Choose and renounce

Choose a project, set a goal, means excluding things that do not fit in it, which are not our style, things that do not fit into our program. Choose implies resign. When there is a behaviour motivated by a project, every man is glad about the waivers involved, because he is committed to the choice that he has made.

This is the way to enrich the personality. Otherwise we are turning over the things that we have renounced, or rejecting the things that our commitment brought, and so the choice -the exercise of freedom - makes little sense. So, the circumstances sometimes bring us where we do not want to go. But not because those circumstances are stronger than us, but because we give up, because our project was not strong, because it had no conviction and the necessary values. It may happen that a man take this world for fifty years and still do not know what he's doing in it, simply because he has not known what to do with his life.

How to know what to do

In order to know what to do, and achieve a consistent and satisfying project, he must know himself. This is not an easy task. Many mistakes were made in this regard. There are many teenagers who discovered in their forties, the great ability they have to learn, for example, Russian. But nobody helped them to discover they had that ability innately. Many mistakes are committed in one's knowledge because of the low estimation of him, that is, underestimation.

In this respect, the teaching of parents, as well as the teacher’s, is often wrong. We have not discovered the positive values that our children or students had. We have not put the stake to grow in their innate values. "Fight your flaws!", we said, when each defect rooted in the young man is the equivalent to five, six, ten, twenty, or hundred dominant values of positive features, one hundred gifts he have received, which might to be developed.

That person, perhaps, has had a hard time trying to eradicate a defect, for example, his disorder: he is fighting the whole day against the closet; he does not know where to put the shoes, socks, etc. And, however, it would have cost little to develop other values such as generosity, punctuality, friendliness, perseverance, generosity.

With very little effort he would had grown up in a lot of virtues and would have made many people happy. But as nobody showed those to him, he has not grown in other state values. This kind of people has a negative conception of themselves - because he knows he is messy, and believes he is a disaster which always has disordered books -. They have a bad image of themselves. No one has discovered for them their positive side in which they easily could grow.

Fighting in a negative way almost never get virtue. Develop positive values that each person has and wants to develop freely, with the help of others, is how virtues are achieved, which is what makes them important to other people. We must end that pedagogy based on the negative, because it is only compatible with the most radical anthropological pessimism. The truth is that, the person, man or woman, is a wonder. Each person is unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable. And besides, has many more positive features than negatives.

Making values

Therefore, we must go trough it, be brave and deeply ask: Who I am? What values do I have? Which values can I achieve? How can I take advantage of the values I have?

Efforts should be done in orther to develop specific values and corresponding virtues. How? Exercising a virtue, there is no other way. Do you want to become more sympathetic? Then, start to smile more, and stretch your facial muscles. First you will get a little rabbit smile, but it doesn’t matter; it will come a time when your muscles will stretch easily. Sympathy is not achieved by doing a master, but exercising it, and if you do it, you'll never make downward estimations of your own person’s value.

If you, arriving in this world, had in sincerity - innate qualities given to you - a score of 8, you will have to die with a total of 800, achieved with little efforts. This will be your biography and you will not have another. That's what economists call added value. In life, there is growth or decrease. What happens if a person is born with a high value of joy and without any effort he has a wonderful smile, and scored 1000, and when he dies he has only 200? Inflation has eaten him! He has lost the great gift of life.

We can laugh, but this is extremely important. If we are born with 800 of joy and we arrive at seventy-five with only 200 of joy, everyone will say: "Take care, he is a grumpy old man, keep it away, because it can bite you." If, however, we were born with 800 and raise this value to 8000, they will say: "Take care of this old man: he is charming, you'll see how nice he is, how well you spend it with him ..."

Growing up in the virtue of joy brings happiness to a lot more people. If we decrease in the virtue of joy we are alone and feel isolated, and we grumbles, dreadful and wretched those around us or the ones we have to care. We have lost the papers on the path of life, because we've never met truly ourselves, because we simply and unfairly have undervalued ourselves, because we have not managed to develop the values we already had, and we could increased it with low cost.

The ethics of virtue

I'm talking about virtues. I like to talk more about virtues than of values. It is not only a question of words, but a fundamental problem about the meaning. The virtues can be taught only indirectly. Instead, they can be learnt directly, living them. It deserves respect the rule "the duty because of the duty," but without forgetting the ethics of happiness, which is what might be resurrected, without losing the reference point of law. When I do the right thing, I do it because I feel like it, and I feel like it because I'm so happy. The wise guy who does evil is not happy, is a miserable. It can easily be shown that he is a miserable. Let me give an example: a girl who puts up with his mother, whose only fault is to have a bad temper. Shouts and shouts, and this is like molten lead that falls back. Even so, she is patient with her mother. And because she does that well she is becoming good. You can say it's silly, but it is not: is happy. Her mother expands herself by shouting to her and, thanks to that, she do not have to go to a psychiatrist. If the daughter would be resistant, the mother probably would have to go to a psychiatrist because it would raise many conflicts between them. And that daughter would finally leave home. This not happens thanks to the strong character the girl has.

Indeed, it is not true that we are good people and, therefore, we do good. Only when someone tries to do good, after some time trying the same thing, it finally becomes good. Only by striving we’ll seriously develop the kindness that has been given to us with life.