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There Is No Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing

Building a bright future requires us to move on from the past. We must change our way of thinking. We must change our way of looking at things. We must change the way we react to things. Therefore, there is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.

— Leo Tolstoy

We think thoughts don’t count; only what we do matters. But the Buddha said in the Dhammapada that our thoughts are the forerunner of our actions (Max Muller translation):

“All that we are results from what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.”[1]

Change starts with a thought, a notion, an inkling, or a feeling we get when we know something just isn’t right. Most of us are aware of it when these thoughts come to us. We were born with a fight-or-flight response embedded into our DNA.

Britannica defines fight-or-flight response as:

Fight-or-flight response, response to an acute threat to survival that is marked by physical changes, including nervous and endocrine changes, that prepare a human or an animal to react or to retreat. The functions of this response were first described in the early 1900s by American neurologist and physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon.[2]

This natural built in response lets us know when we are in danger and when we need to change. But change, lasting, meaningful, genuine change only happens when we stop expecting those around us to change for us, but when we change for us, to benefit them.

The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe. The axe was cleaver and convinced the trees he was one of them because it made its handle from wood.

— Turkish Proverb

My statement that there is no right way to do the wrong thing, simply stated, is that when we expect others to change their behavior, lifestyles, ideologies, or way of thinking to satisfy our own sense of self superiority for our own selfish reasons we are not provoking change. We are provoking control over another by demanding them to change to accommodate us. To fit into our picture of what we believe they should look like.

For change to happen in your surroundings you must convince those who you wish to effect that your way is a better way. To do that one must “show” them, not tell them. Show them a better way by example. Do not do what you ask them not to do. Do not say what you ask them not to say. Do not act like you do not want them to act. Do not justify your actions and yet hold them accountable for the same.

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

— Teddy Roosevelt

One of my favorite stories is of a mother and her child rushing about getting that last holiday season shopping done. After a long day of crowds, lines, rudeness, and loud noise, they had one last item to get.

After entering the store, the mother said to her child, “did you see the look that woman gave me?” The child, in all its innocence, said to the mother “she didn’t give you that look mommy, you’ve had it when you came in”.

Sometimes in life we think its others that are making our world unlivable, when in fact it is us who are doing so. Leave it to the innocence of a child to remind us of that life lesson.

You are the drivers of your own life. As you journey through it you have a choice of which paths to take, which actions to take, or not take. The people you meet along the way will influence your life and your decisions. Just remember that you remain in control and that there is no right way to do the wrong thing.

I wrote another article about change that you can read here: CHANGE WHY IT’S NECESSARY ~ AND HOW TO DO IT WELL

And here: YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE PAST, BUT YOU CAN CHANGE THE FUTURE

If you have enjoyed this article, please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles.

You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don’t think so

For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report

Remember: Happiness is a choice, so choose to be happy.

[1] Learn Religions/Buddhism: Origins and Developments/Barbara O’Brian/accessed 10/24/2020/ https://www.learnreligions.com/right-intention-450069

[2] Britannica.com/Fight-or-flight response/accessed 10/24/2020/ https://www.britannica.com/science/fight-or-flight-response

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. We cannot change it without changing our thinking.”

― Albert Einstein[1]

The past, we all have one. It’s a good place to visit occasionally, just don’t park there. Contrary to popular belief, your past is not who you are, it’s just where you have been. You cannot Change your Past, but you can Change your Future. Here’s how.

The Oxford Dictionary defines past as: Gone by in time and no longer existing.[2] Yet some of us treat it as still in the present, still existing.

The past can leave scars, some deeper than others. The past might create bad habits. The past can create trust issues. The past can create forgiveness issues. The past can create all these things if we give it the power to do so.

I have a past. I have scars. I have had trust issues, bad habits, even forgiveness issues, until I didn’t.

When we give in to the power of the past, we are no longer in control of our own future. It takes control of our lives, our relationships, our friendships, and even our interaction with our fellow humans. You cannot Change your Past, but you can Change your Future.

When we associate ourselves with our past, we will experience feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, regret, bitterness, resentment, low self-esteem, and even anger. But why do we hang on to these negative feelings? We hold on to these negative feelings out of fear. Fear of feeling pain which allows a comfort in our lives without feeling vulnerable.

When we encounter triggers that bring up our issues from the past we act on automatic out of self-preservation, or so we think. We hear those thoughts in our heads saying “see, it’s happening AGAIN”. It is easy to sabotage a simple situation when we act based on past experiences.

A man entered the subway car with his three children where he sat down and stared down at the floor while his children went about being unruly, disturbing the fellow passengers unnoticed by their father.

One passenger firmly asked the man to “control his children”. As if in a daze, the man lifted his head and looked at the passenger and said, “my apologies. They just lost their mother, cancer, and I guess this is how they are responding to it.”

The past, while valid, clouds our judgement in our present and future decisions unless we release ourselves from it. Not all men or women cheat, so thinking they do now won’t help you stay in a healthy relationship. Not all children are wild, so judging them without fully knowing the circumstances can backfire.

Creating a bright future requires us to move on from the past. We must change our way of thinking. We must change our way of looking at things. We must change the way we react to things.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

― Leo Tolstoy[3]

You cannot change your Past, but you can Change your Future. In my recently published book titled You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don’t think so I discuss how to be free from our past. How to live free from our past and not allow it to block the forward momentum of our future.https://www.josephbinning.com/failure%e2%9c%b5your-past-is-not-who-you-are-so-dont-give-up/

I discuss how our perceptions shape our thought process of how we see things and react to them in our daily life. When we perceive things as black and white because we are viewing life without the proper filters to allow us to see things as they really are, we decide based on bad data, thus we make yet another poor decision.

Unless we maintain a forward-directed focus and a firm belief in our “Self”, it will always be easy to allow our failures to block our progress.

Failures do not identify who we are. Failures are lessons that teach us what did not work.

— Joseph Binning

Realizing that there are no mistakes in life without lessons is the first key to seeing that our past, or—as some may refer to it — failures, is an opportunity to learn or experience something new. There are no mistakes without lessons. Everything happens for a reason, for our learning.

If you have enjoyed this article please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles.

You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don’t think so

For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report

Remember: Happiness is a choice, so choose to be happy.

[1] Change Quotes/Goodreads.com/accessed 10/05/2020/ https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/change

[2] Oxford Dictionary/Past Definition/accessed 10/05/2020/https:// https://www.lexico.com/definition/past

[3] Change Quotes/Goodreads.com/accessed 10/05/2020/ https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/change

There Is No Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing

There Is No Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing

You Cannot Change the Past, but You Can Change the Future