It was lonely at the top for Anita. She had riches and power, but she had no friends. People judged her motives and decided they wanted no part of her. She was wealthy on the outside but bankrupt on the inside. Anita sat in a house filled with every luxury, but it wasn’t a home. She couldn’t even buy friends, because they were afraid she would unleash her ruthless behavior on them eventually. She learned too late that the most precious treasures are human relationships.
What are your motives? You will be judged by them.
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Yesterday you viewed the downside of having impure motives. Today you will have a chance to look at what might happen if your motives tend toward the positive side. You don’t have to be like Gandhi, but you can practice having good motives, and it could change your life.
According to Eric Hoffer, kindness can become its own motive. If you are kind to others, you will become a kind person by default. That makes sense when you think about it. It would be impossible to consistently offer kindness to others and remain an ugly person on the inside. You cannot put your life in compartments like that. Eventually, the real motives shine through, ugly or beautiful. You are the sum of your actions and your motives, and it’s very difficult to separate them and only show one or the other to the world.
Think about the intuitive feelings you get when you are around a genuinely nice person. You immediately feel at ease and happy and important in their life. On the other hand, you probably can spot a faker a mile away. How do you feel when you deal with someone who is outwardly nice to you, but you can tell it’s only because they want something?
Practice having good motives today. You might be a selfish person most of the time, but you can change that. Practice acts of kindness and you will become kind. There is no way around it.
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What happens if you just don’t feel like a “good” person? Do you wish people thought you were? Well, that’s a good start. If you would like to have pure motives and do good things in the world, but you are still drawn to the dark side, you have to practice changing your motives. That starts with actions.
Let’s say you are a liar, a cheat, and a thief. You can change. The first step is to pretend. No kidding. You can act as if you are full of good motives. Do things that you think a nice person might do and try to stop thinking about what you will get out of it. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to suddenly change your stripes. Just act like the person you want to be, and eventually your actions will change who you are.
Are you skeptical? Give it a try. You don’t have to believe. Get proof. Give yourself a month and start practicing. This doesn’t work if you do one good deed and then forget about it the rest of the month. You have to continue to act the part. Perform as many good acts as you can for thirty days and then take a look at your results. Are people nicer to you in return? How do you feel on the inside? Has your self-image improved at all?
By the way, this works if you are basically a good person, too. You can be even better just by pretending for awhile. Let your actions dictate who you are for a period of time, and then evaluate the changes you see in yourself.
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Your destiny is not in any way related to chance. People who fulfill their destinies are not merely lucky. They choose success. They go after what they want, and they achieved it. It has nothing to do with chance. You’re not playing a card game here or rolling the dice to find out the outcome. This is real life. You determine what happens next.
You create your destiny every day through the choices you make. It’s not necessarily just the big choices, either, like what you decide to major in if you go to college, where you plan to live, or if you want to get married or remain single. Your destiny is determined by all of the millions of little choices you make, too. They may seem insignificant when you make them, but they add up like change in your pocket, and pretty soon you’re looking at substantial life choices.
