Why Should You Treat People How You Desire to Be Treated?
You get back whatever you put out to the world.
When did it become acceptable to simply be rude to people?
Seriously, when did it become acceptable to treat people with such disrespect? For example, it wasn’t all that long ago that when the President gave the State of the Union address, the other side got a rebuttal after it. Outright heckling? What are you, undisciplined grade school children?
Name-calling, inappropriate gestures, and other disturbing behaviors have become increasingly normalized in the last decade or so. This is a direct reflection of a growing lack of kindness, compassion, and empathy coupled with increasing cynicism, skepticism, greed, and fearmongering.
The narrative, both benign and malicious, tends to be about lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and taking what’s “rightfully” yours. We live in a world where we’re frequently presented with limited slices of pizza and pie where, in truth, there are no limits at all.
Then, when people who have treated others poorly receive poor treatment, they get all indignant. Anyone who complains about anything or any time and attention focused on women, blacks, other people of color, the LGBTQA+ community, or any other marginalized group has no understanding of privilege. FYI, it has far less to do with income than most realize.
The reality is that when you treat people poorly, you get what you give. Thus, when you don’t give kindness, compassion, or empathy, you don’t get them, either.
Let’s address one of the most important elements of this.
There is more than enough of the good stuff to go around
The vast majority, if not all, of the things we’re told are lacking, scarce, or otherwise insufficient, aren’t. Most of that is a false narrative designed to create reactions in markets, induce people to vote against their own best interest, take specific action, form mobs, and the like. It creates fear that you will not get yours, will miss out, won’t have this, that, or the other thing.
Sure, some resources are rarer than others. However, the things we all genuinely desire – peace, prosperity, comfort, care, kindness, compassion, empathy, and the like – are abundant beyond your wildest imagination. There is more than enough of the good stuff to go around.
Love? It’s pretty much infinite. Joy? There’s joy in incredible abundance for all. Happiness? Available to everyone, everywhere, but also often overhyped and tied to tangibles. Happiness, unlike joy, peace, or love, is usually a brief feeling tied to achievement, victory, and accomplishment. Joy, peace, and love and far broader, more readily found, and can just be, with zero conditions, prerequisites, and whatever.
Kindness, compassion, and empathy are something everyone desires. When you treat people how you desire to be treated, you open the channel to receive the same. Also, when you get what you desire that doesn’t take it away from anyone else.
This is not limited, like slices of pizza or pie. It’s infinite. Truly, there’s more than enough of the good stuff to go around.
Let’s address another important element.
When you treat people well you are not exhibiting weakness
There is a wide swath of the American people., right now, who are being constantly told that being kind, compassionate, or empathetic is a sign of weakness. They’ve taken this and weaponized it by referring to laws, acts of kindness, organizations, movements, and anything that’s about consideration for marginalized groups, “woke”.
Does that make any sense to you? How does being awake, i.e., “woke”, present itself as a bad thing? Would you rather be asleep, under the sway of the masses, and not in control? Because that’s the reality of this idea.
This is an incredible, dangerous lie. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kindness, compassion, empathy, and anything that’s an act of treating people well is not weakness. Not even a little bit. The truth is that it makes you stronger.
As I stated at the beginning of this essay, you get back whatever you put out to the world. Put out fear, anger, and hatred, don’t be surprised that’s what you get in return. When you are kind, compassionate, and empathetic towards others, that’s what you get in return.
Do you desire to be treated with kindness, compassion, and empathy? I’m going to hazard a guess and say yes, you do. Listen to the people who are constantly screaming about their “rights” being trampled upon such as American Christians, white men, the uber-rich, and the like. They expect kindness, compassion, and empathy – but aren’t giving it because of entitlement and privilege they’re blind to. Curious, no?
Since we can’t change anyone else, we must begin with ourselves.
Consider your actions
I’m in no way, shape, or form suggesting you be a good-natured doormat. Neither am I suggesting that you accept poor treatment, false narratives, or the disempowering actions of leaders, government, business, and so on.
This is not about the big, generalized, out-in-the-world people and organizations. This is specific to the people you encounter day to day.
Are you treating people with kindness, compassion, and empathy? This is a choice you get to make all the time. In every encounter with everyone in your life, mindfulness is your superpower. Via mindfulness, you have active conscious awareness to decide your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approach toward positivity or negativity. From there, you’re empowered to choose your interactions as such.
When you’re faced directly with the unkind, uncompassionate, and unempathetic, if you can’t actively give them kindness, compassion, and empathy, choose to walk away. Disengage from them. If it feels right to do so, tell them why, and that because you would rather be kind than unkind, you need to walk away.
Your actions, along with the rest of your active conscious awareness, are yours to control. When you desire to be treated well, you must give that treatment to others to get it. That’s why you should treat people how you desire to be treated.
When we put more kindness, compassion, and empathy into the world, we’re adding value that can help so, so many people. The false narratives might be prevalent, but the reality is different. This ties directly into that.
You are empowered to do wonders with how you treat other people. One last caveat – don’t neglect how you treat yourself, too. Treat yourself how you desire to be treated by others, too. Treat yourself as well as others how you desire to be treated.
Knowing why you should treat people how you desire to be treated isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that you get what you give to the world, you can choose via active conscious awareness to treat people how you desire to be treated. Knowing that you desire to be treated with kindness, compassion, empathy, and other positivity, you can use mindfulness practices to give more to the world at large and help build the abundance to overwhelm and overcome the false narratives of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and twenty-seventh (527) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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