Are you a good human? (15 min read)
A friend recently told me about a social media post she saw.
“You can tell if someone is a good human if they return their shopping cart to the designated area in the parking lot, instead of just leaving it where their car was parked. There is no reward for returning a shopping cart, you do it for the service of others, and therefore this deems you a “good human”.
The A.T.H. Awards
This got us thinking, and our conversation continued. Somewhere along the way we created “The A.T.H. Awards”, defined as “Assets to Humanity Awards”. These awards would be verbally awarded to strangers, friends, and family on daily actions witnessed that positively make a contribution to humanity through kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion, and empathy. We delighted in witnessing A.T.H. activity being carried out while driving, shopping, walking, and generally going about our day. You’d be surprised at how many A.T.H. viable awards you can hand out when you become aware of them. You’ll smile, laugh, and generate such feelings of warmth and expansion it’s a worthwhile activity. We handed out A.T.H. awards for smiles given to strangers, door holding, pleases, thank yous, and hellos being exchanged, picking up dropped items off the store floor, genuine laughter, gentle and kind conversations with homeless individuals, genuine conversations with strangers, friends sending surprise notes in the mail, and flowers being dropped off at neighbors doors. The list is endless once you begin spotting all sorts of “Assets to Humanity.”
Who is Good, Who is Bad?
What was a bit of fun actually did help us think through and consider the experiences of life today and the past 18 months. There have been a lot of discussions online, on television and radio, in media, in communities, in businesses, and within family and friend circles about the merits of “good” and “bad” people. Interestingly enough, one of our posts “Good? or Bad? Who Knows.” is in our top 5 of most read and shared internationally around the world. As a world we are fascinated by who is right and who is wrong.
Misguided
As humans we like to box things up and place people in one box or another box. There is us, and them. To get you thinking about that, view this commercial from Denmark in 2017. When we box people it gives us a misguided sense of safety and security, and we feel less threatened when we judge others. It’s sort of endearing when you think about it, we only do it because we are afraid and frightened and we act out. Now imagine a group of 6-year olds having an argument in the playground - yep, that’s really what adult life is! Is then our real task not to judge and criticize others, but instead to get to grips with, sit with, and find ways to release of our own fears?
We love to judge, we love to think we are right, and other people are wrong. Suffering is our choice and frequently we prefer to stay in a place of pain and suffering then allow someone else to have a view, opinion, or belief that is contrary to our own. We prefer to be intolerant of others and behave in a way that epitomizes lack of humanity, understanding and respect. We start to become rude, passive aggressive, deflect, make spiteful comments, ignore, and rise to being hostile towards others. We love to believe we have all the information and we should make the rules and everyone should stick to our rules - or side with the rules we believe are right. Peer, social, and community pressure was something most of us learned at school to be an inhumane activity, we were discouraged from participating in it, and encouraged to stand up and protect others that were bullied. Yet there seems to be a lot of this type of peer, social and community pressuring going on currently. We like to think we are behaving well when we participate in it, and we even look for validation from others that how we are behaving is “right”. We then give ourselves a self-awarded medal when we find that validation, yet in all of this, there is little consideration for anyone other than ourselves when we take part in that behavior. There is a basic flaw in this approach; we no longer trust ourselves. Instead we place greater trust in strangers and “group think” over and above what we instinctively and intuitively know.
We appear to be less tolerant, less gracious, and less patient with others in our communities and society than we have ever been. We prefer to isolate ourselves and only like to associate with others who think and act exactly the way we do, yet those pockets of people become smaller day-by-day and loneliness creeps in. When we align like this we are already on a losing streak. We have reduced capacity to be open-minded, have less patience and care for strangers and even those close to us. Family, friends and neighbors are tossed to one side because we are no longer able to tolerate other people having their own perspectives, ideas, beliefs and values that are different to us. Yet these are the very things that make us so beautifully human and from differences comes unity, growth, greatness, and even strength.
Live your life
Newsflash you’re only here (if you’re lucky) for a century, and probably a lot less for most people. Actuary tables are fascinating to look at, the smarts heads involved in programming these algorithms calculate the probability of when people will generally die. Finance and insurance worlds rely on this information and the models, in essence, are placing bets on when people will pop their clogs. According to U.S. Social Security life expectancy is around 76.23 years old for males and 81.28 years old for women (ebbing and flowing up and down by a year of two since 2004, and adjusting down by 3-4 months between years 2019 and 2020).
We all know our lives are finite, so do we really want to use them up being at loggerheads with others, mistrusting, disliking, changing our behaviors, and not getting on in the life playground for most of our life? Definitely not our choice!
We choose to grow, to enjoy life fully, to engage with others, to see the beauty in life, to experience it fully, to make a difference in how we show up in the world. We will keep shining that light brighter and brighter, and if that makes others feel uncomfortable, that’s for them to work through - and what an opportunity they have!
It doesn’t matter if you identify as LGBTQ2+, align with Republican or Democrat ideas (or change your mind for that matter, you are allowed to vote differently each time there is an election if you want - that’s your privilege of living in a generally democratic nation (I know some would grumble at that.). It doesn’t matter what your nationality is, where you came from, what you choose to put your faith in, whether you are black, brown, white, pink, yellow or all the colors under the sun that we like to describe human beings with, whether you are vaccinated or unvaccinated and whether you choose to share that information or not, whether you speak one language or ten, whether you went to university or not, whether you went to a so-called “right” university, whether you started a business or didn’t, whether you can afford your own house, whether you can go on holiday, whether you have 1, 2, or 3 jobs, whether you have no children or have 1, 2 or 10, whether you made the most of the lockdown in 2020, or didn’t do anything, or whether you live in the “right” or “wrong“ part of town. The topics are utterly endless, and you will always find something you do not like and someone who disagrees with you. At the end of the day, what matters is what you do. What others do; is none of your business. When you actively segregate people into perceived groups this only brings isolation and fear instead of unity and understanding.
“But what others do affects me” you snap. Yes that is one perspective you could adopt. There are some situations (actually very few) when this is true, but for the majority of time what others do has nothing to do with you. You act and behave because of the stories you have created in your mind - not actually because of what others are doing. When you act in this way, 99% of the time you are acting from a fear basis, and will squander your entire life on the merits of what others do and segregate people into being “wrong” compared to what you do and how they impact you. You will act out an artificial reality and in time you will create a reality for yourself that resembles, quite often, the exact opposite of what you want. You will change your behavior to accommodate what others are apparently doing to you. However, the fact is, you (along with the other 7.9 billion people in the world) are an ever evolving human, constantly growing, repairing, adapting and changing. When you give others power over your life, this results in you behaving differently from what you would like to do, and you give way to judging others. When you do this what is ultimately happening is you are diminishing your own life and judging yourself, “others” continue to live very happily. You have not earned (and will never earn) the right to tell others what to do or how to live their life, you only have the right to do that for yourself and make choices about your own life. Make choices that empower, enliven, and expand your own life without being influenced by what others do, or don’t do.
It is clear from the last 18 months that we do agree on one thing; we love to judge others. In fact we are Olympic gold medallists at this point. Not exactly the epitaph you would aspire to, or perhaps you do, so if you do aspire to that then go for it! However, you might want to read a little more about what might happen if you do…
Survival Mode
We waste so much precious time we are alive discussing, debating, arguing, yelling, shouting, and ignoring other people. We frivolously spend time on things that keep us from becoming our best selves, enjoying our greatest relationships, and we don’t use our best effort, energy, and life in meaningful, purposeful, and service driven ways.
As humans our bias is to judge. Our instinctive mode is to operate in a "survival of the fittest" way, that’s why many of us have an unhealthy preoccupation with covid, the virus, and vaccines. The mere existence of a virus is terrifying many and this terror can move us to operate from an unchecked and irrational fear basis. When we operate in disproportionate fear our decisions our impaired, our behaviors are affected, and entire life experience becomes pretty bleak. We end up living a lonely and isolated life devoid of diversity, vibrancy and enjoyment. Even businesses and organizations show a change in the way they operate when they are rooted in fear.
The irony is that we allow the behaviors of others to influence how we experience our life. When that starts happening you can be sure you have accidentally wandered onto a path that isn’t your own and you have to act to change that or you will start experiencing fear, negativity, scarcity, lack, and general doom and gloom comes across your life on a regular basis. From that moment you stop living.
It doesn’t just stop there, your body is a powerful thing. There is growing scientific evidence that reveals how emotions generate physical symptoms in your body and how powerful they can be. As time progresses and the education system, medical world, businesses and industries catch up with this insight and open up to being willing to understand and incorporate more about this, you will start seeing shifts to include areas such as mind-body, heart-math, emotional body impact, functional medicine, and more.
It is no surprise, to those in the know, that many individuals have had an increased experience of all sorts of physical symptoms over the past 18 months. Unconscious and conscious emotions do have a physical impact on the body, and without the awareness of this it can lead individuals to believe they have a physical issue first and foremost which needs conventional medical attention. Some emergency room visits for chest pain and breathing difficulties are attributed to anxiety and panic attacks, which begin to dissipate when individuals are reassured there is nothing wrong as far as the medical world understands.
Many are aware that anxiety and stress levels are at all time high, yet fewer understand the true impact this is having on the medical profession. We know that prior to the pandemic according much research and highlighted in the paper “Epidemiology of Emergency Department Visits for Anxiety in the United States: 2009–2011”: “People with anxiety disorders tend to be high utilizers of health care and place a strain on the healthcare system. It is estimated that annual health care costs for anxiety disorders reach $42.3 billion.”.
We know that stress and anxiety has risen since the pandemic arrived, combined with exponential costs to businesses and the healthcare system. This will continue without the awareness and inclusion of other dimensions of well-being such as the emotional impact in the body. Given one of the symptoms of covid has been regularly highlighted as chest pain and breathing issues, psychologically individuals can be forgiven for believing they have covid when in reality the way they are interpreting their life is creating stress in their body and showing up as a panic attack. This is absolutely not to discount covid and the truly real cases, yet as with all elements of life, maintaining perspective is critical to healthy analysis, conversation and living.
The American “sickcare system” has the opportunity to move towards a true “well-being system” as more aspects of emotional and spiritual health are incorporated into physical health. With over 70% of Americans on some kind of drug medication the nation sicker than it has ever been before. The tides are beginning to change as more individuals come to the realization that the current model and approach no longer works in isolation. U.S. medical schools still only have a very small module of diet included in the education programs, which is staggering given that we now know how diet dramatically impacts health and well-being. The opportunity to incorporate all eight dimensions of well-being into a revised and transformed “well-being system” is ready to launch, and sky rocket.
Less than 5 years ago an oncology conference in the U.S. began discussing how instead of having cancer specialists the profession may need to move toward a focus on the entire body. Everything is connected and the physical body can’t be considered in isolated parts, or be considered without the emotional and spiritual components of being human. (There is that term “isolation” again, it doesn’t lead to success in our connected world.).
Stress is a combination of feelings (sensations in the body) and emotions (chemical signals generated from different places in the body). “Emotional stress is a major contributing factor to the six leading causes of death in the United States: cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory disorders, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide.” as reported in the “Life Events, Stress and Illness” paper by Mohd. Razali Salleh. As we highlighted earlier, mental health is a major factor in the escalating out-of-control costs that businesses are experiencing in healthcare costs.
Are you a complainer?
Science tells us it’s easy to complain, so you are forgiven, it’s a basic human survival thing. For every positive thought, we have significantly more negative thoughts. It’s easy to point the finger, it’s easy to apportion blame. Our brain patterns become stronger the more we use them. We know through neuroscience that synapses get stronger based on use, as you learn your brain fires and wires the synapses together.
If you are a complainer, constantly judging others, living from a fear driven perspective, your brain will be used to that and you will be a world champion at it - without even consciously thinking. Your brain muscle becomes stronger each day, so be choosey about which “pathway” and synapses you fire and wire. It will take effort, even the most positive of thinkers have had their work cut out in the past 18 months. But it’s not all about positive thinking, it comes back to fear and do you allow your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to be dictated by fear. Learning how to trust your instincts and intuition is also key to this formula.
Until you consciously change pathways and begin exercising the muscles in your brain for compassion and empathy, for positive focus, for expansion of yourself and for service of others your brain will happily glide across all the negative thoughts and scenarios it can conjure up. This leads to you feeling heavier and darker by each moment that passes. Quite often what your brain is dreaming up isn’t even real or factually correct, until you start acting it out, and you will if you continue on this path.
The patterns in your brain say everything about you, not others, that’s another piece of the puzzle to recognize. When you start actively criticizing others and changing your behaviors dig deep because 99% of the time the criticism is directed towards yourself, however you are deflecting that criticism towards others. If you feel a twang of indignation at reading that, that is your signal that you have work to do, yet it also tells you that you have the capacity to be able to do the work too. So, have faith in yourself. Start digging.
Different, yet united
Somewhere along the way we lost ourselves and forgot about what brings us together, what unites us. Imagine your head is a radio, and you have been playing the same station over and over, now it’s time to switch channels. You are going to have to work at this. It’s like going to the gym, you have to go each day to create strength and vitality, but the reward is going to be amazing. In the same way, your brain needs you to work at seeing the silver lining in situations and people. The synapses in your brain need to learn to fire and wire together in a new way and as a result you will experience a whole refreshed way of thinking and being.
We are different, we always will be. That’s what makes us glorious human beings. We have an opportunity now to begin caring for one another again, irrespective of our differences.
Emotion Management Experience
At Birch Cove we help people understand all about emotions through our emotion management experience where participants learn more about where emotions come from, how they influence thoughts, and how you start behaving and experiencing the world as a result. We help participants understand how emotions not only impact their ability to connect with others, but also that they impair their decision-making abilities, reduce creativity and problem-solving capabilities. Instead participants learn how they can perform more effectively and optimally when at work, and how they can live more fully and create balance in the quality of their life. The experience is based on science and delivered by our expert Dr. Melissa Milanak. When you understand more about emotions a light goes off in your mind, it releases a lot of tension for participants when they realize they have more choices available to them, are more in control of their own life than they realize, and other people don’t have quite have the control, influence or impact over their life as they thought they did.
What is the antidote?
Focus your attention on yourself, not others. Shift your emotions and strengthen your positive brain pathways. Find the silver lining in everything and everyone. Do not give yourself a moment off, hear yourself complain about something or someone, stop, relook for a positive silver lining. Find it. No excuses. This will be hard to begin with, you are going to have to stick at it, your life literally depends on it, so it’s worthwhile. Your emotions impact your thoughts, your thoughts impact your emotions, and both drive your behavior, which determines your very real life experience.
Learn how to communicate. We need new ways to communicate and you have to step up and invest in learning a new skill. Communication is different to how it used to be. Instead of being critical and lacking empathy and compassion for others we can communicate in non-violent ways. You don’t need to shout, be moody, ignore, rant and rave, or even become stealthily quiet. Instead learn to communicate in a non-violent way as described and actioned by Marshall B. Rosenberg in his book Non-Violent Communication.
Explore and learn how to have a crucial conversation, you don’t need to shy away from topics or people; you can have a dialogue and exchange a free flow of conversation together. However, you don’t just wake up knowing how to do this, you have to invest time in learning what that means. The book “Crucial Conversations” is a step towards understanding what is involved.
Get self-reflective; assess what percentage of the day you spend judging and criticizing others and thinking up doom and gloom scenarios in your mind and in your spoken and written words. Catch yourself at every turn. Stop doing it as you are criticizing and hurting yourself every time you do it. You won’t make a difference to the person you are criticizing so why waste the energy if it only hurts you?
Instead of isolating yourself and others, and talking them down (even in your head) because they don’t subscribe to your views, values and actions, embrace the differences you are experiencing. Be grateful that you get to hear another perspective, be open-minded and curious instead of close-minded, and consider that there are always more insights and perspectives that you won’t have imagined or heard of. No-one, business or organization can ever know 100% of everything, or be sure of 100% of anything. The famous work “Faust” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gives one interpretation of what happens when we try to be all knowing and “right” with a quest for knowledge and understanding.
If you want to take it one step further and have the desire to be a more compassionate leader in your organization and community, explore the work at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCCARE) and commit to completing to The Applied Compassion Training (ACT) - an experiential 11-month online certificate training. The Applied Compassion training is for individuals who are ready to be leaders of global compassion in today's world.
We have an opportunity every minute of every day to bring back care and compassion into understanding. To consider each other as fellow humans, not as individuals to fear, belittle or state as wrong. Recognize we won’t always agree, and that’s ok. We don’t need to be closed-minded and believe our way is the only way. We don’t have the privilege of knowing everything that is going on in someone’s else’s life and we don’t get to dictate what someone else should or shouldn’t do. That’s not our job. Instead choose to be respectful and kind, open and willing to listen. You don’t have to force your opinion on someone else, you have an opinion for yourself and how you live your life.
In Summary
Our job is to work on ourselves, we only know our own life, so decide to leave judgement of others alone for a while, send it on holiday, commit to understanding why you are so fearful and be open to the possibility that you can release the fear that is driving your existence. Dig into your own life, uncover what is not working for you, shine a light on what doesn’t feel good to you and be introspective - and no it’s not because someone is doing something to you, stop playing the victim or support actor in your own play. To quote a wonderful movie “The Holiday” Arthur says to Iris over dinner
“Iris, in the movies we have leading ladies and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend...”
Start empowering yourself by being expansive and choose a growth mindset instead. Release fear, remove judgement from your life, and look for the silver linings in everything and everyone. Instead of tearing yourself and others down, find ways to build up. Use your words to heal not hurt. Begin today.
Have you experienced being judged by others? Have you experienced something that restored your faith in humanity again? Share your perspective with us in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you.
Be well, live intentionally.
Birch Cove is not a medical or therapy based business, we do not offer guarantees of any kind. We are not responsible for the well-being of businesses or individuals that read, watch, or hear our content, or take part in sessions, or use our services or the services we highlight. Birch Cove and our Collective members are not responsible for the physical and mental health and well-being of individuals we interact with directly or indirectly. We work to share best practices that inspire healthy living and revitalize a quality of life.