The
purpose of this section of the Resource Book is to focus you on fulfilling the
demands of the Upsilon Credo at the individual level; in particular, how to
become “an upright, self-respecting man capable of growth and greater service to
my fellowmen.”
You might want to ask yourself the following
questions:
·
Why do I need
to do this?
·
What would I
want to do this?
·
How could I
possibly do this?
And you might want to consider where you are right now:
Are you a resident or a new
graduate, wondering what life holds for you?
Have you been working for a while,
perhaps just starting a very young family, overwhelmed with the pressures of
life and wondering where it’s all heading, that is if you have time to think at
all?
Are you somewhere between 35 and 45 and suffering from a
mid-life crisis? Do you feel that you have no “center” in your life? Are you
frustrated by your career? Do you feel that you have not achieved much or that
what you have achieved is not worthwhile?
Have you reached your 50s or perhaps close to retirement and
still uncertain what you’ve done in your life and what to do next? Have you led
an exemplary life and done things of which you can be proud?
And through it all, can you say that you are an “upright,
self-respecting man?” Is it too early, too late, or totally irrelevant to you?
Just in case you believe that most
problems, particularly social problems are beyond your scope, consider this
story:
“God said to me: Your task is to build a better world. I
answered: How can I do that? The world is such a large, vast place, so
complicated now and I am so small and useless. There’s nothing I can do. But
God in his great wisdom said: Just build a better you.” Anonymous.
In other words, only you can decide and only you can take
action. We need to understand that the buck stops with us. Possibly in the
face of overwhelming apathy, we need to take action as individuals, realizing
that every little action helps. We need to act now, not tomorrow and we need to
think about something concrete that we can do, now. The key is to focus on our
actions, not just words.
Many of us go through life vaguely feeling that a lot of
goals or principles are acceptable but never really decide what our highest and
most worthy goals are. Not deciding on our major reasons for being is the same
as being unguided or morally lost. The problem is that most of us do not know
where to start.
Fortunately there is a set of “tools”, readily available from
a website, that can help us decide what we value most, how we live as upright,
self-respecting men and what actions we should take to achieve our goals.
This resource firstly helps as examine what personal
characteristics we most want to have. It’s never too late to change!
Secondly, it moves us on to thinking how we would like to live our life through
understanding the values we currently have or should have.
Only when we understand our personal characteristics and
decide on our values and what’s really important can we set goals that we want
to achieve in our life. And value centered-goal setting is important at ANY
stage of our life.
Finally, the resource helps us turn
our goals into manageable objectives and actions.
There are two fundamentally different life goals: 1)
personal happiness and 2) doing good for others, i.e., self-oriented and
other-oriented. They are both very appealing values but unfortunately, they
usually take you in opposite directions. If you seek happiness in self-serving
ways, you will miss many opportunities to serve others. You can’t go full steam
both ways – recreation and commitment – at the same time; choices and usually
compromises must be made.
How do you make this tough choice? The resource book will
help you to decide.
So, who is happiest, the person devoted to fun and personal
happiness or the person devoted to helping others? Try this simple experiment.
List the 10 people you know best. Rate each one as either happy or unhappy.
Then, rate each one as self-centered or others-centered. It has been found that
happy people were ten times more likely to be unselfish than selfish.
Strangely, happiness comes to people who have decided not to seek it as their
main purpose in life.
The foregoing is intended merely as a quick guide to
self-improvement. If you found this useful to get you started, we strongly
recommend that you go directly to the source and download the information:
Psychological Self-Help by Clayton E. Tucker-Ladd (Mental
Health Net). Particularly Chapter 3: Values and Morals: Guidelines for Living
Website:
http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/
Self-Evaluator and Action Prompter
adapted by
Roberto Esguerra ‘60
