Three Simple Rules
There are three simple rules you can live by that can make you happy, inspire happiness in those around you, and change the world. These are: love for self, love for others, and love for nature.
Rule 1: Love for Self
Have you ever said to someone, “I love you just the way you are”? If you have, I bet you meant it, because we have a great capacity to see the best in each other. Love for self is saying, “I love myself just the way I am.” Or even, if you find this difficult, “I am willing to try to find a way to move in this direction.”
Quite often, in trying to change ourselves, we beat ourselves up and dislike ourselves. And this sometimes makes us depressed. So love for self would also mean that it’s okay to feel how you feel right now. Some people who have gone through depression have found that this is a good place to start.
Love for self also means to try to stop criticizing yourself. Try to stop beating yourself up for what you should or shouldn’t have done. And try to stop blaming yourself for things that have happened in the past. A child learns from its mistakes but shouldn’t be condemned for making them. It was a part of the process of learning, of evolution. In the grander scheme of things, we are all children and will inevitably make mistakes. It’s part of the process.
I once heard Dr. Wayne Dyer tell a story of how trappers used to catch monkeys in the jungle. They would set down a large heavy jar containing sweet nuts in an area where monkeys lived. The jar had a narrow neck just wide enough for a monkey’s arm so that it could reach in to take the nuts. When a monkey came along, it would reach into the jar and grab the nuts. But its tightening grip would make its hand too wide to get out of the jar. It would try and try, but it couldn’t get its hand out of the jar unless it let go of the nuts. But it wouldn’t let go of the nuts, even though it was stuck. And the jar was so heavy that it couldn’t drag it to a different place. The trappers would return the next day and find the monkey still with its hand in the jar. It had been there all night, never having let go of the nuts and therefore being unable to move.
This is what we tend to do in our personal lives. We hold on to things that happened in the past, playing them over and over in our minds, blaming ourselves or others and refusing to let go. But this makes us heavy and unable to move forward in our lives. We trap ourselves.
Forgiveness is key. This doesn’t mean you have to condone the actions of another person, only to forgive them. Doing this frees you to move on.
My friend Bruce MacKay once said to me while we were in the mountains of Peru, “Where are you?” Bemused and trying to be funny, I said something along the lines of “I am on a path in the mountains of Peru.” To this he replied, “No. You are here.”
He then said, “What time is it?” As I looked at my watch, he said, “It is now. You are here, and the time is now.”
We tend to waste a lot of time in life mulling over past events or worrying about the future, but there is only one time: now. In ten minutes’ time it will be a new now, but it will still be now. The present moment is where you are. And in this moment, you are deeply loved. You don’t need to wait until some future time to be loved or until you have committed 100 selfless acts. If love is the guiding hand of all things, then you are loved now, you have always been loved, and you will always be loved.
If I pointed to some people and said that they were created out of nothingness with a breath of pure love, what would you think? How would you regard them? I bet you would see them as truly divine beings, wonderful spiritual beings with the destiny to bring more love into the world. Well, I am pointing at you. You are that person! You were created with loving breath. This love is in every cell of your body.
I once heard a story about a woman who was feeling depressed, unloved, and unimportant. One day, a friend came to her house and learned how she felt. He felt compassion for her. His attention was then drawn to the pictures on her mantel, so he asked about them. The woman smiled as she explained that they were her children and grandchildren. She lit up as she described how proud she was of them and listed their achievements. Her friend then looked at her and said, “God has a picture of you on his mantel.”
It doesn’t ultimately matter what you own, what you have accomplished, or what you do in life. You are important just because you exist.
There’s a little trick that can help you develop love for yourself. It is called “being kind to yourself,” and it’s fun.
Treat yourself to what you really want. Spoil yourself. Take a long bath with some candles and oils burning around you. Have a massage or a healing treatment. Get your hair done or get a new image. If you don’t have the resources or ability to do these things, then try to find something really special that is possible for you. Maybe there’s something you love to do but haven’t done for a while.
As you do whatever it is you want, do so with the thought, I am a great and wonderful divine being. I am deeply loved, I love myself and I deserve this.
Rule 2: Love for Others
We have an amazing capacity to see the best in each other. So, as often as you can, try to see the best in the person right in front of you. See the best in family members, friends, work colleagues, people you come into contact with throughout the day, people at meetings, clients, children, even people you regard as enemies and people who have hurt you in the past.
When you make an effort to see the best in others, you help to bring it out in them. I used to be an athletics coach and I could only bring out the best in the athletes when I made an effort to recognize their uniqueness. When I saw it, I could point it out to them. So it became more obvious and they were able to develop it. And they felt great because I had complimented them. It works the same way with qualities of character.
If someone told you that you were a generous person, for instance, after some thought, and maybe some mental replaying of past times, you would probably think to yourself, Hey, I am a generous person, and with that thought foremost in your mind you would probably go through your day being even more generous than normal and touching many lives along the way. Pointing out great qualities in people can change the world.
To start with, you could notice, for example, that someone occasionally showed kindness. Then you could try to let that be how you defined them in the future. You might say, “Oh, there goes that kind person” instead of “There goes so and so. Have you heard the gossip?” My friend Stuart Wilkie used to say, “If you have nothing nice to say then don’t say anything at all.“
“It’s nice to be nice,” as they say.
How you label others is not who they are, of course. It is just your label, based upon your limited connection with them. You might not know them very well. But you can always make time to see something positive in others that might help them to feel better about themselves. You might notice that they are great parents, or good communicators, or that they have nice smiles or nice hair, or are wearing nice clothes today. Be creative.
Sometimes it might be difficult to see something positive in a person’s behavior because circumstances have influenced some people so much that the positive part of them is buried. You can look for it. Help them to find it.
Sometimes behavior can cloud the truth. But no matter how many clouds are there, the human spirit never ceases to shine from behind them. The actress Elizabeth Caproni, my partner, reminded me once that an airplane might take off on a cloudy day, but as it rises above the clouds it reaches a place where the sun always shines. She pointed out that everyone is beautiful on the inside. This natural love always shines from within. It’s just that we don’t always notice it. It is up to you to rise above the clouds that might be facing you and see it.
The actor David Hayman, a dear friend of mine, once said to me, while describing someone who brought lots of conflict into the room with him, “He is an angel of God —cleverly disguised as an asshole.”
So, which part of a person are you willing to see? The part you focus on is the part you will then see most and will tease out of them.
If people have hurt you in the past, try to forgive them, let it go, and see their “light from within.” As Mark Twain wrote: “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Why not choose to be a violet today?
In 2004, I read in a national newspaper that a brother and sister had written to a judge who was about to pass sentence on the driver of a truck who had killed their parents in an accident. It was a plea to him not to imprison the driver. The letter brought tears to the judge’s eyes as he read it aloud in court, emphasizing the extraordinary capacity for forgiveness that the brother and sister had shown.
If all of us followed their example the world would transform overnight. Overnight! We would surpass the “forgive ness tipping point.” So, do you choose to forgive or do you choose to sue?
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing — as is kindness. Genuine kindness, in particular, carries extraordinary power. This is where you have nothing to gain from being kind and only wish to help. It is different from acting in order to gain something else. The vibration of the web is different. With a genuine act, the vibration of the web is greater.
Of course, it is not wrong to be aware that you will gain something from a kind act, because there will always be a gain for you. You cannot avoid that. You get back what you give out in one form or another. So if you give out kindness, you will receive kindness in some way. In fact, you receive the moment you give. Don’t you feel great when you help someone?
But the real point is to be kind not in order to get something back but from a genuine heartfelt wish to help. Then your act carries much more weight. As my mom always tells me, “It’s the thought that counts.”
In the Bible it is written:
“ I may speak with the words of men and of angels, but if I have not love I am but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
I Corinthians 13
To do something from a space of love carries real power. So examine your motivation!
Anonymous acts of kindness can also have a huge impact. There was a time, a few years ago, when I was extremely short of money. One day I received an envelope in the post containing £20 (approximately $41). There was no name or address, only a small piece of paper with the words: “God bless.” Whoever sent it knew of my situation but had no need for me to know of their kindness. They only wanted to help.
That £20 was like a lottery win to me, and it meant more and stretched further because of the love that came with it. The spirit of the gift was far more important to me than its monetary value. So it is with your genuinely kind thoughts, words, and actions. The spirit of your intentions carries the power.
Have you ever seen the film Pay It Forward? It features a young boy who is assigned a school project to come up with a plan to make a difference in the world. His plan is to commit a very special act of kindness for three people, an act that can make a real difference in their lives. When each person wishes to show their gratitude, he says that he doesn’t want them to repay the kindness to him but to find three people whose lives they can make a difference in and to help them instead. Those people in turn will do something kind for three others, who will help three others, who will help three others, and so on. In this way they “pay it forward.” It is a truly inspirational film and I encourage you to watch it or to read the book by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It shows the power a person has to make a real difference in the world through one or two simple acts of kindness.
The power to change the world is in you. It’s in your ability to choose and your courage to follow through on your choices. All you need to do is choose to forgive and be kind, and you might just inspire others to do the same. A wave of forgiveness or kindness can be magical!
Rule 3: Love for Nature
In Thom Hartmann’s bestselling book The Prophet’s Way, he describes watching his teacher, Gottfried Müller, outside on the road at 5.30 a.m. picking up dozens of small earthworms that had come to the surface during the previous night’s rainfall. He was giving them a few words of comfort and reassurance and returning them to the grass so that they wouldn’t be run over by cars.
Herr Müller showed that love for these tiny helpless creatures was as important as love for other people. He had been carrying out these anonymous acts of compassion for years.
Compassion is compassion is compassion, regardless of whom, or what, it is directed toward. And everything is part of nature. So extend the kindness and compassion you show for yourself and each other to animals and plants. Try to see the life and the beauty in nature all around you and you will help to bring it out into flower, so to speak.
How you choose to interact with nature, consistently, from this moment on, will impact your life and the world. Love is love is love regardless of whom or what you love. And every act colors the collective unconscious, vibrates the web, and influences the world.
The question is, what type of world do you choose?
