#10Words To Change the World

As human beings, we are driven by self-interest. This manifests in self-preserving, self-serving and self-advancing actions, depending on our hierarchy of needs.

¹→ Self-awareness is required to discern the scope and strength of this self-interest.

²→ Practising self-control, which includes making oneself accountable to others, is required to manage self-interest. 

As human beings, our self-interest creates discontent. This dissatisfaction drives us to use and abuse both things and people in a quest for contentment.

¹→ Self-awareness helps us identify and curb our driven impulses.

²→ Gratitude and self-acceptance enable us to find peace in who we are (our identity) and fulfilment in personal growth (our character).

We all enjoy some degree of privilege, especially if we live in a first-world society. We will always find someone less privileged than we are in either geography or history.

¹→ Self-awareness helps us acknowledge the privileges we’ve inherited, producing humility and gratitude.

²→ Through the practice of humility and appreciation, we work to deserve any privilege we enjoy.

Empowerment comes from embracing personal responsibility; entitlement comes from demanding personal rights. We have the right to choose but we also have the responsibility to choose right.

¹→ Self-awareness helps us identify our roles and responsibilities as a member of our family, our community, our country and the human race.

²→ Other awareness helps us appreciate the rights of all people and understand our personal rights within that collective.

In a humane society, we recognise that all humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights. While these rights include the right to life, liberty, free speech, religion, privacy and so on, they are summed up in the ethic of reciprocity: treat others as you would like others to treat you.

The question that guides our exercise of freedom is, when does standing for my convictions become trampling on someone else’s liberty?