Being Versus Doing

When one enters the world of personal growth and development, there are two questions that possess great power for the individual and others with whom he/she chooses to interact.

1.  Who am I?

2.   Who are you?

The question of ‘who am I’ represents the structure that we choose to build on our personal foundation.  Studying ourselves gives us the answers to the unique and personal questions of who is the unique and special individual we are.

When we look at ourselves in great depth, we often find that many of us have structured our lives around the perception that our lives are basically a sense of being or around the perception of doing.

One of the basic choices we make is whether we wish to build our lives based on the foundation of seeing life as a gift.  We are entitled to this gift by being born and have only to receive it and use it for the time we live on this earth. 

This means that we are of value as humans just because we exist, not on anything that we do.  Of the two basic choices, this perception tends to be the most difficult for most humans to truly believe about themselves. 

It does not take long in our conversations for other people to see whether we value ourselves for being human, or whether we see our lives as only having value for doing the tasks, goals and accomplishments of our life journey.  One can choose to value him/herself only for what they DO rather than just being a human being.

If we listen to what we say to others about ourselves, we find that frequently the predominate talk is about our behavior, about what we have accomplished.  For some, just being alive is not enough to merit our own appreciation of self and certainly does not impress very many other people. 

For many in our society, it is only by doing tasks and meeting goals that they can find value in themselves.  These people find it difficult to retire without remaining ‘active’ even as they need to work at playing or rest from vacations.

The power to ask for the truth in how we value ourselves by asking ‘who am I’ can be just as powerful when we take the risks and ask a similar question to another: ‘who are you?’  We can see by another’s response how they have structured their lives to meet the demands of the society in which they live.  Or they can they take the value of just being human as the ultimate gift we each receive.   

Usually individuals are seeking to be heard and understood by others.  If one chooses to listen, people will tell you where they tend to fit on the BEING vs. DOING continuum.  If emotionally healthy, they may have found a way to balance the two views in our human 'gray zone' rather than black/white.

Like most aspects of studying personal growth, these two points are opposite ends of a continuum.   For those familiar with the bell-shape curve, we know that there are very few instances of one being at either extreme.  Most of us have the characteristics of both perceptions of being and doing.  We tend to be more comfortable living our lives with one trait more than another and our culture certainly gives most of its encouragement to those who DO.

With our question of ‘who am I?’ as a guideline, we can have a positive beginning of personal growth in learning more about ourselves.  With the ‘who are you?’ question, we open the foundation for mutual exchange of honest and intimate dialogue.

As always, the personal choices we make to manage our life growth are ours.

Comments welcome.     Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com

Giving Living A Bad Name

 How fortunate we all are to have this gift of life!!  Regardless of our personal beliefs on the source of this gift, the reality is that each of is given this gift with a diverse range of skills, talents, assets and liabilities. 

Since life is a gift freely given where we have only to receive it, the individual choices we make to manage this gift are our own unique way of demonstrating our personal values.  Many around us make similar and/or different choices from the ones we make.

Some of us will take this gift of life as a given; there is nothing special about being alive.  Some may even come to believe that we are entitled to be alive and just muddle through waiting for life to give us more treasure since we must have more to be a ‘winner’. 

Some may conclude that giving this gift to them, as an individual was some type of mistake.  They see nothing to be given or gained from making choices that could bring positive changes to their lives.  They see themselves as powerless and usually are lonely.  Keep putting one foot in front of another with painful endurance until the journey's end is reached is often this person’s only goal.

There are many, many ways that an individual can choose to make his/her gift of life into a negative experience.  This blog will focus on three of the most common that probably are easily recognizable in our society and are open to the choice of alternation.

One of the first behaviors that we tend to learn early in childhood is developing a case of “the shoulds”.  Our society mandates that there are certain thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are acceptable and must always be done if one wishes to be ‘normal’ and live with other people.

As a former teacher, I may have tended to take over where the parents left off with developing the value of living the ‘shoulds’.  I had the support of the person’s peer group, social organizations, churches, etc.  Most people knew what they should or should not be doing by the time they became adults and enter the labor force.  These adult groups will teach them any ‘shoulds’ they may have missed.

How much of our life is wasted trying to meet the expectations of the ‘shoulds’ that we place on ourselves and by others!   The biggest loss tends to be realization of our personal power to chose and re-decide our life patterns.

When I think of labeling behavior as an obstacle to appreciating the gift of life, I sometimes wonder if we live in some type of giant file drawer where we are categorized by the many, many labels that society has given us to wear.

After giving all the label of human and the gift of life, we are then sorted into the many categories that start with male and female.  We are then labeled by age, race, religion, income, nationality, height, weight, size and type of housing, education, intelligence, social ability, health, mode of transportation we use, family history, friends, cleanliness, orderliness, clothing, food choices, introvert/extrovert, technical aptitude, etc.   The list is endless but they all affect how we decide to manage our gift of life in both positive and negative ways.  We make these labels real and usually grow to believe that we cannot re-label ourselves or find new choices in which labels we wish to use during our Life Journey.

The third way that can tarnish the gift of life and give living a bad name is the process of blame.  There are many who decide early in life that whenever something goes wrong in their world, their first goal is to find someone or something to blame.

During my early days of teaching it seemed to me that we were encouraging and rewarding the behavior of having our students find and/or create some way to avoid responsibility for something that they might or might not have done.  I lost count of how many times I heard myself say “what is your excuse this time”?  It seemed that I was encouraging the students to find new ways to blame a situation on another or be creative in building an excuse which was unique and would allow the student to avoid accepting any responsibility for their behavior.

As an adult I hear my fellow adults carry out the results of this early training.  Parents blame their kids.  Kids blame their parents and almost any adult.  Employees blame their bosses.  Employers blame the poor behavior of employees.  Individuals blame the government.  Government blames citizen apathy.  Farmers blame the weather.  The poor blame the rich for having so much wealth while the rich blame the poor for not doing something to make money while they pay the taxes. 

As with any of these games to avoid taking responsibility for our own choices, we can easily play any of these three perspectives in deciding whether we want to maximize this wonderful gift of life.

With positive management we can decide we want to have life be a process of minimizing the mental games of shoulds, labeling and blaming.  Or, we can choose to utilize these negative perspectives and give our living a bad name.  As always, we can make any choice we wish.  What a wonderful gift for this Life Journey we have!

Comment welcome.  Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com