by ronoc dnalien

Created on: March 25, 2009

What is better, what is worse? As Tom Waits wrote "if you make my devils leave my angels might leave to"; everyone one of us is a complex mix of all we experience and through experience all we perceive.

The steps to be a better person are as different as people are to one another. A set of rules cannot apply to everyone; because we are all a mix and all mixes are different no set of rules can universally apply. With open mindedness to all the exceptions I will attempt to suggest ways a person can become better, while realising that good and bad outcomes stem from individuals who may react to good people badly and find bad people the inspiration for good.

1) Have good relations with those in our lives. Be honest with our selves about our reasons for conflict and don't follow blindly the reasons of others.

2) Watch for repetition in situations that cause us stress, by becoming aware of the cues of our emotions we can succeed in adopting a growing sense of maturity towards the stresses of life.

3) Understand that our lives are finite, the time of living is limited and the time we have is precious. We are all destined to become history, in some situations its worth considering our mortality.

4) There are those that would seek to do us harm and those who are willing to help. Become aware of that difference and put more energy into those who seek to help over those who seek to do us harm.

5) Eat well, nutrition allows the human body to enjoy health and well being. We are dependant on nutrients for healthy living, without proper food we become sick, when we become sick we are restricted in our ability to make ourselves a better person.

6) Become interested in the cultural landscape that defines and precedes your own. It's about trying to avoid the frustration of been overwhelmed by the world around us. To make sense of the world within we need to take into account that which influences our world within from the world around.

7) It's important to escape the self in a real and complex way. Watching episodes of "Friends" may allow some of us to escape for an hour or so, but it is not a benefit to our lives. What we need is temporary escape with reflection and not to have the process of escape destroy other parts of our lives.

8) Appreciate honesty and sincerity. It's not about hearing what you want to hear, seeing what you what you see, feeling what you want to feel, tasting what you want to taste, and smelling what you want to smell. Our five senses are there to perceive the world around us they are not there to necessarily confirm the world within us.

9) Expression is the manifestation of our individual humanity, and as such needs to be exercised to give our humanity meaning. We need meaning to reconcile that for which we cannot find meaning to. Of all the things that affect us in life, it is what we don't understand that as the most potential to struggle us away from the better person we can become.

10) We need to make other people better persons. Within our complex nature, we can lift our spirits by lifting the spirits of others.

On mass, if we all change slightly, we can overcome a lot of the suffering that afflicts the people alive today. Not totally, but just a little bit, a little bit better.

In conclusion I refer back to the start, a reference to our complexity, but in saying that lets not dwell too much on that, lets get inspired, lets get on with it and lets all become better people.

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