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September 26, 2023February 20, 2024

How to take an unconventional look at your principles

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Are you a principled person? Do you stand for your convictions with passion because you believe they make you a better human? But when you’re honest, you’re also feeling drained because you’re constantly fighting for them. Let me take you on a thought experiment and let’s take an unconventional look at your principles.

Imagine you live in a world where you’re certain that your principles elevate you. You’re someone with strong convictions. A proud idealist. You’ve never smoked a cigarette. You don’t own a car. You’ve never been drunk, ever. You don’t believe in giving change to street beggars. You think armies are a waste of tax-payer money. And you boycott Amazon.

In everyday life, you stand for your principles with passion. You can make your case with crushing eloquence and limitless energy. Some people admire you for that. Others call you opinionated. And others feel threatened by you (especially if they are men and you are a woman). For you, standing for your principles makes you feel worthy and in control. It makes you a better person. Someone who lives their life rightly.

In this world, when you live your life believing that your principles elevate you, you always have an agenda — at least unconsciously. You push your viewpoints on others. And you push hard. Conversations become verbal battles. You’re right and you need others to get it!

Every interaction turns into a competition.
Holding on to your convictions and defending your position (read: attacking others’ position) is a way of reassuring yourself that you’re strong. That your existence matters. That you are not scum. Clinging to your principles is your strategy to not feel weak. To elevate yourself from scum.
 
In this world, you tell a friend that he can only attend one of your famed dinner evenings once he hasn’t smoked for three consecutive months. [You feel like his savior because no one else is as categorical with him.] You regularly all but destroy your mother’s faith with arguments and relentless insistence about how stupid religion and how fraught the Catholic Church is. [You feel like you’re the only one who can set her straight.]
 

Life in this world is exhausting. I can sense it. And if you’re really honest with yourself, you can admit that defending your principles “against others” doesn’t make you feel elevated. It makes you feel miserable. When you attack people, you don’t like yourself. Often, you don’t even recognize yourself in these situations. Your fear of feeling weak and meaningless is so unbearable that you have to direct it towards others. Away from yourself. And in that process, ironically, you end up feeling like scum. Thinking that your principles elevate you does exactly the opposite: It diminishes you. And you diminish others. But you don’t see another option.

Your self-worth depends on your being principled.

Now, for a moment, picture that same world with one but critical difference. You don’t believe that your principles elevate you. How would you experience life in that world? Who would you be?

You’re still an idealist. You still have strong convictions. You haven’t started smoking yet, you still use public transit and buy books at the local bookstore… But you see that in that world, you can actively listen to what people are saying. You’re able to keep an open mind towards their views, even when you don’t share them. You actually see their perspective and hear what moves them. Perhaps you’re even surprised to find out new things about them. And you’re able to connect with them at a level of depth you hadn’t thought possible.
 
In everyday life of that world, you don’t feel the need to argue your point. You’re no longer interested in control or in feeling validated. You already know that your existence is meaningful. You’re much more drawn to inquire about the person you’re talking with. Your interactions are not about being better or worse, living rightly or wrongly. They’re simply about b e i n g!
 

In that world, interactions are led by curiosity and respect. They feel light and soft and quite possibly energizing. Gone is the fear of inferiority. The dread of meaningless existence doesn’t exist.

Every interaction becomes an opportunity for connection.
In that world, you invite your friend to your dinner party without any strings attached and rejoice their presence; you learn about your mother’s idea of devotion, her experience of grace and her spiritual practice; you may even realize that you inadvertently kept yourself from discovering your own spirituality because you saw religion as inherently dubious and thus anything remotely spiritual as unworthy of your attention.
 
And slowly, you realize how much energy you wasted believing that your principles elevated you. How much suffering you created for yourself and possibly for others.
 
Then, a sense of peace starts spreading through you. The urge to attack is gone. No more stakes. There is nothing of you on the line anymore. Without this belief, your thinking empowers you, and it empowers others. And you experience that such a life is effortless, calm, joyful and free.
 
What a life this would be! After x number of years (almost forty in my case), you find yourself seeing straight through a very painful illusion!
All your life you had mis-taken your principles for the truth.

The instant that understanding comes into awareness, there is a monumental shift. You finally see that you have a choice! You can continue living in THIS world or you can consciously choose to start living in THAT world.

What’s more for that world, you don’t have to give up your principles! There’s no need to compromise your values. You only need to let go of the idea that your principles are the truth. When your principles are no longer a means to establish your superiority, conversations actually have the potential to be elevating because they’re grounded in a desire to sincerely share one’s mind and to be radically open to receive any perspective without judgment.
 
You have a choice. All it takes is for you to make it — sincerely and with commitment.
 
When you make this choice, your world may feel upside-down at first. You may — almost certainly — experience resistance towards the new world in the beginning. You may still start girding yourself for battle, only to stop short as you’re about to unleash your torrent of words on the person sitting across from you. And it may take all your might to keep that heart open to what you’re hearing. It’s normal when we are working to overcome a mental programming as engrained as this one. You may even “visit” your old world (involuntarily) at times. I still do on occasion. But your eyes cannot un-see the illusion. And a so far dormant part of yourself may continue to awaken. A part that has always known, which way is up.
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