Improve with Personal Commandments

 

A few years back, I had an interesting idea. perhaps it was based on couple of observations. the observations were: Most of us get to know about 10 commandments of bible. then I read a book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen R. Covey

 

It occurred to me, that if we create our own commandments, and keep changing them as we learn new things, we would be able to improve ourselves. Although at first changing the commandments may not sound a good idea. But on further reflection, if we stick to our original ideas, (probably when they are not matured), we would become rigid.

 

So as an example, I would write down my personal commandments, and would try to update them whenever I learn something new. that will also generate another question, how should we learn new things? In my view, new things can be learned by

 

Life: observe your life and try to reflect what can be learnt from it.

People: talk to people and you may ask them what is the biggest learning of their life? in my experience, everyone has something valuable to share.

Books: lots of great persons have shared their learnings in the books. it might take you some time before you might be able to find quality books, but with time you would certainly be able to figure out good from the rest.

Science: all the above ways have one limitation, and that is limitation itself. all of us have limited experience, but often our experience does not tell the complete story. the greatest person would miss out on many things that do not happen in his or her life. A Science based book would try to aggregate many experiences and would be able to present a better picture. SO also read books that try to base their perspective on scientific thinking. by science I do not mean scientific facts, many people peddle scientific facts to suit their own agenda, so try to think if the book is based on scientific thinking. I can't explain scientific thinking here, so either do a Google search or wait till I write my next post.

 

Finally, here is my personal commandments.

 

Relationship: Relationship with my family and friends is the most important thing in my life

Truth: seek truth about myself, human nature in general and everything else

Trust: Relationship is about trust, so always strive to build trust.

Respect: respect everyone, because when we don't respect someone, we don't respect some part of us.

Passion: Work with passion, only passion can bring best in us

Enjoy: Life is short, enjoy whatever we do.

Energy: strive to be energetic, results happen with great energy

Focus: staying in focus gives results.

Balance: life is about balancing competing needs and perspectives.

Perspectives: for any decision, always try to obtain multiple perspectives, single perspective can mislead us.