Always look for the good in people.  Train ourselves to find the good, stop searching for and pointing out the bad.  Focus is key and when we train ourselves to see the good, we learn to see the good around us.  We are all just doing our best with what we know at any given time.  Before I go too far with that, I want to caveat that I am a firm believer that it’s our responsibility to know when we need to do better—that requires the self-awareness we spoke about yesterday.  Yes, I know we are human and will make mistakes, but we need to have the wherewithal to know what those mistakes are and how to do better the next time.  That isn’t about perfectionism, that is an awareness of how our actions can or potentially can impact others.  It’s about how our inaction or allowing ourselves to slip can impact our futures.  Now, with saying that, I go back to the premise that we are all doing our best with what we know.  I totally believe that is true because we can’t do any better or any more than what we know until we get the inkling that there is more to know.  Once we know there is more, once we acknowledge that we CAN do better, it’s our responsibility to DO better. 

That is where people do the most good. When we see the good in them, when we witness the little acts of human kindness that shift the world, when we feel inspired to do more ourselves, these are the things that help light the pathway for others.  It inspires them to do the same, it inspires them to question what more they can do, it inspires them to find themselves so they can help in the most meaningful and purposeful way.  It gives us a source (this is another one of those oasis I spoke about yesterday).  Seeing good and doing good is another form of sustenance.  In many ways we help ourselves when we help others because we have to learn to identify their needs, and that action helps us identify ours.  More than our needs, it helps us identify our capabilities and our capacity to use our resources for good.  That’s when we find purpose—the application of our skills for the betterment of others. 

There are a lot of messed up and disturbing things happening in this world, no one would dispute that.  It’s our job to keep finding the good.  If we continue to focus on the negative, the negative will continue to grow.  The same happens when we focus on the positive, and it takes the same amount of energy regardless of what we focus on—so choose something good.  We feel better, we can do better, and we can help people more when we see the good.  Too much time is spent telling others how they should be, telling them how they are wrong, or proving that we are right.  The truth is that no one is all knowing of the definition of who is right and what is wrong.  The goal isn’t to prove that either way—the goal is to allow space for people to discover what is right or wrong for them.  The goal is to highlight the best features of a person and allow them to shine in their own way.  Again, seeing the good takes no more energy than it does to see the bad, but it returns that energy 10-fold.  We always have the choice, but I know what feels better.  Choose to see the good and move away from anything that doesn’t support that vision.  Help others see good by seeing good in themselves first.  The effort is worth it.