Most people are interested in leading happy, peaceful and productive lives. To this end, I want to suggest an idea that will not cost you anything, does not involve much in the way of personal sacrifice and is practically guaranteed to make you a better person and help you to feel good about yourself. The basic concept is thousands of years old; the only modern touch is a psychological element I’ve added.
Consider this. The things we all do in our lives can be roughly divided as being either good or bad. The good things we do, acts of kindness, generosity or nobility, both large and small, we usually share with our family and friends. The bad things, the dishonesties, judgments and acts of selfishness, both large and small, we tend to keep to ourselves. If we think of our deeds as a type of currency (such as money) and ourselves as a type of repository (like a savings bank), our natural tendency is to dissipate or squander our good deeds, while hoarding or retaining our bad ones. Thus we build up an accumulation of bad deeds in our psychic repository and this has a deleterious effect on our sense of self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence.
I think the positive value of doing good deeds is fairly obvious to the reader. What I am suggesting here is that the positive value of doing good deeds can be magnified tremendously if the knowledge of that good deed is kept to ourselves. When only we possess the knowledge of a good deed done are we then able to hold on to it, to save it in our psychic repository, where it accrues compound interest in terms of our sense of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-worth. The more good deeds we do and the more we keep them to ourselves, the more good feeling about ourselves we accumulate. More about this in a moment.
Let me say a few words about these deeds. They should be kept on a small scale, e.g., complimenting someone, holding open a door, saying hello when passing a stranger, noticing and commenting when someone says or does something well, saying a kind word, allowing someone to merge into traffic in front of you, etc. Good deeds don’t have to be on a larger scale than that. They need not involve expenditures of money or large amounts of time, which is how we might generally tend to characterize good deeds. In fact, deeds do not have to be behaviors at all. Judgmental thinking about someone, e.g., Look at the outfit on her, What a nerd that guy is, Can anyone be more stuck-up? all carry a negative impact even if they are not spoken. Training and committing yourself not to indulge in such judgmental thoughts can bring a tremendous boost to your self-esteem.
Making sure you do your good deed every day may require employing a mnemonic device. At some point in the day, say around 3:00PM, you can get in the habit of checking-in with yourself to see if you’ve achieved your goal. If you haven’t, you still have enough time left in the day to do so. Just begin to associate 3:00PM with achieving your goal. One of the advantages to keeping your deeds to a modest scale is that you can do one almost at a moment’s notice.
The importance of doing a good deed every day is that it keeps you on track, forming a healthy habit. You can be secure in the knowledge that by the end of a year you would have performed at least 365 good deeds! If a day goes by and you realize you hadn’t achieved your goal, you can always double up the next day.
I’d like to discuss a bit more of the psychology involved. The Ego, as the term is generally understood in the common parlance, is a funny thing. The term often carries a negative connotation, as when one is considered to have too much of it. It is an undeveloped part our Ego though, the little ego that we each have, that desires that others know about the good things we’ve done so we can appear to them in a better light. Now this is not an awful thing; it’s merely an expression of the general human condition. But, little do we realize that the cost of desiring to be seen by others in a positive light is that it reinforces the dim view we already have of ourselves. We are misrepresenting ourselves, we are aware that we are doing this and we quite naturally feel guilty about it. By employing the technique of secrecy we are actually able to turn what is generally considered to be a weakness of the ego, the desire to be viewed by others in a positive light, into an inner strength. By eliminating deceptive practices we begin to view ourselves in a more positive light. So rather than betraying ourselves in an ultimately futile attempt to be positively viewed by others, we strengthen ourselves by maintaining our personal integrity, all by the simple expedient of keeping the good we do secret.
In the current climate of political and social divisiveness and the distressing loss of communal cohesiveness and civility, we need to focus more on those things we share in common than the things that divide us. We especially need to instill greater respect for the rights and inherent value of all other human beings in our children, lest matters continue to deteriorate in the future.
I do find one thought heartening: by doing good in secret we benefit others by our deeds and example and ourselves through the practice of commitment and sacrifice. We form an ever enlarging and strengthening benign circle, encompassing all. We actively and on a daily basis oppose divisiveness with loving concern. We can form a network of secret loving concern at work, in our homes, neighborhoods and communities. You can have a positive impact! You can become an actual and potent force for good and healing in the world.