A lot of wasted energy and frustration is the result. This approach is much like the guy who is switching lanes and using excessive acceleration in traffic only to find the cars he passed sitting next to him at the next stop light. People get in trouble here because they bounce around between religious beliefs, a family focus, and a selfish focus. To be truly healthy and happy, your true north needs to be based upon a bed rock principle, not on opinion. True north for some is defined by their religion, for others it may be their family or maybe just their own wellbeing. Another way to state this is that your moral compass provides you with a definition of true north in your life. Your moral compass is a combination of your belief system and a definition of what you value, which provides you a degree of guidance in decision making. If you are out of sync, you are living a lie. In a fearless moral inventory, you must honestly evaluate the synchronization of your belief system to what you value. Either you are fooling yourself about what you believe or you are fooling yourself about what you value. If at the same time, you find it easy to attack and hurt others (especially those you disagree with), your belief system is not in sync with your values. If you are a Christian, you must accept the axiom that you can’t love Jesus if you don’t love people. Testing the accuracy of your mapping is a reality check. Your belief system should map to what you value. This becomes the second piece of defining what you believe. When you combine these two they make a toxic mix unless you synchronize them with what you value. Religion is based upon prescribed absolute truths and politics is based on marketing where truth is situational and always in flux. It is also common for these belief systems to be in conflict. These are also the most likely to be influenced by your friends and family. Two common ones are religion and politics. Being honest with myself while creating this document, my manifesto, was life changing.Īn added complication is that your belief system has more than one component. I wrote an article sometime back titled “30 Things I Believe” this was my effort of ensuring the origin of my belief system. If, in honesty, you find that your belief system is not of your own making, take steps to correct this problem. It is essential to a fulfilled life that you operate on what you believe and on what passes your own reality test. You will also have a hard time living with the results of those decisions, leaving you frustrated or in denial. If you do not own your belief system, you will have a hard time being consistent with it when decisions need to be made. If your belief system belongs to someone else, you are living someone else’s life through your choices and consequences. A fearless moral inventory will only be useful if it is based in reality and honesty.Ī good question to start with is who owns your beliefs? Did you come to them by means of your own intellect and life experiences or were they given to you by your family, boss or some other significant person in your life. With that in mind, let’s make the answer easier to get by being honest with ourselves. We are complicated beings living in a complicated world. What do you believe? This is not an easy question to answer.
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