Giving and Taking

"Give" and "take" are two interesting verbs. When you give, you transfer or hand over something that you have to another. When you take, you reach for something and hold it. Nowadays it seems that the most popular philosophy is the one that encourages you to take rather than to give. A famous Latin proverb says, "Do ut des", which means "I give in order for you to give me back." Therefore, it seems that any apparently generous action is carried out so that a benefit can be acquired. How sad! On the other hand, how beautiful it is to give for the sake of giving, just to see the other happy. You can give so many things, beside material stuff: a smile, your time, a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on. How difficult can this be?

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy can be defined in two ways. It is pretending to have virtues and moral standards that one doesn't have. It can also mean treating people well while metaphorically stabbing them in the back. The face of a hypocrite is double. You see one but not the other. So he/she always pretends to be who and what they are not. They are not virtuous while preaching ethics, they are not sincere when they show affection or praise. They always wear a "mask". What about you?

Caring

What does "caring" really mean? Do you care enough to spend a little time thinking about it? Caring means to pay attention to somebody else's needs. It also means to do things with the only aim of making someone you love happy. Only when you show concern for the welfare - physical/emotional/spiritual - of another, can you truthfully say that you care for them. Do you show such concern through your words, your behavior, your actions? You certainly claim that you would never say or do anything that might hurt another's feelings. Check yourself out in this respect. It's easy to make honest mistakes.

Accepting Others

Accepting others as they are might seem an easy task to carry out. But...is it really? Easier said than done. When you find yourself in a situation where somebody else challenges your opinion or belief, where another behaves in a way that displeases, hurts or offends you, can you willingly accept their words or actions? Can you convince yourself that they, too, have the right to express themselves as they prefer? The fact is that you (like everybody else) have created an imaginary world where all goes according to your wishes. But it is just this, "imaginary". It does not correspond to reality. The real world is what it is, people are what they are, independently from your utopian mental realm.

Criticism

Some people cannot take criticism. They are unable to accept the possibility of being wrong. They have to always prove that they are correct in their statements, judgments or behaviors. What about you? The willingness to acknowledge the fact that you are not perfect (and you aren't, just like anybody else!) gives you the opportunity to improve your way of thinking, speaking and behaving. When you are open to honest criticism, you admit that others have opinions which, although different from yours, deserve to be taken into consideration. If someone tells you that you are a bit too self-righteous, for example, instead of immediately turning into defensive or aggressive mode, try to really listen to what they're saying and examine yourself carefully. They might actually be right.

Comfortable In Your Skin?

Have you actually ever wondered how much you love yourself and how comfortable you are in your skin? It seems an easy-to-answer question but... is it? Stop a moment and think about it, really think about it. Become aware of what you truly like about yourself - physically, emotionally, spiritually. Detect how often you either praise or criticize yourself. Now think about how comfortable you are with yourself. Count out the ways and situations in which you believe you usually express the best or the worst of your personality, what are the circumstances in which you feel totally at easy or at dis-ease. If you carry out this little test carefully and honestly, you will learn a lot more about your present state of mind/soul.

Wandering Thoughts

Have you ever paid attention to the huge amount of thoughts that keep racing in your mind? If you become aware of the crazy running around of ideas, considerations, judgments, or simply words that rush here and there in your brain, you might feel you are out of control. Thoughts just come and go and it seems that you are unable to direct or stop them. It is not so. You have the ability to choose them, i.e. change them, eliminate them, transform them. You are never bound to accept any thought that pops up, seemingly out of the blue. There is a reason, a cause for anything that happens, including the rambling of your mind. But you can accept or refuse any part of such "wandering".

Making Decisions

When you have to make a decision, don't hurry. You might feel the need to follow your first instinct and act immediately, but it's better if you stop and give yourself some time. Relax, reflect, wait for the best answer to manifest. Only when you feel at a deeper level that you are doing the right thing, take action. And even when you start acting, don't rush anything. Proceed step by step. You cannot have the "whole" plan displayed in front of you. You can only see its beginning, you can only know what to do first. The following steps will manifest in due time, one by one - possibly slowly. You need to be patient in order not to regret your decision.

You

If you ask, “Who am I?”, you may believe you know yourself. But, if you think about it, what do you really know? What you know for sure is your physical appearance. You say, “I’m tall, I’m short, I’m medium height. My hair is black, brown, long, short straight, curly….” You may say, “I’m fat (just a bit. Need a little diet!) I’m thin, my eyes are blue, brown…” You look at yourself in the mirror and you have no doubt about what you see. But is what you see enough to make you know who you are? No, it isn’t. You don’t know who you “are”. You only know what you “look like”.

Your Category

In a sociology class, the professor asks her students with what "category" of people they identify themselves. Sex, race, ethnicity, culture, experiencing discrimination, and so on. There are so many ways a human being can see him/herself almost encapsulated in a definition that, in a way, leads their lives in a specific direction and makes them feel in a certain way. Think profoundly before answering. You might discover deep-rooted beliefs about yourself and about society that you didn't know you had. 

Three Things

Your Responsibility

Shakespeare wrote that life is a stage and we all play a part upon it. Someone else declared that life is like a movie of which we are the script writer, the director and the protagonist. So, in definitive, it's up to each of us, and therefore to you, too, to decide what we want to write in the plot, how we decide to direct it and how we choose to act it out. It's a great responsibility, isn't it? How aware are you of the power you have in your hands? Do you believe that it is really up to you to determine how your life is going to be carried out? If you do, never forget that you always have at your disposal the best tool that can help you in this great undertaking: the magic word "attitude".

Decisions

If, when you decide do make a change in your life, at a certain point you realize that it was not the optimal decision, that it did not yield the result you had hoped for, you can still go back to the old road and... try to make it work better. Never forget that you are free to decide what you want to do with your life. But wisdom must be your guide. You are not a child who is allowed to change his/her mind at a whim. You are a reasoning adult who, by now, should be able to discriminate between what is positive and what is not.