Chapter 04
My character
PREFACE
PREMISE
I am an innocent, loving, perfect Presence. My ego can attempt to hide that, but it cannot be changed. We are all innocent beings and that cannot be changed. This does not excuse poor words or poor behavior—that is the result of the ego. I must remember that in relationships we are loving, innocent Presences and this premise must be my go-to belief. If I fall short, that’s okay. I will have another chance the next second and the next second after that, because the past does not exist—only now exists.
When I say that I am an innocent, loving, perfect, aware Presence I am not referring to myself as a person. Personhood is associated more with the body personality and the body personality is not the same as the aware presence that I am. The real truth of me is that I am the nonphysical part of me—the innocent, loving, perfect kind of eternal Presence. Persons and personhood are never perfect and I can do the best that I can at the personality level, but it’s at the Presence level that I’m never corrupt in any way. I’m never anything other than loving and perfect. But when I show up as a person, those are two different things.
My character is my behavior, my thoughts, my judgments, and my tastes; it’s a decision-making frame. In other words, my character describes my personhood. Character encompasses my morals, my ethics, my integrity, my fortitude, my capacity—all are adjectives that describe my personhood.
Strong Character is a deep sense of right and wrong and consistently doing it, and I need great character to have a great life.
A good character is something that we are born with; we lose it due to incorrect programming and conditioning. Therefore, it must be redeveloped over time. A good character can take years to build—but can be broken in an instant.
I can consciously choose the character traits that I want to build into my life. Good character requires consistency—it’s a habit and it also requires me to listen to my intuition. My character comes out when the going gets tough. My integrity, fortitude, and moral courage should become available for me to call upon when the going gets tough. Particularly during these tough times, I don’t want my moral integrity to go out the window or to lose my sense of what’s right and wrong.
I believe that life is about CHOICE and the quality of my life is the sum total and result of my choices. I can choose to be loving and kind and base my decisions on being so, or I can listen to my ego—in a fight or flight mode—and be only concerned about myself. I have a strong belief that ANYONE can have a fantastic, fulfilling, happy life if they make the kind of choices that we ALL have the ability to make.
My ability to CHOOSE is my greatest freedom and my greatest strength. No matter where I start in life, I will be presented with countless choices, and what I choose in that moment will make all the difference in the quality (and even the quantity) of my life. I can’t always control the things that happen outside of me—most of the time I can, but not always. But I can ALWAYS control my inner experience. Anything that goes on inside me that is immobilizing, stops me, gets in my way, keeps me from reaching my goals—ANYTHING INSIDE IS MY CHOICE. It’s mine and I own it all.
When I reference control here, it’s important to note that I am always, in a sense, shaping the things that happen outside of me because I am causing the things that happen outside of me. When I use the word control in a case like this, the implication is things just randomly happen and I don’t have anything to do with exactly why they happen. The implication is that I just try to do my best to make the best of it. But the underlying implication that things just happen to me randomly—that I have nothing to do with them happening to me—is simply not true.
It’s so hard to wrap my head around this because it is so unlike everything that I’ve ever been taught. I was taught that the world exists on its own and does its own thing and the only thing that I can do is to try to meaningfully manage or control it in some way. But that underlying premise is wrong because it claims that the world I inhabit is just here and that I must simply make the best of it. However, every aspect of my world I have specifically put right in front of me. So that’s why the idea of controlling it implies that I didn’t put it here.
I say all of this knowing how it sounds — and knowing how easy it is to believe when life is comfortable. It is something else entirely to hold onto when the world you have shaped hands you something devastating. That is the moment the philosophy stops being a framework and becomes either something real or something hollow. I found out which one it was.
This philosophy was tested when someone I once trusted chose to use the legal system falsely against me — and my body responded in ways I didn’t choose. I didn’t choose the neurological diagnosis that followed. But I also can’t pretend the life I built had nothing to do with the world I was standing in when it happened. What I can say is this: the moment I understood that my inner experience remained mine — even inside the chaos of a false accusation and a body that had stopped working right — that’s when this stopped being theory and became something I actually lived.
And that’s where character enters the picture. Because character isn’t what you are when everything is going well. It isn’t what you are when the stakes are low and the choices are easy. Character is what you are when the ground disappears beneath you — when someone takes something from you that they had no right to take, when your body fails you, when the system you trusted to protect you becomes the weapon used against you. That’s the moment that reveals what’s actually there. Not what you believed about yourself. Not what you told yourself in quiet, comfortable moments. What’s actually there. And I had to face that honestly. Did I respond with bitterness? Did I collapse into the story that I was simply a victim of someone else’s cruelty? Did I use what happened to me as a reason to stop being responsible for what happens inside me? Those were all available choices. I looked at every one of them.
What I chose instead was ACCOUNTABILITY — and I want to be precise about what that word means, because it’s been used against me in ways that were designed to make me feel small. Accountability doesn’t mean accepting blame for what someone else chose to do. It doesn’t mean absorbing another person’s false narrative about who I am. True accountability is actually the opposite of that. It means I look clearly at what is mine — what I contributed, what I caused, what I could have done differently — and I own all of it without excusing any of it. AND it means I look just as clearly at what is NOT mine, what belongs to someone else’s choices, and I refuse to carry that too. Carrying someone else’s responsibility isn’t humility. It isn’t accountability. It’s a different kind of avoidance — a way of keeping the focus blurry so nobody, including yourself, has to see things too clearly. Real accountability demands precision. It demands that I know exactly where I end and someone else begins. And standing in that precision — holding what’s mine, releasing what isn’t, and choosing to pursue what’s right anyway — that’s not weakness. That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And it’s the most important choice I’ve ever made.
That experience didn’t change what I believe. It confirmed it — from the inside out rather than the outside in. And it brought me back, with new clarity, to the definitions I’ve been building toward throughout this chapter.
My character is my identity as shaped by moral values—it is built up over time.
Character determines all of the other categories in this Lifebook. It’s the engraved mark of my soul. It is the sum of the qualities that define my outer being. Note: It’s always my state of mind at any given moment that determines whatever it is that goes on in any category of life; it doesn’t matter what category it is. By defining character as the moral and ethical strength, integrity, fortitude, etc., then those things are more a result than a cause. They would all be the result of deciding to be loving and following my intuition and being all that I can be.
Could the balance of these make up my character?
- Behaviors
- Thoughts
- Ideas
- Motivations
- Intentions
- Temperament
- Emotions
- Tendencies
No. It’s easy to think that my character stamps moral order into my life, but in fact, it is, of course, the other way around—moral order or living lovingly is what stamps the character; therefore, that statement is in reverse order.
Now, my body personality is instead what I am referring to here, but it, too, is colored by what I think I am. My Body Personality is what my Body Personality continually does.
Or it might be more accurate to say, “What I think I am determines what I do because what I think I am is always upstream of words and actions and what shows up in life.”
Habits are a choice; they can be changed and with that my character can change.
VISION
Most people do not choose their character consciously; they watch their parents, teachers, peers, television, etc. I, however, can choose what to work on, how to treat people, what to focus on, and even how to deal with setbacks. I can change anything if my desire is strong enough. I can bring consciousness to what I want my character to look like. I can listen to my intuition.
I don’t have to get upset at things that I can’t control and if I do get upset, I should handle that emotion first and be aware that if I’m upset over something that I can’t control, then what I can’t control is not really causing it in the first place, but something else is—it’s always my internal state that’s driving the upset, no matter what the perceived trigger is.
It certainly makes sense that if I can’t control something, then getting upset over it is not particularly helpful, but if it does trigger something and I do get upset, then I don’t want to make my upset the enemy—because whatever is going on that’s triggering, it is only that—a trigger. Upset is always an internally created thing.
It doesn’t make any sense to be upset over, say, a rainstorm coming in and keeping me from going out and playing a basketball game—getting upset about it isn’t going to do any good, so to speak. But if I do find myself upset, then I should allow myself to feel the upset. I need to unlearn everything that I have been taught about repressing my emotions. In the big picture, I have created everything that’s going on in my life (I ultimately have put it all there and my outer world is always going to be an exact snapshot at any given moment of my internal state of mind). The more I keep all of that in perspective, then, generally, the better off I will be.
What I didn’t fully understand when I wrote those words about emotion and internal states is that consciousness has a ceiling. There’s a level of threat — real, sustained, profound threat — at which the nervous system stops consulting your philosophy and starts doing what it was built to do. For five months I had panic attacks, multiple times a day. I didn’t choose them. I couldn’t reason my way out of them. I couldn’t simply decide that what I couldn’t control wasn’t worth my upset and watch the panic dissolve. It didn’t work that way. And I had to sit with that honestly — because a philosophy that only works when conditions are easy isn’t really a philosophy at all. It’s just a preference.
What I came to understand is that the panic attacks weren’t a refutation of what I believe. They were the body doing the only thing it could do with something the conscious mind couldn’t fully process — sounding an alarm, over and over, because the threat was real and the nervous system hadn’t received the signal that it was safe yet. I had written that I needed to unlearn repression, that I needed to allow myself to feel the upset. And the body took that seriously in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The gates opened. And when they opened, five months of alarm was what came through.
When the panic attacks eventually subsided, I made the mistake of thinking the process was over. But the body hadn’t finished. The nervous system found a new language — neurological symptoms, a diagnosis called FND — to say the same thing it had been saying all along: this isn’t resolved. This still needs your attention. And this is where my philosophy came back to me, not as comfort, but as clarity. I have written that the outer world is always an exact snapshot of the internal state. My body was exactly that — an honest snapshot of what it cost to absorb a profound injustice, to lose months with my son, to carry the weight of a false narrative about who I am. The body doesn’t editorialize. It doesn’t exaggerate. It simply shows you what is true. And what was true is that the cost was enormous.
What I chose — and I want to be clear that this was a choice, in the middle of all of it — was not to make the suffering the final word. I couldn’t choose whether my nervous system fired in the middle of the night. I couldn’t choose whether my body produced symptoms that kept me from functioning. But I could choose what I believed those symptoms meant. I could choose to understand them rather than just endure them. I could choose to stay in the work — the physical therapy, the litigation, the daily discipline of not collapsing into the story that I was simply a victim of something that happened to me. The philosophy held — not because the panic attacks stopped on command, but because I never once believed that what was happening inside me, however painful, was bigger than my ability to choose who I was going to be inside of it.
What that period stripped away — the panic, the diagnosis, the sustained weight of all of it — was everything that wasn’t real. What was left was a very clear picture of who I want to be. Not as an idea. As a daily practice.
- Character traits that I value:
- Reliability—my word is my bond.
- Courage—take risks.
- Compassion—treat people with respect.
- Determination
- Honesty
- Diligence
- Empathy
- Kindness
- Patience
No matter what conditions I am faced with, I can choose my own values; I can choose how to treat others; I can choose to mold and develop myself; I can choose how to handle adversity; I can choose to be disciplined and hard-working; I can choose my own purpose in life; I can choose my attitude—which is the most important single choice.
Each one of these choices happens INSIDE me and is not controlled by ANYONE but me. Everyone has the ability to control and choose these things. Think of the difference the right choices in these areas can make.
If there is ANYTHING that I don’t like about myself, if I am anxious, shy, if I hate my job, if I am stressed out, unhappy, depressed, etc.—those states reflect choices I have made, consciously or not. My choices got me there. And I can change almost anything in my life if I am aware of my choices and my desire is strong enough.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand that it is within their own power to choose and don’t comprehend the awesome control they could exercise over their own existence. It is hard to learn because it is rarely taught. Like most people, I was taught helplessness and powerlessness. “I can’t because I was born poor, a minority, a middle child,” etc. If I adhere to that belief system, I am giving up control of my life and I will have rendered myself powerless. I must totally reject the concept that there are “a few chosen people” who are lucky, born into the right circumstances, destined to have great lives. I believe it is there for all of us—to be happy.
I believe in taking responsibility for EVERYTHING that goes on in my life. This does not mean the weather—or anything else that I can’t control. It means my choices, actions, behaviors, values, and goals.
Taking responsibility means that I don’t allow the externals of my life to take control of who I am, how I feel or what I do. I should not let anything outside of me dictate my life in any way. Taking responsibility means no blame EVER for ANYTHING. My life is the result of MY choices—my challenges are mine to resolve. Taking responsibility means I NEVER sit around and complain or worry about how the world is. Instead, I should get mobilized by the things that I don’t like. I should listen to my emotions when I am triggered—they are signals pointing me toward something worth examining within myself.
I shouldn’t flail about, wasting time and energy. If I don’t like something, I can do something about it. I should get involved and find a solution. Fix it or move on from it. No blaming, complaining, or worrying—EVER.
People have asked me — and I have asked myself — whether filing a lawsuit contradicts everything I have written here. If I believe in taking full responsibility, if I believe in no blame EVER for anything, if I believe that my life is the result of my choices and my challenges are mine to resolve — then what exactly am I doing in a courtroom? Isn’t that just pointing a finger? Isn’t that just the long, expensive version of complaining?
No. And the distinction matters more than almost anything else I have written in this book.
BLAME is using someone else’s actions as the explanation for who you are, how you feel, and why you can’t move forward. It’s building your identity around what was done to you. It’s letting the external become the reason — the permanent, irrefutable reason — that you are the way you are. That is what I refuse to do. That is what this philosophy rejects completely and without exception. But accountability is something else entirely. Accountability is looking clearly — without flinching, without dramatizing, without exaggerating — at a harm that was caused, identifying who caused it, and using every legitimate tool available to address it. Accountability doesn’t ask you to be passive. It doesn’t ask you to absorb a wrong quietly and call that growth. It asks you to see clearly and then to act.
I wrote that if I don’t like something, I should do something about it. I should get involved and find a solution. Fix it or move on from it. A civil lawsuit is exactly that — it is fixing it. The same legal system that was used against me through a false filing is the system I am now using, correctly and with evidence, to establish a truthful record of what happened and what it cost. I am not flailing. I am not wasting energy on worry or complaint. I looked at something I didn’t like, I listened to what my emotions were pointing me toward, I examined it honestly — and then I got mobilized. That is the philosophy. Not in theory. In a courtroom.
The line I keep coming back to is this: BLAME keeps you in the story of what was done to you. ACCOUNTABILITY moves you through it. One makes you a permanent resident of the worst thing that ever happened to you. The other makes you the person who faced it, named it clearly, and refused to let it go unanswered. I am not in this fight because I need someone to tell me I was right. I am in this fight because walking away from a false record — one that affects my son, my health, my name — would itself be a failure of responsibility. Letting it stand unchallenged, just to avoid looking like I was pointing a finger, would be the avoidance dressed up as virtue. And I have written enough in this book about avoidance to know exactly what it looks like.
What I know is this: accountability, practiced cleanly, doesn’t require you to become cold. It doesn’t require you to harden toward everyone touched by the situation. If anything, it asks for the opposite — because the only way to pursue something this difficult without losing yourself is to stay exactly who you are throughout it.
There is a man I love who had not spoken to me — not really spoken to me — because I went ahead with this lawsuit. He has been part of my life for years, someone I consider family in every way that matters. And for months the silence between us sat like something broken that neither of us knew how to pick up.
When I heard he wasn’t doing well — that he was dealing with serious, chronic pain and had just come through a significant procedure — I didn’t think about the lawsuit. I didn’t think about strategy or what reaching out might look like to anyone watching. I thought about him. So I sent a message telling him I hoped he felt better soon. That I loved him.
He wrote back the same day. He told me about what he’d been through — a device implanted near his spine, wires, an electrical impulse designed to interrupt what had become unbearable pain. He said he was improving. And at the end he wrote: I look forward to completion of the legal issues. I love you too.
I’ve read that message more times than I can count. Not because it resolved anything about the lawsuit. But because of what it showed me about what’s actually true between us — and about what I believe, at the deepest level, about character. He didn’t say I was right. He didn’t say he agreed with my decision to pursue this. He said he loved me and he was waiting for this to be over. That’s a man who knows the difference between a legal dispute and a relationship. And that exchange — two people finding their way back to what’s real between them, across months of silence and a situation neither of us chose — is the whole argument for everything I’ve written in this book.
The lawsuit is about accountability. It is not about him. It is not about what I feel toward him or what I hope for him. And I believe he knows that. Because when I reached out, I didn’t reach out as someone with a case to make. I reached out as someone who loves him and wanted him to feel less pain. CHARACTER is not what you perform when conditions are ideal. It’s what you are when someone you love is hurting — even when the circumstances between you are complicated, even when something unresolved sits between you and a simple conversation. That message told me he knows who I am in this. And it reminded me, when I needed it, that I know who I am too.
That is the ground I am always trying to return to. Not the outcome of a legal proceeding, not the validation of a judgment — but knowing, in the quiet of an ordinary moment, who I am inside all of it. That is what living with quality actually means.
To live the best possible Quality of Life, I must take responsibility for my INTERNAL experience and my internal attitude—which I totally control. Immobilizing emotions like anger, annoyance, jealousy, fear, depression, etc. are hardly worth defending at all and I should not spend time defending them (which is what fights are all about—”I feel this way because of YOU, and it’s justified and it’s a big deal.”). But the fact is, anytime I feel an emotion like that—it’s all mine. I own it. It’s not someone else’s.
No one can “inject” me with those things. If people behave toward me in ways that are aggravating, that is a signal worth paying attention to—it’s pointing inward to something I may still be working through. I need to listen and then let it go.
They are behaving the only way they know how to behave. Instead of getting upset, I should respond to them with who I am: loving, confident, solid, together, helpful, etc. Don’t blame someone else for my upset. Instead, listen to those triggered emotions and use them as information rather than as indictments. Note: once those emotions are triggered, then I have to deal with the emotion first—before I can try to deal with whatever the trigger was. No one outside of me can control my emotions—I am in charge of my own internal experience. Remember—people are innocent; their words and actions can be unloving, but that is just their ego.
Getting upset is not an intellectual choice—that’s not the way emotions work. Emotions have nothing to do with whether I intellectually choose them or not. It’s important to note that if I do get upset, then I should not make myself or anybody else the enemy—just be kind to myself and realize that I’ve got a button in here that just keeps getting pushed one way or the other. Allow myself to feel my own upset, remembering that it’s never caused by whatever it is they’re doing or not doing anyway. And then when I restore my own emotional equilibrium, then absolutely, I can respond to them with who I am—which is loving and confident and helpful, etc.
I can’t process my trigger and lovingly respond at the same time because I don’t have access to my loving, confident nature when I am in the process of feeling endangered—because that’s what upset is about. This is why I sometimes seemingly willingly hold on to being upset—my body chemistry which is what’s causing the upset in the first place is in response mode—response to a perceived threat by something or someone.
Whether that’s to the physical body or to the ego, it doesn’t matter—the response is the same. But once the perceived threat is there and the stress response has been triggered and the upset is there, then that must be dealt with independently of whatever the triggering agent is. Only after that can I deal with whatever was said or done or whatever. Then I really can be calm, cool, collected, and loving—but not until I’ve settled my own stress.
Good character examples may be:
Temperance—don’t eat until dullness; don’t drink in excess.
Silence—don’t talk unless it benefits me or others. Avoid excess small talk.
Order—let all things have their place.
Resolution—do what I should do and always do what I say I will do.
Don’t get upset about things that I cannot control.
- Virtue examples:
- Temperance
- Humility
- Justice
- Respect
- Patience
- Kindness
- Integrity
- Toleration
- Diligence
- Generosity
- Love
- Wisdom
- Gratitude
- Loyalty
- Trust
- Sincerity
- Gentleness
- Forgiveness
- Prudence
- Moral responsibility
- Honesty
Living my life lovingly is what will stamp these character traits into me.
PURPOSE
I need a good internal attitude to be happy and for the world to work well for me. I need to return to my natural state of openness and ease. Good character is what all this looks like externally. Good character shows me that I am doing things right. A good internal attitude allows me to be happy—I can’t be happy without one, and the more I clear away what is obscuring that natural state, the more readily it becomes available to me.
That does not mean that I should create an egocentric wish list of things that I want, and when I get them then I will be happy. No, that’s not where happiness comes from. Instead, happiness comes from being present, being helpful, getting out of my own way and not being egocentric with a long list of things.
If I were to talk about what I want, then I am talking strictly about my ego mind—that sense of separate self that thinks. My ego mind says that my child has to be this way and the weather has to be that way, and my wife has to be this way and my financial situation has to be that way, and the politics have to be this way. The ego always has a whole list of things that I have to have be a certain way so that I can feel safe and happy. But that’s not talking about the reality of me; that’s referring to the sense of separate self and, of course, that never works.
Even if I could do that, even if it were possible for the ego mind to get exactly everything it wanted, since that’s not what I actually am, that’s not what brings happiness in the first place. No, I need a good internal attitude to be happy.
A good internal attitude with the intention to be helpful is automatically going to have the world work for me. The world working for me is not so much a goal but rather it is automatic—this is what will happen once I get my internal world straight and then once this is straight, my external world, with all the things that I normally refer to, are going to take care of themselves on their own because they are at the effect level. Remember, I have to deal with the causation level—which is having a good, internal loving attitude. Once this is achieved then I don’t have to worry about what the external world is going to do. It’ll be fine.
Good character is the outer-world result and empowers me to be the best me that I can be. Look at what I get upset about. Is it worth it? Is it really big enough to get upset about? I am in control.
Virtues that I would like to strengthen in my life:
Forgiveness. Why is it important? Forgiveness is really the act of releasing a constricted perspective. It is not about pardoning. It is about shifting from an ego perspective to a “Holy Spirit” perspective. It begins with recognizing that I want to let go of the interpretation that I have placed upon a situation and being willing to see it differently.
Forgiveness is a foundational principle for being happy and for having a feeling of contentment. If I can truly release, then I can’t hold a grudge. I can’t hold a grudge and be happy at the same time. Releasing my attachment to old stories and old interpretations is vital for reprogramming my unconscious mind and freeing myself to show up fully in the present. To clarify that sentence: it’s not so much about some formal act of absolution for past things, because past things don’t exist anymore. What I am really doing is releasing or letting go of something that I’m currently aware of holding onto in this moment. Forgiveness is always an immediate, real-time thing.
A statement like forgiving myself for past things would fall in the phony pardoning category because right now in this moment, there are no past things happening. We need to just always remember that forgiving is releasing and releasing at any moment. Any contraction, any lingering resentment or judgment that I’m still holding onto in my immediate experience is what needs to be released—not some catalog of historical transgressions.
It’s incredibly important and very misunderstood from everything in my culture. That’s why I sometimes think that I need to use an entirely different word, which is why I use releasing rather than forgiving because that’s actually what it is.
Forgiveness, as I understand it now, is not something I grant to others — it’s something I practice for my own sake. When I hold the belief that something has permanently diminished me, or that I have somehow ruined myself through what I’ve done or what was done to me, I contract around that belief. And contraction is not neutral. It has weight. What I’m learning to recognise is that the belief itself — not the event, not the person, not the outcome — is where the unnecessary suffering lives. And that belief, when I look at it clearly, doesn’t hold up. I have not been ruined. Neither has anyone else. That is not optimism. It’s simply accurate.
Resentment is something I’m learning to see differently. It isn’t a moral failure — but it is a kind of confusion. Right now, in this moment, nothing is happening. Nobody is doing anything to me. Whatever occurred, occurred in the past, and yet part of me can continue to relate to it as though it’s still unfolding. Holding onto what happened as though it’s happening now doesn’t protect me from it — it just keeps me living inside it. And I don’t need to stay inside it.
What I’m also coming to understand is that releasing an old story doesn’t mean the body follows straight away. There are patterns the nervous system has learned under stress that take time and patient work to unlearn — not through will alone, but through consistent, quiet effort. That process runs on its own timeline, alongside the psychological one, not in lockstep with it. What I am responsible for is the quality of attention I bring to my own experience right now — the story I keep choosing to tell, the weight I keep choosing to carry. Not the pace of healing. Not the presence of symptoms. Just this: whether I am adding unnecessary suffering to what is already there. And I am not going to do that to myself. Not anymore.
What am I going to gain when I strengthen this virtue (forgiveness) in my life?
- Happiness
- Freedom from my ego.
- Trust
- Reduced triggers / emotional outbursts.
- A lighter, more open way of moving through the world.
- What price will I have to pay if I don’t change?
- I won’t live my life the way that I want.
- Misery
- Pain
- Being a poor example to my son.
- Having a hurt relationship with my wife.
- Triggers
What price will I have to pay if I don’t release these old patterns? The answer is that I won’t live the life the way I want. I will be miserable and in pain and a poor example to Edward, etc. These are the ways that I will be banging my head up against the wall. But I don’t have to do this. No one is making me do this . . . only my lack of understanding about how life actually works.
When I stop contracting and stop withholding from myself, then I automatically gain the assets that come with my own Presence; they are automatically there. I will automatically feel happy and safe and feel that all is right with the world and feel free, etc. Opening up and releasing what is not serving me is what brings me all the rewards that I am looking for.
STRATEGY
Self-discipline is a big character trait. It enables me to get myself to do what I should do whether I want to do it or not (but always after first listening to my intuition). Inner strength comes before outer strength—so that I can summon courage in the face of fear. In my relationships, I can’t be thin-skinned. I can’t take offense all the time and be fragile or self-indulgent (i.e., have emotional outbursts). Instead, I must keep control. I am not saying that I shouldn’t have an emotional response to something; no, but if I do, then I don’t want to take it out on other people. It’s also not so much that I want to keep control of my emotions because that sounds like I am trying to make them not be there. It means that I need to be appropriate in the way that I am processing my own emotions, which is to let them totally be there, own them, claim them, and feel them—but not take it out on other people.
This character may be described as: Perseverance—try, fail, but with the need to keep going. I should be willing to change my mind and do it. I should take full responsibility for my happiness and not whine or complain—I should not lose control and “leak energy to people around me.”
What do I need to do to make this virtue into a habit? I could meditate, which is simply being true to myself and listening to my emotions—in other words, being responsible. I can read this book each day as a reminder.
I am an innocent being and that cannot be changed. This does not excuse bad words or bad behavior—that is just the result of my ego. I must remember that, in relationships, we are loving, innocent people and this premise must be my go-to belief. If I fall short, that’s okay—I will have another chance the next second and the next second after that, etc. The past does not exist; only now exists and so, I must consistently think “how can I be of help?” If I consistently do that then my character will improve, as well as my life.
BUILDING A GOOD CHARACTER
I can improve my character by diving deeper into the core of my being—where my intuition is—to discover what is contracting me and to let it go. If my character is not what I want it to be, I need to go internally to see what is being triggered because cause and effect are simultaneous; I need to consistently do this and with that habit (consistency), my character traits will improve because my character is simply an outer reflection of how well I am doing this.
Because the world is a mirror, everything about my character relates to inner peace and so the real engine that drives my character has an internal origin—my internal attitude. To improve my internal attitude, the most key thing that I can do is be fully present and openhearted, as loving as I can, and be attending to the welfare of myself and everybody around me. Consistently doing this builds good character.
