Self-Help Through Changing Your Behavior: Enjoy Your Life More

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INTRODUCTION

Self-help through changing your bad habits can be used as a way to improve not only your life, but also the lives of generations to come. The purpose of this book is to provide information and encourage you to consider the things that you can do to help yourself simply by changing bad habits. Changing bad behavior is a simple way to do better and live a more productive life. Not one of us needs to wait for someone else to do for us those things we can do for ourselves. Even if it is not clear to us at this moment, it is within our power to deal successfully with most of the difficulties that many of us face, including continued high poverty, unemployment, incarceration of family members, and poor quality education. These, as well as other challenges do not allow us the luxury of limiting our options for effective solutions. Far too long, most of us have chosen to accept the situation and conditions that we find ourselves in instead of choosing and acting to change them. Consciously or unconsciously, we have just gone along and accepted the same old bad social standards, attitudes, and practices that have impeded our progress or stopped it altogether. If you could go back and relive your life, would you change any of the decisions you made or the things that you have done? If you are one who wouldn’t change anything, then your life must be wonderful! However, most people without question would probably change certain choices and actions that didn’t produce the results intended or desired. Regardless of our age, each of us has made mistakes in our lives that have continued to undermine our progress. For instance, some of us went to school and may even have graduated but, nevertheless, did not take school seriously and, therefore, did not do our best. Others of us dropped out altogether. You may be one who has been to prison or jail because you chose to do something illegal, thinking you could get away with it. These and similar mistakes, despite the logic and reasoning we used at the time, have kept us from reaching our full potential. Yet, we are not disposed to live with the consequences of our mistakes by force. If we have not taken steps to make amends for the mistakes we have made, we must look within ourselves—for within each of us is the answer to our failing to do so. That which caused us to choose and do the wrong thing, even if we might have believed it was the right thing at the time, is the very thing that is holding each of us back right now. Since it is our character and personality that predicts our behavior, then, that negative causation within us may be the result of something that we have learned and incorporated within our character, or it may be the result of something that we have failed to learn and incorporate in our character. By that which we learn and adopt from our experiences, we are the masters of our character on which our personality relies to express who we are. And, while we may be influenced by others, each of us alone is the only person who can change our character. No matter how we define success, the beginning of our journey to succeeding in life is by, first, understanding the need to change and by, second, taking the necessary action to change those aspects of our character that are holding us back. This book is written to encourage you to take an inventory, assess, and evaluate those aspects of your character that distinguish you as an individual that which your choices and actions personify—and those distinctive qualities are the means by which you establish and maintain your reputation.

CHAPTER 1

Traditions

No matter how we define or classify them, all peoples of this world are influenced by traditions that have been passed down to them through generations. Unfortunately, the traditions of Black people in America have been marred by slavery, Jim Crow, and institutional racism, such that some traditions are positive influences on the character of Black people but others are negative influences that we must eliminate. Slave owners took specifically targeted steps to breakup Black families so that they could not bond as a family unit and they also took steps to deny Black family members the education they deserved. In conjunction, they prohibited participation in certain cultural traditions and customs or prevented such participation or practice by limiting or denying Black slaves’ freedom and resources. Consequently, many traditions among Black Americans today are mere shadows or corruptions of African traditions that our ancestors attempted to pass down to the generations in spite of slavery. The vast majority of Black slaves could neither read nor write; therefore, where such traditions could not be physically practiced or demonstrated, they passed such traditions down to the generations through the spoken word, through poetry, and through songs. Only after slavery ended did Black Americans begin to reconstitute their extended families and reinstitute old family traditions that had been passed down through folklore, folktales, or through verbatim repetition of some traditional sayings or songs within which certain beliefs and practices were memorialized. We can only imagine or surmise how much of our ancestral traditions were lost over the 250+ years of slavery and the next 150+ years of discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow policies and laws. In conjunction, during slavery and throughout the period of Jim Crow, Black adults taught traditions that were wrought out of slavery to Black children, even to those who were not related by blood. These were not altogether African traditions but also included slave traditions devised by Black adults and designed to teach each other and Black children how to survive and traverse the dangers, stumbling blocks, and impediments that were incorporated in the policies and practices of slavery, Jim Crow, and institutional racism.

Since these are the traditions that many of us embrace today, we must realize that behaviors passed down through the generations can keep you, develop you, deny you, or destroy your chances to succeed in the world we live in today. Although some traditional behaviors serve a significantly good and proper purpose, others may not be conducive to producing beneficial results for people struggling to overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Only by our own ignorance and resistance to change are we bound to continue cultural or customary beliefs or practices from generation to generation that keep producing bad outcomes and results for us as individuals or as a family. The truth of the matter is that we are born into our family’s way of life. Therefore, when we are children, some decisions are made for us before we have a choice in the matter. These decisions include such things as our family’s status economically, politically, educationally, and religiously. As children, we had no part in determining the example our parents gave us as regards marriage, parenting, community participation, etc. Yet, for the most part, these aspects of our upbringing were most influential in forming our way of thinking and behaving. And of those experiences both good and bad, we gained knowledge, understanding, and wisdom; and we used that which we gained to build and pattern our lives—that is, in making choices and taking actions, right or wrong. Nevertheless, we are not bound to continue believing that which we first accept is true; our experiences either confirms that the truth we believe either is valid or invalid. When we obtain proof that the truth that we believe is invalid, it is in our best interest to revise our thinking and seek a more valid, if not perfect, truth.

Our character dictates the pattern of our lives—that is, the positive and negative qualities that we adopt mentally and morally directly affect the choices we make and the actions we take. Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way when we choose to do what others (our parents, family members, friends, etc.) did before us instead of using our own minds, the benefits of the realities of our own experiences, and our own moral compass that is our self-developed guide to what is right and wrong. If we are not careful in considering how we live (choose and act), we may allow ourselves to believe that the only way to live is to think, behave, or do things the same longstanding way traditionalized by people in a particular group, family, or society. The realities of our own experiences are of infinite value to us because they are God’s true, unvarnished feedback to us based on our personal choices and actions. From the realities of our own lives and of the lives of other living beings around us, God either validates the benefit or advantage of our thinking, behaving, and doing things the traditional way or God validates the detriment or disadvantages of our following tradition. I believe that most of us agree, God does not lie or give false testimony; and that which God reveals to us is the absolute truth, which is distorted or corrupted only by our misinterpretation or misunderstanding of that which the Spirit of God reveals to us through each experience that we have.

Santa Clause is Coming to Town

Before learning that Santa Clause was only a myth, our behavior and expectation reflected our belief that Santa Clause was real and would visit our homes— that is if we were fortunate—on or before Christmas Eve. Black people, like all other people who celebrate Christmas, are now faced with a dilemma. Even though they may have grown up and finally realized that the character is not real, the promotion of the fictional Santa Clause remains an integral part of the Christmas tradition. I am convinced that the whole notion of Christmas, particularly for children, becomes lost or corrupted when parents attempt to extricate Santa Clause from its paganish traditional beginning. Choosing to ignore the true history of the celebration and festivities, people whose faith is in Christianity traditionally link celebrating Christmas to their religious beliefs in the stories told about the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth. Those who believe in Christmas as a religious holiday therefore are more tightly bound to traditions that represent some aspect of the religious stories they have adopted as true and less bound by belief in the pagan traditions that gave birth to Christmas festivities. Consider the time and effort people spend manufacturing things to simulate Santa Clause to their children, the time teachers and parents waste with children writing letters to a fictional character, and the disappointment of children not having Santa Clause come down their chimney, especially when many of their homes did not even have a chimney. Consider all that time, effort, and money wasted over a myth that brings to each family more expense, disappointment, and depression, than it does happiness and merriment. After learning that Santa Clause is not real and is not some