course they weren’t thinking about the impact they were having on Ms. Klein (the bus monitor). They were thinking about themselves and how to fit in with their peers. To them, Ms. Klein wasn’t really human. As a result, they never considered the impact they were having on their target.

All too often we go through life ignoring the reality of the people around us. We get so wrapped up in our own problems that we don’t consider that other people might have problems of their own. And that is why we all got so upset at the behavior of those kids on that bus. They didn’t take into account the reality of Ms. Klein’s life.

The secret to ethics isn’t about following a set of rules. It goes much deeper than that. It is about truly understanding the golden rule. When you take the time to think about how you want to be treated by others, as a real human being worthy of respect and dignity, you realize that you need to treat others with respect as well. Everyone is struggling with something. When you realize that, the thought of tormenting another person becomes unthinkably cruel.

Image: "School Bus" by Arvind Balaraman FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Help fight cancer with Humanism

I am participating in Foundation Beyond Belief's Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. With your help, we can make this night one that will go down in history as the largest concentrated humanitarian effort from the freethought movement. I am organizing the Happy Humanist team in Sarasota Florida.

It is important to note that we are doing this humanitarian effort in honor of Christopher Hitchens and have this amazing matching challenge going on with the Stiefel Freethought Foundation. Todd and his family are teaming up with Foundation Beyond Belief in order to help make this the largest godless charity event ever. and have generously offered to match every dollar that our national Light the Night team raises up to $500,000, making our total goal $1,000,000--which will break the Leukemia Lymphoma Society's record for funds raised by a brand new organization in the Light the Night Walk.

Ways you can help:

• Donate today!
• Join a team! 
• Spread the word by sharing this post with others.

Please help me spread the word about what will become the largest secular charity event in history!

Overcoming fear with science

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The emotion of fear is always negative.  Our responses to fear were learned early in life as hand-me-downs, by imitating fearful, ignorant, superstitious people.  If fear is such a powerful force, why do we teach fear to our children?  Fear and ignorance are sort of like the chicken and the egg-which came first.  We fear what we don't understand and we don't understand what we fear.  Irrational responses to fear are very common. 

I remember an incident years ago that demonstrates that fear is learned.  I was visiting a friend one weekend and, while he was tending the bar-b-que, his 4 year old girl started screaming in the bathroom.  I hurried to the doorway and found her sitting on the floor screaming, looking at her finger bleed.  She was terrified!  Apparently, she had never before consciously experienced bleeding.

Rather than make a big fuss over it (I could see it was only a minor wound), I stopped, smiled and said, "I see you sprang a leak."  She immediately became silent and bewildered.  I then asked, "What do you do when you see a leak in your garden hose?"  She put her finger over the leak.  "That's right," I said.  "Hold your finger on it for a couple of minutes and it will stop bleeding."

She then started giggling, got up and ran to her mother in the kitchen shouting, "Look Momma, I sprang a leak." That little girl reacted to a new situation, in which she sensed danger, in much the same way motion pictures and TV shows portray emotional reactions to bloody injuries - by screaming.  But once she better understood the situation was a normal occurrence and there was little danger, her whole emotional response changed from fear to the joy of enlightenment.

Many of the fears children learn, they learn by default.  The parents don't attempt to explain the natural world in a scientific sense, either because they don't (or won't) make the time or don't know themselves.  If children are not encouraged to think at a very early age, through the use of science and the scientific method, their emotions will easily be controlled by others later in life because of their ignorance.  A keen interest in the nature of things - science - sets the foundation to emotional responses. Scientific knowledge and skepticism deflate erratic emotional responses simply by removing the anxiety of doubt and fear of the unknown.

Perhaps, sometime in the future, emotions will become based more on knowledge than ignorance; reason than fear.  Emotions will then become a positive constructive influence instead of the negative, destructive influence it seems to be today.

Guest post by Frank Prahl (Excerpted from his essay Reason, Emotion and Humanism). Frank is a Journalism graduate of the University of Houston; Past president of the Humanists of Houston and later, Humanists Involved in Greater Houston and has been a Humanist Advocate for more than 15 years. 

Our Cheating Culture

I was contacted by a researcher who wanted me to share an infographic on cheating. Apparently because I talk about morality- she thought I would have an interest. Well, after looking at the graphic, I do.  If the information in this graphic is correct, cheating is very prevalent.

As I've said before, the only person who is really hurt by your cheating is you. (see blog post here). And that is something I firmly believe. You might achieve some short term gains, but ultimately, if you cheat, you miss out on learning and that is a tragedy. From a humanist perspective, education and knowledge is the key to living a happy and productive life. Cheat yourself out of learning and knowledge and you are essentially cheating yourself out of a happy and productive life. And why would anyone choose that path for themselves.

Anyway- here is the graphic - it's a bit long - but worth looking at:

Created by: OnlineMastersDegree.com

The importance of reality

Image by Phaitoon - http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

File this under Humanistic Leadership. When it comes to dealing with people, differences of opinion are very common. It always amazed me how many people, when they have a disagreement with a coworker assume evil intentions to their coworker, creating needless conflict where none need exist. That’s because people don’t bother to question the assumptions they are making to figure out whether what they think is a problem is actually a problem. This is one of the reasons why Humanists spend so much time engaging critical thinking.  We don’t like to waste our time chasing after paper tigers. We want to focus our time on real problems and not on imaginary ones.

For instance, if you are having a disagreement with someone over tactics, take the time to respectfully ask this person WHY they are focusing on the solution they are. You may just find out that you overlooked something important.  Most people just want to try and do the right thing.  By taking the time to not fight people with different ideas, but to learn from them, you may turn what could have been an adversarial situation into an alliance. Always remember, winning an argument doesn’t do you any good if your ultimate solution doesn’t work. Never assume you know all that you need to know and always treat people with differing ideas with respect.  Don’t assume your coworkers are out to get you unless you have verified that they are really out to get you. Reality matters.

The other mistake people make is they tend to completely ignore problems that arise because; they literally refuse to believe they have a problem. It’s called denial and we all do it to some extent. I am always amazed at the amount of energy people put into their denials. It would be way easier to just accept the new challenges you have to face, but people are often afraid to do so.  Since it is always better to accept reality for what it is, the next time someone brings you bad news, and you don’t want to believe it, force yourself to do a little research and find out if the bad news is real or not. That way you won’t act like a complete reality denying idiot nor will you waste your time and energy on problems that aren’t real.

To recap – knowing what is real is important.  If you don’t know if a problem is real or not, you will waste time fixing non-problems and you will ignore the problems you have. Don’t waste your time and energy, embrace reality instead. 

Compassion for others lead to compassion for self

Image courtesy of 
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When dealing with difficult people it is really easy to feel sorry for yourself and wallow.  Wallowing is sometimes a necessary self-indulgence and something that we all need to do at some point.  The problem is that self-indulgent wallowing isn’t going to help you solve your problem

The common advice given to keep you from needing to wallow in the first place is to feel good about yourself so that the negativity other people direct at you doesn’t affect you. This is obviously very hard to do.  Most people would rather feel sorry for themselves.

I take a different approach. Rather than trying to make yourself feel better, I encourage people to feel sorry for the person who is being mean to them. The reason is because the more compassion you can muster up for others, the more compassion you can muster up for yourself.

So, the next time you find yourself confronted by someone who is trying to demean you, try feeling sorry for them. When you forgive people for not being perfectly wonderful, you will find that you can forgive yourself for not being perfect all the time either.

You Ain’t Leading

Do you even know if they want to cross the bridge?
Renjith Krishnan/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

File this under Humanistic Leadership. Lots of people like to think they are leaders, but if no one is following you, you ain’t leading.

It’s amazing how many leaders don’t get this. They get mad at people for failing to see how brilliant they are or how important the work they think needs to get done is. If people aren’t following you, the problem must lie in the stupidity of the followers who are refusing to follow. Right? Wrong. If people ain’t following you, it’s your fault. And launching ad hominen attacks on the people you would like to have follow you isn’t going to endear you to them.  

If you want people to follow you, you first need to take the time to find out what it is THEY want to accomplish. They could care less about what you want. What they want to know is how you are going to help them accomplish what THEY want. But unless you are willing to find out what THEY want, you aren’t going to be able to help them see how your plan of action will help them. If you want people to follow, you need to step back, consider the problem from their perspective, and help walk them through step by step how what you are proposing is going to help them and you get to your shared goal.

Never underestimate the intelligence of your followers. They aren’t stupid if they aren’t following you, they are just being skeptical, and that’s a good thing. If you want to lead people, you first need to give them a good reason to follow you.

(If you want to get more information on Humanistic Leadership - visit http://humanisticleadership.com/ )