Keys to living a good life, Part 2

Why be a person you would like?

Well, for one, you are the only person that will have to live with yourself 24 hours a day, 7 day's a week, 365 (or 366) days a year. For the rest of your life.

Another reason is that more people will like YOU better and thus treat you nicer making your life easier than it would otherwise be. There is of course no guarantee that any single person will not treat you badly, but it greatly increases the odds for people being nice to you.

So, what qualities in other people cause you to like them?

"They give me stuff" is an instinctive reaction, especially from those who have been somewhat spoiled. But there is something to that. It's called Generosity. We like generous people, especially when they're generous to us. We also admire their generosity to others, especially to those in need.

I'll add the other biggie here - it's actually more important than generosity.

Honorability. It's trustworthiness with a halo around it.

There are others. Humility. No, I don't mean go around wearing sack cloths and smudge up your face and beat your own back with a cat o' nine tails... it means acknowledging you're not now, nor will you ever be perfect.

From humility and generosity spring patience. You know you're not perfect. You know nobody else is, either. When someone else behaves in a manner that we disapprove of, especially if it directly affects us -- we need to understand that that person, even if they're trying to improve, will fail sometimes. There is a limit to patience. If the person isn't trying, your patience will understandably run out quickly.

Patience is closely tied to forgiveness. If you give a person a chance to improve and you can see they are trying and really don't want to cause you any harm, it's a good thing to let go of whatever pain they have caused you. Stop holding a grudge. Holding on to it will only eat in to your patience and humility and generosity. Which are things we're trying to nurture here, not rot off.

So here are the basic keys

Honor
Generosity
Humility
Patience
Forgiveness

There are other keys, probably, but most people will have their hands pretty full with these alone. If you can get a handle on these, you'll do fine, and much better than most people.