Goodness Yes Always LRN LAF LUV LIV LYF Learn Laugh Love Live Life

Embed the core value of Goodness within you

Values are the soil from which sprout your thoughts, actions, and reactions. They are the markings on your moral compass that identify whether a thought or an act aligns with your values or is astray. Your values set your bearing in life.

The core values––the most critical and influential values that are the very core of the way you are––in LRN LAF LUV LIV are goodness, open-mindedness, gratefulness, respectfulness, and courageousness.  Aligning and living your life with these core values every day—as a matter of course—elevates the quality of your character and guides your way of life.

Core Values Goodness Open-minded Grateful Respect Courage Word Cloud learn laugh love live life LRN LAF LUV LIV LYF

This post gives you a greater understanding of the core value of goodness so you can embed it into everything you do in life.

Goodness

Goodness is the single all-encompassing foundational core value of LRN LAF LUV LIV for LYF.  Goodness is a quality that infuses your life’s actions with outcomes that are truly valuable and elevating.

Goodness is the necessary ingredient for any other value to have merit. In other words, a value without goodness as its underpinning will stray you from the way of experiencing an elevated life. The value of honesty is not the best policy when absent goodness, for then honesty can turn brutal or careless. The values of commitment, competence, and courage sound good, but without goodness they can all be used for harm and hatred. All other values lose their moral standing when not bathed in goodness.

The fingerprints of goodness are all over LRN LAF LUV LIV for LYF. Goodness is embodied and imbued in your life’s strategy, your life’s mission, and your life’s vision. It is mandatory for an elevated life. It is front and center in the philosophy’s platinum rule:

Do goodness always, to yourself and others.

Quote - Sklar - the platinum rule of LRN LAF LUV LIV for LYF - Do goodness always to yourself and others

Examples of Goodness

Opening doors for others to help them through, smiling when you greet someone, sending a nice message to someone to uplift his or her spirits—these are examples of actions embodying goodness.

Responding to someone’s negativity in a way that diffuses the tension, saying you are sorry when you have hurt someone’s feelings, saying thank you and please to show their actions are appreciated—these are examples of responses embodying goodness.

Finding inspiration in the goodness of others, wanting to better the goodness in yourself, analyzing alternatives and making decisions based on the LRN LAF LUV LIV core values—these are examples of thoughts that embody goodness.

These examples may seem small. But pebbles of goodness cast positive ripples that can stretch far and wide as good deeds are duplicated and multiplied. Your simple smile uplifts the spirits of someone who carries that forward to the next person he or she encounters. A returned smile energizes you further, which is carried to your next encounter and smile. Goodness is exhibited in many ways and many sizes.

This website contains real-life examples of simple acts of goodness that ripple goodness to and through others. Here is just one example.

Ripples of Goodness Learn Laugh Love Live Life LRN LAF LUV LIV LYF

But what is goodness? How does one define it?

Your goodness is expressed by acting and responding in ways that are good for you and good for others, ways such that they can draw out the better sides (the goodness) in everyone. Everything you do in life expresses your goodness or detracts from it. Goodness—as a core value—should be your norm on how you think, act, and respond.

Goodness is constructive—it creates value rather than destroys value. Goodness is positive—it generates energy rather than saps energy. Goodness is beneficial—it helps the self and others rather than self-mutilates and maims.

Goodness is not a rigid set of rights and wrongs, and it is not a set of impossibilities. Goodness is situational and sensible. It is said that the Chinese teacher Confucius did not define goodness for his disciples for he believed that they would feel it and recognize it as they practiced it in different situations, and from those feelings and recognitions they could develop their own goodness further.

Many variations of the “golden rule” have been taught, shared, and preached for over two dozen centuries in various cultures. While not definitions of goodness per se, these can serve as directional statements to help foster a recognition of and provide guidance toward goodness. “What is hateful to you, do not do unto others” allows one to mentally feel what it would be like and avoid actions contrary to goodness. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” allows one to identify possible actions that may have goodness associated with them. These statements are helpful as one practices doing deeds of goodness and works toward embodying goodness as a habit in every thought and action.

One knows he or she is living with goodness when the outcomes of daily actions grow true wealth in yourself, give true worth to others, and provide moments of personal and divine elevations.

Goodness is universal and has always been the right path throughout the centuries. Even in sixth century BCE the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote:

“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained.”

In more modern times, in the 1700s, Benjamin Franklin would begin his day asking himself, “What good shall I do this day?” and end his day with, “What good have I done today?”

One may ask: If goodness is such a good way of living, why don’t we live it? And even if it is a good way of living, is it humanly possible to act always with goodness?

“Why don’t we live it” presupposes that deeds of goodness are not performed. But there are innumerable deeds of goodness performed every day. A parent feeding their child, a goodnight kiss to a spouse, a smile to the neighbor, a kind word to a friend. The point is taken, though, that people do bad things. That ill gossip or a bad word about someone slips from the tongue, that anger and frustration is expressed in the home, that jealousy initiates untoward behavior at a colleague. Why is this? Goodness takes more effort than apathy or evil.

As stated in Dhammapada, XII:163:

“Bad deeds, and deeds hurtful to ourselves, are easy to do; what is beneficial and good, that is very difficult to do.”

Goodness is a Sign of Strength

Expressing goodness is sometimes misinterpreted as weakness and acquiescing. Goodness, however, is neither passive nor apathetic. It does not mean that you capitulate to an abuser or oppressor. Goodness requires a belief and a resilience that are quite strong. Nonviolent civil disobedience acts of goodness are powerful.

Only goodness can elevate a person, for only goodness has such strength.

The next post will discuss the four other supporting core values that are requisites for fully creating true value from the four related deeds of goodness.

 

6 Responses

  1. […] previous post discussed goodness, the single all-encompassing foundational core value of LRN LAF LUV LIV for LYF. […]

  2. […] to ensure you don't miss out on these future posts and on your better life. And then come back and click here to learn more about the core values of your better […]

  3. […] The previous two posts focused on the core values for your better life. […]

  4. […] way to live your life better through the core values of goodness, open-mindedness, gratefulness, respectfulness, and courageousness, […]

  5. […] Each deed is embodied with the core value of goodness. […]

  6. […] is closely associated with actions that cause "happiness", but these actions are infused with goodness. For example, laughing at others for their misfortunes or laughing to be hurtful is not LAF.  Your […]

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