feel free to read MY BEST JOURNAL ENTRY......and think about it....

to be praised,,,,,,,,,,or to be blamed¡­¡­..

One of the most unavoidable life lessons is having to deal with the disapproval with others. Praise and blame are all the same and somehow it is a fancy way of reminding ourselves that we¡¯ll never be able to please all the people all the time. Our approval rating from family, friends and the people we work isn¡¯t likely to be much higher and definitely different rating received from different people. The truth is, everyone has their own set of ideas with which to evaluate life, and our ideas don¡¯t always match those of other people. For some reason, however, most of us struggle against this inevitable fact. We get angry, hurt or otherwise frustrated when people reject our ideas, tell us no, or give us some other form of disapproval. The sooner we accept the inevitable dilemma of not being able to win the approval of everyone we meet, the easier our lives will become. When we expect to be dished out our share of disapproval instead of struggling against this fact, we¡¯ll develop a helpful perspective to assist our life journal. Rather than feeling rejected by disapproval, we can remind ourselves, ¡°Here it is again. That¡¯s okay.¡± We can learn to be pleasantly surprised, even grateful when we receive the approval we¡¯re hoping for.
I find that there are many days when I experience both praise and blame. Someone will hire me to speak and someone else won¡¯t want to; one phone call delivers good news, another announces a new issue to deal with. One of my friends is happy with my behaviour, the other struggles against it. Someone says what a nice girl I am; someone else thinks I¡¯m selfish just because I don¡¯t return his phone call. This back and forth, good and bad, approval and disapproval is part of everyone¡¯s life. I have to admit that I always prefer approval over disapproval. It feels better and it¡¯s certainly easier to deal with. The more content I¡¯ve become, however, the less I depend on it for my sense of well-being. And somehow, I always find that being kind is better over being right. When we are tempted to put others down, correct them or show them how we¡¯re right and they¡¯re wrong is that our ego mistakenly believes that if we point out how someone else is wrong, we must be right, and therefore we will feel better. In actuality, however, if we pay attention to the way we feel after we put someone down, notice that we feel the worse than before. Our heart, the compassionate part of us, knows that it¡¯s impossible to feel better at the expense of someone else. And the opposite is true ¨C when our goal is to build people up, to make them feel better, to share in their joy, we¡¯ll get the rewards of their positive feelings. It does not mean it¡¯s not okay for us to be right, only that if we insist on being right, there is often a price to pay ¨C our inner peace. When somebody blamed me, my feeling urged me to correct where things came wrong, but in order to feel the peaceful and to be a person filled with equanimity, I always choose kindness over being right¡­..most of the time..