Overcome Adversity with a Principle Based Life
- Posted on Jun 2, 2018
Church can teach each of us to be virtuous. However, simply attending services or performing the work aligned with the church will not significantly improve society as a whole. Instead, only when each member of society fully lives life based on moral based principals will the human experience flourish. People too often compartmentalize their lives. It’s convenient having moral bound principles in certain circumstances such as related to church functions and having different principles under other scenarios. The phrases “All is Fair in Love and War” and “All is Fair in Business” come to mind. I mention church and religion because those teachings are commonly known by most people to represent the great principles of life.
When We Don’t Live Based on Principles
What causes consternation in everyone’s life is that many of us only apply principles in limited amounts. Certainly all is NOT fair in love and war, or in business, or in our day-to-day lives. If all was fair in war, we would all be dead from nuclear bombs. Fortunately, so far, our world leaders have seen fit to engage mostly in cold war rather than nuclear wars. All is not fair in love either. With strong principles in mind, you need to understand the concept behind “If you love someone, let them go. If they come back, they are yours forever. If they don’t return, it was never meant to be.” That’s the true principle of love. Yet, every day the news is full of stories about jealous lovers killing each other and domestic violence permeates our society. Fortunately, most of us live a life based on principles rather than forcing our desires on others.
The same is true in business. A limited few take advantage of the masses. A bad example of this is Bernie Madoff. He is known as the creator of the largest Ponzi scheme ever known to exist. The actual amount will never be known but it’s estimated that he stole 18 billion dollars from others. Madoff’s final reward for living a principle-less life is a 150 year prison sentence.
We Strive to be a Principle Based Humanity
We call it a revolution, not evolution. This is about the U.S. Constitution, which begins with the words: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” These are words of a civilized people that strives to live life based on principles rather than allow and all powerful king of England to unfairly rule over us without representation by the people. Another short quote representing the greatest Democracy’s determination to live a principled based life comes for Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “…these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Your Personal Constitution
Your life mission statement is in essence, your personal constitution. It’s your principle based mission statement that endures to serve you fully as self-evident truths even in the midst of social ambiguity and change. Your personal constitution becomes the basis for making major, life-directing decisions, the basis for making daily decisions in the midst of the circumstances and emotions that affect our lives. It empowers individuals with timeless strength in the midst of change. Your changeless core values enable you to live with the constant change we face in life. Be it the change of a new child coming into your family or a boss with constantly changing rules, or temporary financial despair. Without a principle based core, you have to find new ways of dealing with every change that affects your life. A principle based life provides you with reliable values, beliefs, and behaviors to deal with everything life throws at you. A principle based mission statement frees you of prejudices. You no longer need to explain or categorize the unexplainable. You are free to live life on your own terms rather that the terms of others. You will remain proactive to stay in control of your destination. Instead of being reactive and only being able to hope that good things will happen to you.
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