Page 19 - ALIVE CODE
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DARE TO BE A.L.I.V.E. - DON’T BE A D.A.S.H.
A
EXPANDING ON THE OF L-E-A-R-N
A = Anti-self-downing. Against judging, condemning, or rating yourself and
other people as
persons, while still measuring and rating your and their behaviors.
It is perfectly human not to be perfect. Owning your problem and taking
responsibility is one thing, but putting yourself down for your imperfections
is another. You don’t have to celebrate your imperfections, but you can
admit that they do exist and still accept yourself, the imperfect person.
All of us fail at tasks we deem important. You may easily (and often) fail at
speci c tasks or relationships that you really want to succeed at. By all
means, strive for success, but no matter how many times you succeed you
can never prove that you are a “success”.
Similarly, no matter how many times or ways that you fail, you can never
prove that you are a “failure.” You are a human who does some things well
and some things poorly. And millions of things in between!
You are never obliged to prove your human worth. In fact, it is impossible to
prove or disprove your goodness or badness. All people are error-prone and
make thousands of mistakes, accidentally and willfully. Human beings are
incredibly fallible.
Therefore, no matter what you do, you can never rightly judge yourself to be
a worthless person; o r a good person. You can always own your problem
without putting yourself down. Just acknowledge, “I performed poorly this
time.
That’s unfortunate.” Not: “I am bad for performing this unfortunate way.”
Why are you not good or bad? Because you are a very complex, ever-
changing process- a person who, during your lifetime, does thousands no,
millions of good, bad, and indifferent deeds.
ALIVE CODE
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