Chapter 41: Material Things Will Not Bring You Happiness

Material things do not necessarily bring you happiness. That is a fact of life. It is a hard fact to understand sometimes, especially in a society that tries very hard to teach you otherwise. It is very common to get into a mode where you think, "If only I had object X, my life would be perfect and I would be happy." You REALLY want something: a new TV, a new car, a special pair of shoes, whatever. Then you buy it and you LOVE having it for a few days. But over time you get bored or it wears out. You can see this pattern repeated constantly in your own life. For example, your parents and grandparents likely spent thousands and thousands of dollars on toys for you as you were growing up: Dump trucks and Barbie dolls and video games and electric cars and on and on and on. All of those toys got boring or broken or outgrown eventually. They brought happiness for a moment or a week, but over time they became worthless and your desire turned to a new object.
This pattern begs the following question: "If material things bring just a temporary and short-term happiness, then what does that mean?" It might mean that you have to buy material objects at a rate of perhaps one per day to sustain the temporary and short-term high of getting something new. The problem is, that begins to sound a lot like a drug habit. This train of thinking can get you into some very deep areas. Things like:

• What is happiness?
• What does it mean to be happy?
• What do I want to do in my life?
• Does life have meaning?
• And so on.

Very deep. There is a difference between material happiness, which implies having all the basic (or extravagant) comforts necessary to live life, and spiritual happiness, which implies something else altogether. I had a friend whose philosophy was this:
No matter how much money you make, you always want more. So if you make $25,000 (1997) you believe that if you just made $50,000 you would be happy. But then you begin to make $50,000. At that point you believe that if you just made $100,000 you would be happy, and so on through life. This pattern is true whether you make $25,000 or $10,000,000 a year, because as you earn more money you acquire more expensive tastes. It seems to me that you might as well learn to be happy on $25,000 a year, figure out an easy way to earn it and then have the rest of your time free to do what you want. This sort of philosophy implies that you can find something other than material happiness to give meaning to your life. The thing about "wealth" is that there is more than one way to measure it. Traditionally it is measured in dollars, but there are many other scales. You can be "rich" in ways that have nothing to do with money. For example:

• Rich in friends—A person who cultivates friendships and who is a joy to be around can have hundreds of good friends and can be rich beyond the wildest dreams of others.
• Rich in health—A person who spends time eating right, exercising and relaxing from stress can be extremely healthy, and this health can be far more valuable than any amount of money.
• Rich in strength—A person who works out with weights every day, runs, swims, etc. can be rich in strength and will have an attractive body.
• Rich in family—A person who devotes time to his or her spouse and children will have a strong and happy family that is rewarding throughout life.
• Rich in knowledge—A person who reads and studies will become rich in knowledge.
• Rich in skill—A person who practices anything daily (a skill, a sport, prayer, whatever) will become excellent in that skill area. Excellence has its own rewards.
• Rich in character— A person who works hard at being honest and truthful in all situations will become rich in character and will be trusted by everyone.

One funny thing about all of these different areas is that none of them are taxed. You are taxed on the money you earn, and that is it. There is no knowledge tax, for example. You can learn freely throughout life and acquire a huge "bank account" of knowledge. No one can steal it or diminish it in any way. Presumably, knowledge is the one thing you might be able to take with you to Heaven. All of these alternative types of wealth are different from financial wealth, and yet all of them can be equally rewarding in their own ways. The point is that the act of buying things by itself, despite what television tells you, may not be what will bring you maximum happiness in life. Things like good friends, a loving spouse, well-raised children, a home built on love, a good relationship with God, a clear conscience, a worthy goal and a job you truly enjoy bring you contentment that lasts and has meaning. These things are often very hard for some teenagers to understand, but as you mature they become more important.
As you look at the world around you and come to understand what is important to you, keep these things in mind. Think about what it is that you enjoy and what makes you truly happy. See what you find. In thinking about it consciously, you might be surprised by what you discover. Money is incredibly important—you need it to survive. But it is not the only thing you need, and money itself will not bring lasting happiness to most people. Man does not live by bread alone.
The Meaning of Life
As you ponder things like the importance of money and the role of happiness, you often end up at the question, "What is the meaning of life?" For most teenagers, this question is both important and confounding. Like its partner, "Who am I?" it is unique to you. Only you can provide the answer.
There are as many answers to the question, "What is the meaning of life?" as there are people. However, the answers often break into broad categories. By looking at some of the categories (as well as creating categories of your own) you can often come to understand how you want to answer the question. The following three sections look at three different ways that you can think about the question. This list is not exhaustive, and I am not advocating any of them. They simply offer you some examples.
Life Has No Meaning
What is the meaning of life for a rabbit? A rabbit is born. It eats and sleeps. It reaches sexual maturity and has children of its own. It is either eaten or dies of natural causes. When it dies there is no "heaven." It simply dies and that is the end of it. In such a scenario it is possible to conclude that life for a rabbit has no meaning. Rabbits exist to produce other rabbits and thus keep the species alive, but even that has little or no meaning in the grand scheme of things.
The "life has no meaning" school of thought applies that same line of reasoning to human beings. Humans, so the logic goes, have no soul and no afterlife, and therefore are no different from rabbits. When we die we die, and that is the end of it. This thought process can lead to one of several behavior patterns:

• Because life has no meaning, there is no point to living. I should wallow in self-pity and a private misery for years at a time.
• Because life has no meaning, I might as well be as obnoxious as possible—This is the "juvenile delinquent" and "career criminal" school of thought. Since life is meaningless, you might as well make as many people miserable as possible by killing people, robbing them, vandalizing things and so on. It is unclear how the connection from "my life has no meaning" to "therefore everyone else should be miserable" is made, but these people make it nonetheless.
• Because life has no meaning, I might as well enjoy it while I am alive—A corollary is "I may die tomorrow, so I had better live it up today." Another somewhat more positive corollary is, "Life is a journey; enjoy the ride." In either case, life is seen as a terminating state of being, so the more you enjoy it now the better.
• Life may have no meaning, but I choose to make other lives better during my time here—This is the opposite and positive side of the "juvenile delinquent" school of thought.

Life Has Meaning Through Human Society  Assume that there is no God and no afterlife. Even so, it is possible for life to have meaning through the larger and ongoing society we live in. By looking at your life as a part of a whole rather than as an individual life, it can have meaning when you ask a question like, "Where is humanity, as a whole, headed?"
Think of it this way: Human beings have progressed from the point where we were strictly animals to the point where we are thinking, knowing beings who have just started to harness space travel, computers and communication. In just 100 years we have gone from an agricultural society to a technical society. This transformation has not occurred because of one person, but instead because of the contributions of billions of people. Each of us does one small thing that moves society forward. For example, many people worked to develop the telephone and build the switching infrastructure that makes up the telephone network. Many other people invented the Internet and built the systems on top of the phone system that make the Internet possible. Many more people worked to get a phone wire to your house. Still more people invented, refined and popularized computer hardware and software. Many more worked on modems and web sites. As a result of all of this effort you can now easily dial in to the Internet and retrieve billions of bytes of data from around the world using the World Wide Web.
Given our rate of technical progress, imagine what you will be able to do 100 years from now in terms of communication, calculations, travel, and so on. One day we will be able to colonize other planets. One day we will be able to travel to other solar systems and galaxies. One day we will be able to move huge amounts of matter to create new planets. One day we will, in theory, be able to design our own universes. When that happens, humanity will have become something else entirely. If we become immortal and can redesign or create universes, then we will be entirely unlike what we are today. Perhaps at that point we will find a completely different way to look at the universe and understand its significance.
In such a context, you are one part of the process that gets us there. Choose a worthwhile goal that moves humanity forward and work toward it.
Life Has Meaning Through God
Most religions contain a concept of Heaven or an afterlife. Christians, for example, believe in an eternal life through belief in Jesus Christ:
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. [Source: The Bible: John 3:16] By believing in God, Heaven and an afterlife, life has meaning because it is not an end in itself. Instead, life is part of an ongoing and eternal process. The life we have on earth is just one small step. If you believe in God and Heaven the questions then shift:

• If there is a Heaven and Hell, how can I get into the former and avoid the latter?
• What do I take with me to Heaven? What can I do to prepare?

Many teenagers rebel against the idea of God and Heaven in much the way that they rebel against Santa Claus as pre-teens. There is, after all, no direct proof that God exists. For example, He has never taken over all the TV stations and spoken to all of humanity to prove His existence.

A good book to read for more information is A Simple Path by Mother Teresa. See the references section for more information.

And yet there is more subtle evidence. There is the universe itself, for example. Where did it come from? There are thousands of consistent and reputable stories about near-death experiences. There is growing scientific evidence of the power of prayer (see, for example, the April 1996 issue of McCall’s magazine, page 86 for an overview). These things combine together in such a way that you must wonder: Is there more to life than what we can see? And if so, how does it affect us when we die? These questions often lead adults to God. God gives their lives meaning because death is not the end—it is the beginning.

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Chapter 37: Life Is Short

Life is short. That is a fact of life. It is impossible to understand this simple fact as a teenager, however. As a teenager you look at senior citizens and you know you will never look like that. You look at people like your parents—people in their 30s and 40s—and you cannot imagine ever being that old. The thought of looking just two years down the road is probably difficult. Most teenagers feel they are immortal. That is one of the great advantages of being a teenager (see Chapter 16). This feeling of immortality will last perhaps into your 20s, then it will vanish as reality sets in. Since it is impossible, I won’t attempt to convince you that you, too, will one day be 60 or 80. Or even 30. However, let me try to give you an analogy to help you understand why you feel the way you do about life.
Let’s say you are standing in a desert. You are standing next to a gigantic tank that holds 30,000 gallons of water. The tank is 11 or 12 feet in diameter and about 40 feet tall. The tank is full to the brim. This is your drinking water. Every day you drink about a gallon of water.
Let’s say that someone walks up to you and says, "Hey, can I have a gallon of water?" Your response would probably be, "Sure, why not?" In fact, if someone asked you for 100 gallons of water, your reaction might be the same. You’ve got 30,000 gallons after all, and there is nothing for you to do with it but drink it. What do you care? If you spill a little water, it doesn’t matter either.
As you go through life drinking about a gallon of water a day, you begin to notice something. Each day it doesn’t seem like you are taking anything out of the tank, but over time you can see that the level in the tank is getting lower. You look in one day and the tank is only half-full. Then it is only a quarter full. Then there is only an inch in the bottom of the tank. At that point, how much would a gallon of water be worth to you? Quite a bit, because now you can see that your water is scarce: you can see the end of the supply looming in the near future. One fateful day you extract the last drop from the tank, and you realize that today is the day you will die. You are, after all, standing in a desert. And that night you die.
The number 30,000 is significant. If you assume you will live to be about 82, there are 30,000 days in your life. Right now your tank of water is full. If you are 15 you have only used about 5,500 gallons, so water seems to be plentiful. In fact, the supply of water seems to be infinite and you feel immortal. However, each day you live you drink a gallon from your tank, and there is no way to add any more once you use it.

What you often don’t realize as a teenager is that there are a lot of easy ways to put holes in your tank or spill large quantities of water on the ground. As you are spilling the water you don’t really care because you have so much water it seems infinite. However, you can easily spill 20 or 30 years of water as a teenager. That water will be extremely valuable later in life. When you get older there are going to be lots of important things that you will want to enjoy: your children, your grandchildren, your spouse, your friends, your retirement. At that point water will be extremely valuable to you, and you will realize how foolish you were to spill it as a teenager. But at that point there will be absolutely nothing that you can do to get it back. You will die way too early. The following sections look at the three most common ways for people to waste life.
Smoking is Stupid
  One of the best ways to shorten your life is to smoke. If you take up smoking as a teenager, you might spill perhaps 10,000 of your 30,000 gallons of water.
Ask any adult what they think about smoking. Any adult, smoker or non. If you ask non-smokers, what they will tell you is that smoking is a bad habit. If you ask smokers, they will also tell you is that smoking is a bad habit and they wish they never started. You really should try this—go to an office building where there are older smokers standing outside and ask them what they think about the habit. You will learn a lot.
Imagine that I come up to you one day at school and we have the following conversation:

Me: Hi, How’s it going? You: Fine.
Me: Hey, I’ve got this new thing I’d like you to try.
You: Tell me more.
Me: Well, it’s a pill I think you will want to start taking.
You: What does this pill do?
Me: First of all, it is a known carcinogen. It is extremely likely you will get lung cancer due to this pill, for example. It is going to cause a lot of other short- and long-term health problems as well. It will make your breath, hair and clothes stink. It will make a mess of your car. You will take this pill about 40 times a day. This pill, by the way, is addictive. Once you start taking it, it will be extremely difficult to stop. And a supply of pills will cost about $2 to $4 a day, depending on where you buy them.
You: I have to pay for this??? Are you kidding??? This pill sounds absolutely disgusting!!! Why in the world would I want to take it???"
Me: It will make you think you are cool.
You: Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? Sign me up! Where can I get some???
Two other good reasons not to smoke:

• An average smoker who starts at age 15, dies at age 60 and smokes two packs a day will consume 657,000 cigarettes. 657,000 cigarette butts is disgusting.
• Assume each cigarette costs a nickel, and assume the money wasted on cigarettes was instead deposited in a mutual fund earning 10%. The value of the money wasted on cigarettes during a lifetime is about $500,000. If you assume cigarettes cost a dime each the value exceeds $1,000,000. There must be a better way to spend that money.

Besides that, cigarettes can significantly shorten your life. Although you likely don’t care about that now, you most certainly will in the future. That is a fact of life. [For more information on smoking, see this article]
TV is a Wasteland
One thing you will notice about successful adults is that they watch far less TV than unsuccessful adults. A successful adult thinks, "Life is short! Who has time to waste it on TV?" There are three problems with TV that lead to this trend:

1. The rate of information transfer for TV is very low when compared to the data rate for reading. For example, the transcript for an hour-long educational show like Nova is very thin, and you can read it in 10 or 20 minutes. If you want to learn something, it is almost always faster to read about it. If you want to know what is happening in the world, read the newspaper. It is always much more detailed than the TV news and you can control exactly what you read.
2. Most of the stuff on TV is incredibly mindless crap that has no value. It is either harmless but a total waste of time, or it is harmful. It is harmful when it repeatedly injects negative thoughts into your brain. For example, a typical child is exposed to 8,000 murders on television by the time he or she finishes elementary school. A typical teenager sees 200,000 acts of violence on TV by age 18. The vast majority of people in normal life are exposed to zero murders and very few violent acts. TV makes violence seem normal and acceptable. What value does that have?
3. TV transmits commercials that lead you to buy things you would neither want nor need in the absence of TV. These items are a waste. See Chapter 29 for details.

The following quote is interesting: I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air, and stay there. You will see a vast wasteland—a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families… blood and thunder … mayhem, violence, sadism, murder … private eyes, more violence, and cartoons … and, endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending.   This quote was made by FCC chairman Newton N. Minow to the National Association of Broadcasters. What is funny about this quote is the fact that it was made in 1961. If anything, TV has gotten worse rather than better since then. The average American spends about 2 hours a day watching TV. That is the equivalent of over 18 weeks of 8-hour days. This is time, and life, that is completely wasted. Read instead, take a walk, get a part-time job, learn to play an instrument, create a work of art, talk to other people, take up a sport (see Chapter 36) or do anything constructive. Eighteen weeks of 8-hour days is a gigantic amount of time, and you would be amazed at what you could accomplish if you used that time constructively. If you stop watching TV today and use the newly free time in a productive way, you can begin being far more successful in life.
The following facts are published by an organization called TV-free America (http://www.essential.org/tvfa/). They are enlightening:

• Number of 30-second commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
• Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 38.5
• Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680
• Percentage of children ages 6-17 who have TVs in their bedrooms: 50
• Percentage of day care centers that use TV during a typical day: 70
• Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
• Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500
• Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66
• Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
• Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
• Percentage of Americans who believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem: 79

Here is a thought experiment to try. Imagine that you had been brought up without ever watching television. Your parents then take you to a grocery store. Would you want Lucky Charms? Sugar Pops? Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes? No. You would not have any preferences when you walk down the cereal aisle. You would try some cereals until you found one you that suited you. Now imagine going to a toy store. Would you want GI Joe? Barbie? Any action figure or doll? No! In fact, you would think that a lot of these things were stupid. TV commercials make you want things that you would never want or need otherwise. Simply stop watching television. It will be hard at first. You may not be able to comprehend life without TV, but after a few months your head will clear and you will find that you enjoy life a whole lot more. Try it and see.
Drugs are Worthless
And then there are drugs and drug addiction: heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and all the rest. No successful person uses drugs. That is a fact of life. Drugs make you stupid for long periods of time, and that limits your potential for success.
The promise of drugs is a "high" or a "feeling of euphoria." For example, heroin causes a euphoric "rush." I have heard it described as "better than sex." I have heard it described as "like being in heaven." All kinds of things. The problem is that the feeling always comes at a cost once the high ends. The cost is a feeling of depression of greater magnitude. You cannot have the high without the despair or depression. You can safely ignore anyone who tells you otherwise. So you are forced to either maintain the high or absorb the despair. Unfortunately, the despair lasts far longer than the high does. So what have you gained?
Drugs are a lot different from sex, and they certainly are not "better than sex." If you have a wonderful night of passion with your spouse, you will feel very good for a long time afterward. Drugs are nothing like this. With drugs you get a rush, then you crash and burn. The only way out is to take the drug again. This is why you see people on cocaine binges or week-long sessions with amphetamines. To stop means despair.
What, you might ask, is the point? If the high is always followed by despair, what have you gained? In fact, you have lost. The euphoria is addictive and causes you to crave it.

There simply is no value, or point, in getting started with drugs. Simply walk away from the people who tell you otherwise.

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For Teenagers: Understanding Smoking

If you are a teenager, chances are that you have considered taking up smoking at some point. About 3,000 teenagers pick up the smoking habit each day in America, or roughly one million new teenage smokers per year. About 60% of all high school students try smoking by the time they are seniors. That means lots of new smokers, and it also means there's a good chance that you or one of your friends is smoking right now. What I would like to do in this article is help you, as a teenager, to understand why so many teenagers start smoking. If you understand why teenagers start smoking, chances are you won't smoke. It is sort of like a magic trick. The first time you see the trick it looks really cool and mysterious. But then if someone tells you how it's done it's not mysterious at all anymore and the trick loses a lot of its appeal. Smoking works the same way.

The Pill

Imagine you and I having the following conversation:

Me: Hi, How’s it going? You: Fine. Me: Hey, I’ve got this new thing I’d like you to try. You: Tell me more. Me: Well, it’s a pill I think you will want to start taking. You: What does this pill do? Me: First of all, it is a known carcinogen. It is extremely likely you will get lung cancer due to this pill. It is going to cause a lot of other short- and long-term health problems as well. It will make your breath, hair and clothes stink. It will make a mess of your car. You will take this pill about 40 times a day. This pill, by the way, is addictive. Once you start taking it, it will be extremely difficult to stop. And a supply of pills will cost about $2 to $4 a day, depending on where you buy them. You: I have to pay for this??? Are you kidding??? This pill sounds absolutely disgusting!!! Why in the world would I want to take it??? Me: It will make you think you are cool.

If I offered you a pill like that, would you take it?

Why?

  Let's start at the beginning - why do teenagers start smoking? If you ask teenagers, here are the four most common reasons:

1. Group acceptance - if their friends smoke, many teenagers will begin smoking simply to maintain their acceptance within the group. AKA "peer pressure".
2. Image projection - there is definitely an "image" attached to smoking by advertising. For women it is one of sexiness and desirability, and for men it is one of rugged individualism, fun or coolness. If a teenager buys into that image, then smoking begins.
3. Rebellion - many teenagers take up smoking because they know it annoys/bothers/infuriates their parents and other adults. There is also a certain element of "independence" or "doing what is not allowed" or "walking on the wild side" worked in as well.
4. Adult aspirations - some teenagers believe that by smoking they are acting like an adult. If the teenager is raised in a community where most of the adults smoke, then this is perhaps a logical conclusion.

There is one other factor at work as well, and most teenagers have no idea it is happening. This factor is the teenage mind itself. The following graph is interesting:
What this graph shows is the age at which people begin smoking. On this graph you can see that some 11 and 12 year-olds start, but in general the ages 13 through 18 are the big "start smoking" years - nearly everyone who starts smoking starts between these ages. Here is the important thing to notice: No one starts smoking after age 20 or so. That is, if you can make it to age 20 without smoking, you will never start. This is an extremely interesting fact of life. No adult ever makes the decision to smoke. The question to ask yourself as a teenager is "why is that?"

The Adult Mind

  The "teenage mind" is much different from the "adult mind." All teenagers eventually figure this out - that is the point at which they start to become adults. But until a teenager turns on his or her adult brain and begins thinking like an adult, he or she is stuck with a teenage brain. The key concept here is that "being a teenager" is a temporary state meant to be outgrown. In other words, "being a teenager" can be equated to "being a child" at some level. The idea is for a teenager to outgrow teendom and become an adult. Once you understand that, you are on your way. But before that happens your "teenage mind" tends to be extremely non-rational and very reactive. Every single person who starts smoking is doing it because they are using their "teenage mind" to make the decision, rather than an adult mind. You can understand the difference between the teenage mind and the adult mind by looking at these two examples:

• Teenage mind: "A couple of my friends have started smoking. I better start too or they will think I am uncool." (Reactive)
• Adult mind: "A couple of my friends have started smoking. Do I want to start smoking?" (Thinking)

The difference is that the teenage mind reacts, while the adult mind asks and considers options. You, as a teenager, are a blank slate. You, and only you, get to determine exactly how your life will turn out. You get to choose exactly what appears on your slate by making choices from a nearly infinite pool. In other words, you get to design your life. You get to decide on things like:

• Who will I marry?
• How many children will I have?
• How will I dress?
• Where will I live?
• What kind of car will I drive?
• Will I go to college, and if so which one will I attend?
• What will be my major in college?
• What will I choose for my career?
• How much money will I make, and why?
• What will be my attitude toward life?
• Will I smoke? Will I take drugs?
• And so on...

However, you only get to choose if you think about these things and make conscious choices.

Addiction

The problem for many teenagers, and for nearly every teenager who smokes, is that the choices are not conscious decisions - they are reactions. You can go back and change many of these decisions later, but smoking is not one of them because smoking is addictive. This fact of life helps answer the following important question: If no adult using their adult brain would ever start smoking, then why do you see millions of adults smoking everywhere you go? The reason is simple: Every adult smoker started smoking as a teenager because of a silly decision made by their teenage brain, but once addicted to cigarettes it is impossible to stop! That is the only reason you see adult smokers. No one in their right mind (that excludes, of course, a teenager using a teenager mind) would smoke if they didn't have to. But cigarettes are highly addictive so adult smokers have to smoke. Here are the four main reasons adult smokers would love to quit smoking:

1. Smoking has serious health consequences. On average, each minute of smoking reduces a person's life expectancy by a minute. When you consider that a two-pack-a-day smoker consumes on the order of 600,000 cigarettes in a lifetime, and it takes three to five minutes to smoke a cigarette, this is a significant factor.
2. Smoking is addictive. Once you get hooked it is very difficult to stop. Once hooked, you have to stop every half hour or so and smoke another cigarette. You have no choice!
3. Smoking is extremely expensive. Cigarettes range in price from a nickel to a dime each, so if you are consuming 40 a day the cost averages about $1,000 per year. There must be a better way to spend $1,000!
4. Smoking has effects on personal hygiene. Cigarettes are messy and they make your hair, clothes and breath stink.

As a teenager, with a teenager mind, you may think that you are somehow immune to the addictive power of smoking. Somehow you will not become an addict. All you have to do is look at the millions and millions of adult smokers in America today - all of them thought exactly the same thing. You are no different.

The Pill

  Another way to understand smoking is to imagine that you and I having the following conversation:

Me: Hi, How’s it going? You: Fine. Me: Hey, I’ve got this new thing I’d like you to try. You: Tell me more. Me: Well, it’s a pill I think you will want to start taking. You: What does this pill do? Me: First of all, it is a known carcinogen. It is extremely likely you will get lung cancer due to this pill. It is going to cause a lot of other short- and long-term health problems as well. It will make your breath, hair and clothes stink. It will make a mess of your car. You will take this pill about 40 times a day. This pill, by the way, is addictive. Once you start taking it, it will be extremely difficult to stop. And a supply of pills will cost about $2 to $4 a day, depending on where you buy them. You: I have to pay for this??? Are you kidding??? This pill sounds absolutely disgusting!!! Why in the world would I want to take it???" Me: It will make you think you are cool. You: Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? Sign me up! Where can I get some???

If I offered you a pill like that, would you take it? Yes you would, if you are using your "teenage mind", because being cool is important to you. But look at the price you have to pay. "Being cool" won't matter nearly so much to you once you turn on your adult mind. Plus, smoking isn't nearly as discrete as taking a pill - everyone knows that you are a smoker. Unfortunately, for every adult who sees you it's like wearing a big "I'm a Stupid Teenager!" sign around your neck. With a teenager mind you can't see that. In fact, if you are "rebellious" your teenager mind is thinking that is exactly what you want to say. However, your adult brain will turn on in a year or two. If you start smoking as a teenager then you are going to be stuck with an addictive habit that is disgusting, expensive, unhealthy and unwanted.
If you are considering smoking, here is something to try: think about waiting until you are 20 to start using cigarettes. They will still be there - cigarettes are never going away. See what you think about them at that point. You will be amazed!
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Chapter 35: Understanding Laws, Police and Lawyers

For many teenagers, all the laws and restrictions that society imposes on everybody seem ridiculous. A teenager is faced with a wide variety of limitations:

• Speed limits
• Noise ordinances
• Minimum drinking age
• Community standards
• Curfews
• Social etiquette
• Bureaucratic rules, like those at the Department of Motor Vehicles
• Building codes
• Drug prohibitions
• Closing times
• Truancy rules
• Licenses and permits
• "No Trespassing" signs
• Helmet and seat belt laws
• Application deadlines
• Dress codes
• Parental rules and restrictions
• School regulations
• And on and on and on

It seems like every time you turn around someone else is telling you what you can and cannot do. It may also seem like a large number of these laws and rules are ridiculous and unneeded. Why are there seat belt laws, for example? If you want to drive around without a seatbelt, why should anyone care? Same thing with helmet laws on motorcycles. Why can't 16-year olds buy beer? Why can't people play their stereos as loud as they want? Why are there building codes? If you want to build something, why can't you simply build it rather than having to read and abide by the uniform electrical code, the uniform plumbing code, etc.?
  Rules, restrictions and laws are all facts of life. There is nothing that you can do about them but accept them. However, they are much easier to accept if you understand their intent and realize that they are open to change.

IT'S A LOT BETTER THAN IT USED TO BE

One thing to keep in mind is that, at least for teenagers, things are a lot less restrictive than they used to be. The following are the "Regulations for Dormitories" that were posted on every student's door at North Carolina State University in 1905:

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REGULATIONS FOR DORMITORIES Duties of Students. - To be present at all classes, exercises, formations and inspections; to observe the college regulations; to avoid whatever wastes time and money, or damages health and character; to do unto others as you would be done by.


REGULATIONS. Study Hours. - 8:15 AM to 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM to 4:15 PM - 7 to 10:30 PM
Inspections. - PM 7:00, 9:00, 10:30; Sunday, breakfast formation; special inspections at any time.
Rooms. - Swept, tidied and bed made by 8:00 AM and kept so; doors unlocked 8:00 to 10:30 AM; each occupant responsible for room and contents
Uniform. - Worn at all times (except during work in Barns, shops, laboratory, etc.) by all students (except winter course students and specials over 21 who room and board outside of college).
Liberty. - For all, Saturday PM 1:30 to 6:00; Sunday, 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM, 1:30 to 6:00 PM; 7:15 to 10:30 PM.
Juniors - Friday, 7:15 to 10:30 PM; sign liberty book (Friday night).
Seniors - Two evenings (according to choice), 7:15 to 10:30 PM; sign liberty book (nights of choice).
Vaccination. - Required of all students
Withdrawal. - Any student not employing his time profitably to himself and to the college.
Dismissal. - For cheating, falsehood, stealing, insubordination, hazing, drunkenness, gambling and other gross offenses.


DEMERITS. 1 demerit for tardy, loafing in study hours, delaying to send in excuse.
2, absent dinner or supper formation, untidy room.
3, absent breakfast or chapel formation.
4, absent 7:00 PM or 9:00 PM inspection; not wearing uniform, not signing liberty book, lights after 10:45 PM.
10, absent 10:30 PM inspection; absent class, shop, drill; violating liberty in daytime, smoking cigarettes or having same in room or possession; playing cards or dice or having same in room or possession; having in possession or room pistol, dirk or other deadly weapon.
25, absent after 11:30 PM, violating liberty at night.
50 to 100, very disorderly or scandalous conduct; using liquor or having same in possession or in room; interference with others.
100 demerits in one year will require withdrawal.

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If these were the restrictions imposed on college students at a public college, you can imagine what the restrictions for high school students must have looked like in 1905. The point is, teenagers are freer today than they have ever been in the history of the world. Whether that is a good or bad thing is a topic frequently debated by adults.

THE PURPOSE OF LAWS AND RULES

Although it may seem at times that laws and rules are nothing but obstacles to your freedom, most laws and rules have legitimate reasons for their existence. There are three reasons for a law or rule to exist:

• A law exists because a majority of the people in this country agrees with it. Why can't you walk down the street naked on a hot summer day? Because a majority of people in this country don't want to look at you. It's as simple as that.
• A law exists because it promotes the health or safety of everyone in society. Seat belt laws are enforced in all 50 states because seat belts save a lot of lives. A majority of people will normally support life-saving rules even if they infringe on personal freedoms to some extent. All building codes and health ordinances exist to protect the public in this same way.
• A law exists because it helps society to function more smoothly. Traffic lights are a perfect example of this sort of law. Because people obey traffic lights society works efficiently. If everyone did whatever they felt like doing at every intersection, we would have anarchy.

You can see an example of the second type of law when looking at building codes. Building codes are a classic example of rules that are put in place and enforced to protect the public health and safety. They also demonstrate how changes take place over time as society learns new things and why upon your arrival on the scene things seem like a complicated mess.
Take the building codes for plumbing. Let's say you want to put a toilet in a house. Two or three hundred years ago this was not a question--everyone used outhouses. If you visit the Governor's mansion in Williamsburg, VA, you will see that even England's high colonial governor used a pair of three-holer outhouses located at the back of the formal garden. Eventually, public water supplies and pressurized well systems allowed people to have indoor plumbing, and this allowed for the addition of indoor toilets. A toilet has to flush somewhere, so sewer systems evolved.
Why can't you run the sewer line from a toilet or a sink out of the side of the house so it spills on the ground? That certainly would be easy and inexpensive, but people learned fairly quickly that human waste spilled on the ground smells bad and leads to incredible disease problems. Therefore, the idea of septic tanks and sewer systems evolved. The uniform plumbing code lists hundreds of rules for septic tank installation. These rules ensure that tanks work properly over many years. Now that you have a septic tank, you can add sewer lines from the sink or toilet to the septic tank. Say you tried this approach:

The problem with this approach is that as the septic tank fills up with stuff it produces a rather malodorous cloud of fumes. These fumes float from the septic tank up the sewer line to the sink and into the bathroom. Not good. Therefore, plumbing codes require a "P-trap" at every drain opening, as shown here:



You may have wondered why you find these funny loops of pipe under every sink in your house. The idea is that water gets trapped in the "P." This water blocks the fumes from the septic tank and keeps them from entering into the bathroom. Unfortunately, a P-trap alone does not solve the problem because it turns out that the fumes in a septic tank are under pressure. The fumes simply bubble through the water in the trap and cause the same problem. Therefore, there is the concept of a vent pipe, which allows the pressure to escape, as shown here:


You may have always wondered why houses have pipes sticking up out of the roof. They are vent pipes to relieve the pressure so that P-traps can do their jobs. It turns out vents also break vacuums so water flows down the pipes faster. Besides covering P-traps and vent pipes, the uniform plumbing code specifies all sorts of other things:

• The required diameters for pipes
• The allowed materials for pipes
• The types of joints you can use
• The necessary supports for pipes
• The angle at which pipes must fall
• The longest distance for lateral pipes
• And on and on and on through hundreds of pages

The code seems huge and totally ridiculous when you first see it because you missed the 100 years of evolution that have brought us the code we have today. The thing you realize as an adult is that, instead of being ridiculous, all of these rules actually work. When plumbers follow all the rules, they are able to create extremely reliable and safe plumbing systems. Over time new rules get added as people realize funny little quirks and nuances. These new rules prevent problems in the future, and each one makes the code a little bigger and better. Our entire legal system has grown in exactly the same way over the course of several hundred years.
Although it may not seem like it to you, nearly every law or rule has a reason behind it. It either promotes health or safety, helps society to run more smoothly or supports something a majority of the people in this country believe is a good idea. If you find a law where none of these three things are true, then it is time to change the law.

LAWYERS

A lawyer is a person trained to understand our legal system. Because the legal system has grown steadily more complicated over the last several hundred years, a lawyer is almost essential whenever you need to negotiate a legal problem. Let's say that you are unfortunate one day and are pulled over for speeding. Unless you were going 100 miles per hour, you will generally be allowed to either mail in the fine or appear in court. What should you do? You should get a lawyer and appear in court. Even though a lawyer may cost several hundred dollars, it is worth it. Here are two facts of life that you must keep in mind:

• The fine on the ticket may be only $50 or $100, but if the violation shows up as points on your car insurance your insurance will go up. A lot. That is a fact of life. It may be that you are not paying for your car insurance right now, and in fact have no idea how much car insurance costs. Therefore, you might be thinking, "What do I care?" If your parents end up paying $300 a year more for your insurance, that is $300 a year they can't spend on something else, and thus it is $300 they cannot spend on you. Or they may ask that you pay the increase, and then you really will care.
• Points on your insurance last three years in most states. Eventually you will have to pay the insurance bill, and then it really will be your problem. You will be paying $300 extra a year for no good reason. Because the rise in insurance rates greatly exceeds the fine on the ticket, your goal is to avoid the insurance penalty if possible.

When you go to court without a lawyer you will be asked to plead "innocent" or "guilty." If you were innocent you would not have been issued the ticket. Therefore, you are guilty and you might as well have mailed in the fine. With a lawyer present, however, a whole set of extra options open up. Normally a lawyer can do a variety of things to eliminate the points. You will still pay the fine and court costs, as well as the lawyer's bill, but it will end up costing much less over time than an insurance premium increase.
Why can a lawyer get you off the hook? The legal system in this country is incredibly complex. A lawyer is a person experienced with the legal system. The lawyer knows the DA, the judge, all the options and loopholes available in the legal system and all of the areas of flexibility. You hire a lawyer to gain access to this knowledge.
Is this a fair system? Should we have a legal system so complicated that a specialist, in the form of a lawyer, is required to help a normal citizen negotiate it? Should a specialist be able to charge money for this service? Is it fair that rich people, who have the extra money to afford a lawyer, have greater access to this sort of help than other people? These are all good questions. However, it is a fact of life that the system currently works this way. If you don't want to deal with lawyers then don't break the law. It's as simple as that. Or work to change the system.

LAWS AND RULES CHANGE

Look back at the "Regulations for Dormotories" shown earlier. You may have noticed that those rules no longer apply. If you are a teenager and think those rules are dumb, you should thank all of the college students who protested in the 1960s for the elimination of most of those rules, the elimination of the concept of in loco parentis, the creation of such things as coed dorms and so on. It really is possible to change things. Laws and rules are constantly changing. Because you are a teenager and have probably not been through a major change cycle, it may seem to you that this statement is untrue. However, rules are constantly in flux as the ideas, principles and mood of the majority changes. For example, it was illegal for a woman to vote 100 years ago. No one would consider denying women the right to vote today.
One of the most interesting changes I have noted in my lifetime has been the change in smoking rules and regulations. When I was a kid people could and did smoke anytime, anywhere, in any public place. They smoked in airplanes, restaurants, offices, movie theaters, meeting rooms and so on. There were absolutely no restrictions on smoking because a majority of adults in the United States smoked. Look at how things have changed. It is now illegal to smoke in virtually any public area. People stand outside of office buildings to smoke. It was an amazing transformation to watch. In terms of social change timelines it happened very quickly.
The thing that caused this change was the fact that smokers lost their majority in the population. As people have realized how unhealthy smoking is, people have stopped smoking in record numbers. Once non-smokers held a decided majority, all the laws changed.
Let's say you find a law or rule that you think is unreasonable. To change it, all you have to do is convince a majority of voters (meaning adults) to agree with you and work toward a change through your congressman or other elected officials. It is really as simple as that.

DEALING WITH POLICE OFFICERS

Let's say you are driving down the road one night minding your own business. Suddenly, flashing lights appear behind you and you hear a siren. You are being pulled over for speeding. What should you do?When dealing with a police officer, for whatever reason, it is important to keep two things in mind:

• It is the job of police officers to enforce the laws of society. As discussed earlier, the laws of society are agreed to by a majority of the people who make up the society. Therefore, what the police force does is a good thing.
• Society has empowered police officers with absolute authority. That means if you give an officer a good reason to do so, he or she has the right and the power to kill you. To avoid having to resort to that level of force, police officers have other options. For example, they can handcuff you and take you to jail. This is not a minor amount of power.

Police officers, by the nature of the job they hold, have to deal with a lot of rather difficult and often deadly people on a regular basis. When police face any armed assailant, from a drug dealer down to a drunk husband, the individual officers are risking their lives. This makes the job of a police officer different from other jobs--things are taken much more seriously. A police officer in every situation is performing an extremely intricate calculus to determine what level of response is appropriate. Into these calculations goes a healthy margin for personal safety as well as for the spouse and kids at home. If an officer is going to make a mistake, it will often be in favor of too much force rather than too little. Anything else would be suicidal for the officer.
From this discussion you can see that whenever you look at a police officer, you are looking at a person who has the power to take away your freedom or your life and who has every reason to do so immediately rather than waiting. A person with that kind of power is not someone you deal with trivially. This is the kind of person that you treat with maximum respect all of the time, even if he or she seems to be wrong at the moment. To do anything else is extremely dangerous and simply asking for trouble.
When you are pulled over for speeding, you should sit in your seat. You should get respectful very quickly. You should place both hands in clear view on the steering wheel so that it is obvious you are not armed. You should make no sudden movements. You should, in fact, do nothing unless you are specifically told to do it. And you should answer every question with "Sir" or "Ma'am." It is as simple as that. If the police officer is wrong it is probably best to simply keep your mouth shut, cooperate in every way and deal with it later in court.
There was a good story that made all the national news shows and papers in November 1996. It demonstrates why this sort of thing is important. A woman saw a police officer writing a ticket for a parked car at an expired parking meter, so she put a coin in the meter thinking she was being helpful to the person getting the ticket. It turns out that this act is illegal in many cities, and it was illegal in the city she happened to be standing in. Does it make sense that this act is illegal? It doesn't matter. This gets back to the whole idea behind laws--at some point a majority of the public, or a majority of people elected by a majority of the public, felt that this sort of law represented a good idea. Once it is a law it is a law until you change it, and that is simply how our society works.
So, what we have is a police officer standing on the street with a woman who has broken a law. It is not the officer's job to judge the validity of the law. It is the officer's job to enforce the laws created by society. The officer told the woman about her violation. If the woman, at that point, had simply gotten immediately respectful and apologized, it is likely the incident would have ended. However, the woman did not do that because she did not understand how the world works. The officer asked for her ID. She refused. At that point she had committed a serious offense. The officer was forced to escalate and told her she was under arrest. He had no other choice. If the woman had gotten respectful at that point, she would have had problems but they would have been relatively minor. She did not. Instead she attempted to turn and walk away. At that point, of course, the officer had to escalate again and break out the handcuffs because she was resisting arrest. The woman started screaming. And so on. She eventually ended up in jail.
At every single point in the transaction the woman did the wrong thing and the police officer did what his job requires him to do. He simply reacted logically to the woman's actions. The point of all of this is simple: this woman wasted a tremendous amount of her time because she did not treat a police officer with the level of respect that a police officer deserves. If you have a lot of free time in your life that you want to spend in jail, you can follow in her path. In general, however, it is not worth it. Police officers act the way they do because it is their job. Understand that and respect it. It is a fact of life.

Return to the table of contents for The Teenager's Guide to the Real World

Chapter 22: You Can Create a High-Level Vision

You can create a high-level vision of any space that you occupy. This vision allows you to evaluate yourself as well as those around you. It allows you to analyze and, in many cases, truly understand the problems you face. It allows you to become much more strategic in your thinking. Many people never get to the point where they even realize this fact of life. That deficit limits them throughout their lives. Once you realize that it is possible, you can practice this skill and use it to accomplish things both great and mundane. Surprisingly, I realized this fact for the first time during a racquetball game. Let me tell you how it happened so you can understand what I am talking about. I am certainly not a stellar racquetball player. However, I do enjoy playing the game. I had played for about a year, and one day I was playing with a good friend of mine. There came a particular shot in this game: In that shot I was suddenly able to watch the ball and think about it. I can distinctly remember the moment because it was as though a new part of my brain popped into existence and started processing events. It was almost like a new me could stand, at a higher level, and think about the game. What this new part of my brain said was, "OK. This is good. Look at how the ball is tracking. Now look at where you are, and notice where Mike is standing. If you move to here, you will able to reach the ball there. That will allow you to place the ball when you hit it right into the far back corner. He will never be able to reach it." During this time the action of the game seemed to slow down, and I could actually see and move and think at the same time. I was in fact able to hit the ball into the back corner, well out of reach of my friend.
From that moment on my game improved dramatically.
What was amazing about this event was the fact that I had never before in my life actually been able to think about the game. Prior to this moment my brain simply tracked the ball and forced my body to hit the ball. I simply reacted. My conscious mind had never been able to participate. There was simply too much to do for my conscious mind to move to a higher level to analyze things. It is just like when you are learning anything new—it demands all of your concentration. Once you get good at something though, you are able to do it subconsciously without thinking. This is what allows you to walk, chew gum and talk to a friend while avoiding traffic as you walk down a busy sidewalk. You are doing the walking and chewing and avoiding subconsciously, and your mind is able to consciously process the conversation.
What this newfound ability in racquetball allowed me to do is to think strategically. Instead of flailing away at the ball in a reactive mode, I could watch the ball and my opponent, think about them and plan my actions. When you watch a skilled tennis star or basketball player do what they do, you are seeing a person who is able to think perhaps at several different levels about what his own body is doing, what his opponents’ bodies are doing, what the ball is doing and what is necessary to win the point or make the basket. These higher-level thinking processes may be conscious or unconscious, and they make the brilliance of star athletes possible. At the same time, people who seem totally clueless about what they are doing and how the world works have never reached the point where they can effectively think about the world and themselves at this higher level. Everything they do is a reaction to immediate input rather than a step in a longer-range plan.
Once I realized that this was possible in racquetball, it became possible to use this skill in a number of other places. For example, when having a conversation with someone a part of you can move to a higher level and watch the conversation, thinking about the goals and objectives of both people who are talking. This skill is incredibly important in critical meetings and conversations, and it gives you a definite advantage over people who cannot work that way.
Is it always possible to work from a high-level view? No. And that is an important fact. It is easy to drop out of a high-level position and back to "reactive mode." Some of the things that can trigger this downward transition include fatigue, anger and newness. At the same time, however, there are things you can do to force yourself up to a higher position. One of the best things you can do is ask yourself a simple question: "What am I trying to accomplish here? What is my goal?"
Let’s say that you are talking to a friend and your friend is angry. You have two choices. You can react angrily. That is certainly the easiest thing to do but almost always the least productive. The other thing you can do is say to yourself, "This person is a good friend of mine, and I trust her. But something is obviously angering her. What is my goal? My goal is to do what I can to solve the problem and allow our friendship to grow." Now ask her: "What, exactly, is the problem here? I see that you are angry. What is causing the anger?" Something is causing your friend to be angry. It could be a legitimate problem, it could be a misunderstanding, it could be a lack of communication or it could be a variety of other things. By understanding the true cause of the anger and working to eliminate it, you can prevent a major fight. Sometimes the simple act of listening rather than reacting fiercely is enough to defuse the situation so that you can both work toward a solution.
If you are trying to work with someone to accomplish one of your own goals (see Chapter 23), then by moving to a higher level you can often understand how to create a win/win situation. Ask yourself questions like: "What does this person need? What does this person want? What is important to this person? What would make this person happy?" In answering these questions and aligning them with your own desires, you can often reach a solution that makes both sides happy. You can work at a higher level during the conversation. You can think about the situation privately and try to come up with creative options (see Chapter 24). Draw or write options on a piece of paper and analyze them. For example, say you get a job at a fast food restaurant. While you are on the job you notice the manager has a lot of problems staffing weekend nights. You might come up to a higher level and ask yourself, "How can I help solve this problem?" You might volunteer to work three out of four weekends per month in return for extra pay, then negotiate a wage increase that works for both of you. Or you might suggest to the manager a broader program where all people working the weekend shift get extra pay. Look for creative solutions to the problem from a higher level.
Let’s say that you have a problem that is causing you a tremendous amount of dismay at the moment. One way to get a handle on it is to move to a higher level and analyze all of your options, listing the advantages and disadvantages of each. See Chapter 24 for a discussion.
  The ability to move to a higher level is something that requires discipline and practice. You have to have the discipline to remind yourself to move upwards, and you have to practice so that it becomes easier each time you do. Try analyzing problems ahead of time or while you are within them from a higher level and you will find that things are much clearer and easier to understand.
Approaching Concepts from a High Level
Many times when you think about a concept, problem or situation, its solution is much clearer if you raise the level of your thinking. Often this approach means thinking generally rather than specifically, or thinking in an extremely large way rather than in a narrow way.
Here is an example. Let’s say that you decide that, as a way to make money, you are going to walk along the boardwalk at the beach and collect aluminum cans out of trash receptacles. You do it for awhile and you learn about this aspect of life. You learn which trash receptacles generate more cans, where you can take the cans to be paid, how much you get paid for the cans, and so on. Let’s say that you are able to do this and make $10,000 a year if you do it full time.
Now that is fine. However, you might be able to come up to a higher level, see the space in a larger sense and learn something from that raised position. Here’s a progression you might go though in your thinking:

• Way to think about your life #1: I pick cans out of trash receptacles at the beach.
• Way to think about your life #2: I sort trash into two categories: aluminum cans and everything else. The aluminum has value, so I sell it to a recycling center.
• Way to think about your life #3: I provide a sorting and transportation system for post-consumer aluminum waste.
• Way to think about your life #4: I currently implement one piece of the American recycling infrastructure, a system that allows the country to reuse post-consumer products and packaging for the betterment of both the environment and the world’s scarce resource base. I currently specialize in aluminum, providing both a sorting and transportation capability.

There is a huge difference between version #1 and version #4. Notice how we have been able to move from an extremely low vision to an extremely high vision of the activity. The funny thing is that as we move up the hierarchy there are more and more opportunities to do other things. For example:

• If you see yourself as a person who sorts trash (version #2), it might be possible to sort the trash into a number of different categories and do all kinds of other things. You could potentially recycle paper, glass and plastic in addition to aluminum. You could do research on the distribution of materials in the trash you sort and publish research papers on it. You might purchase (or encourage the city to purchase) special multi-hole trash cans that let the consumer do the sorting for you (you’ve seen these, where there are separate holes for bottles, cans and everything else). Perhaps you could then subcontract with the city to maintain and service these receptacles and make money both through the contract and the value of the recyclable materials. If this lowered the cost of clearing trash from the beach, the city might go for it.
• If you see yourself as providing both a sorting and a transportation activity with a specialty in aluminum, this might get you into other forms of transportation. For example, you frequently make runs between the beach and the recycling center. Perhaps you could purchase a special aluminum can hauling truck that lets you stop not only at the beach but a number of other facilities along your route. For example, you might stop at bars and convenience stores along the way picking up all their empties and paying them a portion of the recycling revenue. Then you expand the route to include larger portions of the city until you cover the entire city. Then you move on to provide the same service to cities nationwide. You eventually become the country’s largest provider of aluminum recycling services.
• If you see yourself as one part of the nation’s recycling infrastructure, then you might end up eventually creating a company that brokers services between producers of a variety of waste and the different recyclers in a region. You might work with office centers, for example, to concentrate paper waste. You might work with service stations to do bulk recycling of motor oil and tires. You might work with retail stores to recycle cardboard. You will find that there is already competition in some of these specialty niches, so you might partner with or compete with these companies.

Here is another example. Let’s say your father asks you to mow the lawn. Here are different levels at which you might think about this activity:

• My dad is making me mow the front yard.
• I am in charge of taking care of our yard. In the summer I mow, in the fall I rake and in the winter I shovel snow.
• I am the family’s yard-care specialist, providing a variety of services depending on the season.
• I am a yard-care specialist and my parents are one of my clients. I give them a special rate in return for the things they provide me, such as room and board. I service the needs of six other clients in the neighborhood at my standard rate.
• I am the owner of one office of a nation-wide consortium of yard-care specialists. My parents are one of my clients, and I have six other clients in my region. Several of my friends are also members of the consortium, and each of us have our own regions. We pool money together to advertise, buy shared specialty equipment and so on.
• I am the president of a firm specializing in yard care. I have a number of employees in a number of branch offices, and I have also allied with other lawn-care firms to form a consortium. In our industry I believe it is important that…

You can see here that the highest-level vision eventually takes you to the point where you have multiple clients, multiple partners and multiple employees. All of this from mowing your front yard! Here is a final example that shows how your high-level vision can branch and thereby control your actions. Let’s say there is a big dance Friday. Here is one set of levels:

• I am going to ask Suzy to the dance.
• I want to find out if I like Suzy and Suzy likes me.
• I am trying to find a person to marry by going out with different people.

Compare that to:

• I am going to ask Suzy to the dance.
• Suzy is an incredibly beautiful woman, and I want to spend time with her.
• I want to marry Suzy.

In the first case you are driving toward the general goal of marriage. In the second case you are trying to marry a specific person. The vision that you carry has a big effect on the way you approach this date. In the first case, if Suzy says "No" you can call someone else. In the second case if Suzy says "No" you might not go. Consciously asking yourself the question "What is my goal?" can help you come up to a higher level. Once you ask the question, you can begin to understand your own motives as well as your options (see Chapter 24).
The level of your vision controls the opportunities available to you. By moving to a higher level you can see more. You may not initially be able to do anything at your higher level of vision because you lack resources, but it gives you a way to set goals and priorities.
Speaking at a High Level
Related to the act of thinking at a high level is the act of speaking at a high level. Speaking at a high level allows you to present your ideas and goals in a way that shows you have a plan.
Here is an example. Let’s say you walk up to a teenage bag boy in a grocery store and you ask, "How do you like your job?" In response you hear:
I hate this job. Any monkey can do it, but my parents forced me to get a job this summer. Compare that to the following: I am learning a lot from this job. My goal is to eventually work in a retail environment, and I like the grocery business. Food has a certain fundamental connection to life that is lacking in other retail channels. My goal is to understand each position in a grocery store so that I can become a manager. Right now I am a bag boy. Next I will do stocking so I can learn about inventory and item movement in the store. Then I will try cashiering. Once I have experienced all of the jobs, I will be much better equipped for a management role. Note that in the first response the teenager clearly does not care one bit for the job. In the second response the teenager clearly is enjoying the job, seeing it as a learning process and positioning it as one step in a set of steps leading to a much higher goal. The second teenager has clearly risen above his current situation and placed it within a larger context. As an employer, who would you rather be talking to and promoting? It’s not a hard choice. The person with the high-level vision always wins. Let me give you another example. Say you walk into an office and sit down next to a data entry clerk at a computer. The clerk is a teenager and you ask, "What do you do here?" The teenager replies with the following:
I take these crappy little cards that come in the mail and type the data off them. It is boring as hell. You ask the teenager next to him the same question and get the following response: I am a data entry specialist. My job is to accurately transcribe the data from cards mailed in by our clients. This data is used to create a customer database that we use for advertising and sales purposes. Our direct marketing effort, for example, makes extensive use of the data I enter. Note here the second teenager’s clear presentation of not only what she does but how her role fits into the department’s overall function in the company. She sees herself at a much higher level. If you are a manager looking to promote someone, you will obviously promote the second teenager. I once worked with a person who, when asked his position, said, "I help hold the carpet down." After working with him, the high-level description of his position changed to this:
I am currently a software developer on a project team, and I am training to become a project leader. My specialties include GUI design using MFC and entity modeling. My goal right now is to learn the management skills required to be successful in a project lead role. The point here is simple: If you describe yourself as a bag boy who hates what he is doing or as a flunky whose main attribute is his weight, then that is exactly what people are going to think about you. If you describe yourself at a higher level, then they will think that instead. It is a fact of life that people who speak at a high level always win. Also, by bringing your description of yourself up a level, you often gain a much clearer understanding of what you are doing, why you are doing it and what you hope to accomplish in the future.  Another place to apply high-level concepts is in your verbal interactions with other people. For example, let’s say that you don’t like the way your boyfriend is treating you. One end of the response spectrum might be, "I HATE YOU!!! DON’T DO THAT!!!!" The other end of the spectrum is, "I am a bit concerned about the way you are treating me at the moment. Would you mind if we discussed it?" There are all sorts of levels in between. Notice how the first response almost certainly invites an angry reply and an ensuing argument, while the second response is completely flat and invites discussion.
Let’s say that you believe that you and your friend have agreed to meet at the mall at 3:00. However, your friend arrives a half-hour late. One response is, "WHY THE HELL WEREN’T YOU HERE AT 3:00??!!" At the other end of the spectrum is, "It is possible there has been a miscommunication. I was under the impression we were meeting at 3:00 today." Note how the second response makes no assumption of guilt on either party’s part and allows open discussion of the situation.
Let’s say that your parents have made a decision that causes you to miss the big dance Friday. One response is "YOU ARE BOTH STUPID IDIOTS!!! I HATE YOU!!!!" An alternative is, "Would it be possible for us to analyze this situation at a higher level to understand the fundamental issues?" Imagine how differently your parents will react to these two modes of conversation. In the first case they will either roll their eyes or scream back at you. In the second case you might be able to have a discussion.
Perhaps a friend comes up to you screaming at the top of her lungs, obviously upset about something. One way to handle it is to scream back. A better response might be, "I am wondering if we might be able to calmly discuss the cause of your anger. Tell me what you are feeling."
Adults use these techniques all the time to help diffuse situations or avoid angering people when offering constructive criticism. One word for this activity is diplomacy. It sometimes seems like a lot of work, but it is almost always worth the effort. It is a fact of life that if you say certain things in certain ways it is guaranteed that no one will listen, while if you say exactly the same thing using different words people will hear you. For example, replace "Are you an idiot?! You can’t do that!!!" with "I wonder if there might be any value in considering some alternatives?" and you will get a totally different reaction from your audience. Watch how successful adults talk to each other, or how they talk to you, and you will notice this. Successful adults learn that certain modes of communication shut people down or infuriate them. Other modes allow people to discuss things rationally rather than escalating to anger and confrontation all the time.
Speaking at a high level allows you to show that you have an understanding of how the world works and how people work within that world. High-level speech can open a lot of doors and help you understand what is going on around you. Start practicing, and within several months you will notice the difference it makes. See also the chapter on anger, because you must control anger in order to work at a high level.

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Chapter 18: Virtue Triumphs Over Evil

art 4: The Facts About Attitudes and Values

You are in total control of your attitude and your values. You can choose to be happy or sad, optimistic or pessimistic, shy or boisterous, honest or dishonest or anything in between. The only person who has any control over your attitude and values is you. This section will show you some of the possibilities.

Chapter 18: Virtue Triumphs Over Evil

You might recall from super hero comic books the proclamation, "Virtue triumphs over evil!" The good guy typically says this, or something like it, right after he puts the bad guy behind bars. And it is true. In the long run, the forces of good always triumph over the forces of evil. Virtue triumphs over evil both for individuals and society as a whole. In general, people who live good and just lives do better than people who do not. Good people have more friends, are more successful, are happier and live longer than people who are not. If you look at the people around you in society, on TV, at your school and so on, you will find that in general people who follow the path of good succeed, while those who follow the path of evil fail. Sure, there are exceptions, but those exceptions are almost always in the short term. In the long term those who follow the path of evil pay for it, while those who do good are rewarded. Let’s look at two questions to better understand this phenomena: 

• Is it true that good triumphs over evil? Do people who follow the path of goodness generally succeed? And do those who follow the bad path fail? In general this is the case. Think about Adolf Hitler. He was evil incarnate. The entire world fought a war to stop him and he lost. Think about criminals. Eventually they are arrested and put in jail. Think about drug dealers. They die from taking the drugs they sell. Or they are killed by other drug dealers. Or the police capture them. Think about dishonest people. Eventually, they are caught in their dishonesty and pay the price. People who do the right thing are rewarded. Those who do not pay for it. Either they pay for it directly (by going to jail, for example), or they pay for it when their conscience starts bothering them.
• Why is it that good triumphs over evil? Why is it that this is such a consistent fact of life? Why is it that you can reliably predict the future of a person’s life based on his goodness or evilness? First, most people are fundamentally good and they do not tolerate bad. Society as a whole has an interest in promoting goodness, so it does. When someone lies to you, for example, you find you cannot trust that person. Therefore, you stop doing business with that person. So do other people. The lying person goes out of business or loses his job. The second reason is that bad acts often have bad consequences associated with them. That is simply how the world works. You might do something bad once and get away with it. Maybe twice. Maybe many times. But in general the natural consequences of bad acts catch up with you and you reap what you sow.

The fact that virtue triumphs over evil is an excellent reason to work toward goodness in your own life. By following a "good" path you bring to yourself the rewards of goodness. Another reason is your conscience, and the fact that you have to live with yourself. Although the idea of a conscience may sound old-fashioned to you, and perhaps even silly, it is important. Your conscience is what distinguishes you from an animal. When an animal acts, it acts instinctively. It does things in response to signals directly wired into its brain. So when a male dog finds a female dog in heat, he mounts her. When a rattlesnake is surprised by something it bites the intruder to kill it. When a larger animal comes upon a smaller or weaker animal that has food, the larger steals from the smaller. These are all instinctive reactions to situations. As humans we are different because we have a brain that lets us think, reason, consider and override instinct. The thing that makes us unique as humans is our conscience—our ability to differentiate between good and bad. We are most human when we are most conscious of our actions. We are at our best when we consider what we are doing and choose the right thing.

WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG?

In the little decisions you make during each day of your life your conscience guides you in the search for what is right. It also guides you in the larger things you do. Think about the following situations and how you might react to them:

• I’m at a store and I really like this hair clip (wallet, pen, whatever) but I don’t have any money. No one is looking. Should I just stick it in my pocket and walk out the door?
• The star quarterback started talking to me at lunch. He has an unbelievable body and everyone loves him, including me. We started dating. We have been out three times and now he wants to have sex. Should I sleep with the star quarterback tonight?
• I broke the window. Should I tell someone?
• Should I ask my best friend’s girlfriend out? I know she likes me and I like her.
• Should I sneak out of the house tonight to go out with my friends?
• I have a test today. My friend Jim took the test earlier today, and we know the teacher will use the same questions when I take the test. Jim is a genius and he owes me a favor, so he wrote down all the correct answers on a sheet of paper. It would be easy to memorize them because the test is multiple choice, and no one would ever find out. Should I use the answers Jim gave me on this test?
• My father is a house painter. I go with him to people’s houses and paint with him sometimes. We are at this rich person’s house today, and there is a really nice watch on the dresser. Dad is getting ready to take it, I can tell. I know he has taken things from other houses and he always gets away with it. Should I go along with dad and let him take it? I know that he would love to have that watch.
• I found my Sister’s diary today because she accidentally left it on her bed. Should I read it?
• I found a wallet at the mall. Inside there is $225. Should I return it? Should I take the cash as my reward and return the wallet? Should I keep the cash and throw the wallet away?
• My friends are going to bash mailboxes in the neighborhood tonight. Should I go?
• Should I skip class today?
• I’m pregnant. I can’t possibly tell my parents. When I told the father he stopped talking to me. Should I have an abortion?
• Everyone teases Mary because she is poor and wears stupid clothes. I don’t like the way they treat her, but my friends say I’m in love with her if I keep quiet. I’m not in love with her, I just think we shouldn’t tease her. Should I tease her like everyone else to get them off my back?
• I accidentally dinged the car next to me with my door because the wind blew it open suddenly. Does it matter?
• I would like to buy a pair of new shoes. Should I take the money I need from Mom’s purse even though I haven’t asked her about it?
• My friends are going to put a tack on the teacher’s chair. Should I play along?
• A bunch of my friends are going to a party where there will be lots of cocaine. The guy who is having the party is a friend of a friend. My friends tell me that cocaine feels incredibly good. Better than sex. Should I go with them and try it?

In each of these situations you have a choice. You can do the right thing or the wrong thing. Many teenagers have trouble making the correct choices. Here are three reasons why a lot of teenagers would have trouble figuring out the "right" thing to do in the above situations:

1. Many teenagers would never stop to think about it. They would just do something (usually the thing that "feels good" or is "easiest" at the time), and that something is often the wrong something because what "feels good" in the moment is often wrong long-term.
2. If they did stop to think about it, many teenagers would have no way to decide on the "right" thing. Many teenagers have no moral framework that allows them to make the correct decision. Lacking a moral framework, their conscience does not work correctly, or it does not work fast enough. So maybe two days later they start to feel guilty about what they’ve done, but by then it is too late.
3. Many teenagers have a conscience, and it works correctly and plenty fast, but other pressures override it. For example, if "everyone" is doing something and they are in a group, they will let the group’s behavior take precedence even when they know the group is doing the wrong thing. They do this because they want to "fit in" and be accepted.

How do you build a moral framework and a conscience that will help you to see the difference between right and wrong? How do you make the right decisions on a daily basis? In theory your parents and teachers have helped you to build a good moral framework throughout your life. There are a couple of things that can cloud the issue, however. For example, maybe your parents don’t have a great moral framework themselves. That could slow you down, but probably won’t. Much more likely is the fact that you are receiving thousands of conflicting messages each day from television (see Chapter 37) and your friends. Let’s take an extreme example. You probably know it is wrong to murder someone. There isn’t a lot of thinking power necessary to understand that murder is wrong. Yet by watching television as much as you do you have seen thousands of people murdered. Murder can solve all sorts of problems, according to television; everything from an uncooperative parent to a pesky teacher to a rival for your boyfriend or girlfriend can be solved by murder, at least on TV. Even with all of those messages on TV saying, "Murder can solve a lot of problems" you probably still understand that murder is wrong. However, notice how many drug dealers and criminals use murder every day without a bit of hesitation. Somewhere they have gotten the message that it is OK. And think about smaller things, where it is not so clear-cut. Because you get so many conflicting messages from television, it can be very hard to accurately tell if something is right or wrong at any given moment unless you have a strong moral framework to guide you.

BUILDING A MORAL FRAMEWORK

In order to know what is right and wrong you need a moral framework. You need a clear and simple set of criteria that you can use in any situation to tell you if something is right or wrong. You then need to learn to use your framework to make decisions. Here is a set of five simple questions that you can use to start building a moral framework and a conscience. In the situations you face you can ask these five questions to decide what is right or wrong:

1. Will what I am about to do hurt someone else? If it will, it is wrong.
2. Will I break a promise or a commitment I have made to someone else by doing what I am about to do? If it will, it is wrong.
3. Does what I am about to do have known destructive or negative consequences? If so, it is wrong.
4. Is what I am about to do illegal? If so, it is wrong.
5. Would I be ashamed or embarrassed to tell anyone about what I am about to do? If I were to get caught doing this, would I know I was doing wrong? If so, then it is wrong.

Now let’s look at each of these rules in detail and discover why they are useful rules to include in your moral framework. The first rule is fairly straightforward: Don’t hurt other people, either physically or mentally. For example:

• You do not want to be murdered.
• You do not want to be beaten.
• You do not want other people to steal your stuff.
• You do not want to be betrayed.

You are a human being. You do not like to be hurt. Because you do not like these things to happen to you, you have to assume that everyone else feels the same way. Therefore, if you want the world to work in such a way that you aren’t murdered, beaten, robbed or betrayed, you have to do your part by not doing these things to other people. This is where the golden rule comes from: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Another way to say it is, "Don’t do to other people what you would dislike having done to yourself." In both the positive and negative senses it means the same thing. By following this simple rule you can decide what to do in all sorts of situations. Should you steal or shoplift? No. Should you tease other people? No. Should you read your sister’s diary? No. And so on. Simply ask yourself, "Would I like it if someone did this to me?" If not, then don’t do it. The second rule has to do with your personal accountability. If you make a promise or commitment to someone, then you need to keep it. It is as simple as that. This topic is discussed in much more detail later in this chapter.
There is another thing having to do with personal commitments that is easy to miss: hidden commitments. For example, when you buy a pet dog you are taking on the hidden commitment of feeding, sheltering and caring for that dog for the rest of its life. The dog, after all, depends on its owner for these things. The act of buying the dog and becoming its owner is what signed you up for these duties. Once you buy the dog you are responsible for fulfilling all of the duties of dog ownership, whether you understood them when you bought the dog or not.
The third rule in your moral framework asks, "Does what I am about to do have known destructive or negative consequences?" Drugs fall into this category. They have clear, known, well-understood and common negative consequences. Therefore it is easy to see that drugs are wrong. The same applies to smoking because of its know health effects. Promiscuous sex has the destructive consequence of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. These diseases have known negative consequences, so promiscuous sex is wrong. Also keep in mind that the purpose of sex is to create a baby, and a baby carries a huge implied commitment to clothe, shelter, feed, love, educate and nurture the child throughout its life.
The fourth rule asks, "Is what I am about to do illegal?" If it is, then it is wrong by society’s standards. If you think the law is wrong, then you should work legally through proper channels to change it. As long as the law exists it is wrong to disobey it because any illegal activity has known negative consequences (arrest, fines, jail, public humiliation, etc.) You have the right to change the law (see Chapter 35), so work on that instead of defying the law. If you are right a majority of people will feel the same way and changing the law will be easy.
The fifth rule asks, "Would I be ashamed to tell anyone about what I am about to do?" Let’s say you are about to cheat on your girlfriend or your spouse. You would be ashamed to face your girlfriend or your spouse if you got caught, so it is wrong. Let’s say you are about to cheat on a test. If the teacher caught you there would be bad consequences (failing the test, expulsion) and you would be ashamed to face the teacher, your classmates and your parents. Therefore, cheating is wrong. Let’s say you are about to bash mailboxes. If you got caught by the owner of the mailbox or your parents, you would be ashamed. Therefore, it is wrong. And so on.
If you apply the five simple rules to any question of right and wrong, the answers you generate will tell you the right thing to do.

Are there ever exceptions? Can you ever break any of the five rules? Yes, there are exceptions. Let’s say you get married. In your marriage vows you promise, "Until death do us part." However, after a year of marriage your spouse begins taking heroin and starts beating you. In a case like that you have an obligation to break the commitment because your basic rights as a human being are being violated. You have the right to press charges against your spouse and get a divorce because you should expect that you will not be beaten by others. You also should expect that your spouse will not break the law. When these rights are violated, you have the right to take action. Another example: What if you have been dating someone for six months, but you realize that you do not want to marry this person and it is time to move on. Breaking up is going to hurt your partner. Should you stay in the relationship? No. The reason you date is to find a marriage partner. Once you realize that marriage is not in the cards it is time to break the relationship. There is no way to avoid it. In theory your friend should be able to understand that. If not, there is nothing you can do about it.

A good book to read for more information is How could you do that?! by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. See the references section for more information.

A problem arises when people use excuses and exceptions to attempt to validate legitimately bad behavior:

• "It’s OK to cheat on this test because it is nothing but memorization and memorization is stupid."
• "It is OK to steal this item because the store has all sorts of money and I don’t."
• "It is OK to lie to my friend because if I don’t it will hurt her feelings."
• "My girlfriend won’t mind if I go out with her best friend because we aren’t really getting along right now anyway."

In all of these cases the word "because" is supposed to erase the fundamental wrongness of the act, but it does not.
One of the biggest problems many teenagers face is self-centeredness. As described in Chapter 2, infants are naturally and completely self-centered. Many teenagers are still remarkably self-centered and shortsighted. In many situations you face, a good additional question to ask yourself is, "Am I being selfish or self-centered or shortsighted here?" If the answer is yes, then it is likely that you will want to reconsider your approach. It can be hard for a teenager to get past all of the excuses and explanations and mitigating factors to understand the basic selfishness of an act. In that case it is good to ask an adult you trust to help.

Another Way to Tell Right From Wrong

Another way to tell right from wrong is to try to choose a word or set of words to describe the thing you are about to do. If you find that the words you choose have a bad connotation, then you know the action is wrong. If you would not want yourself described using those negative words, then you know that the action is wrong. On the other hand, if you would be proud of your action and proud of the words used to describe it, then you know that the action is probably right. Here are lists of right and wrong words to help you describe yourself and the actions that you are considering:

Good Words (virtues)	Bad Words (Vices)
Caring	Callous
Clean	Dirty, filthy, defiled
Compassionate	Pitiless, merciless, harsh
Confident	Uncertain, weak
Considerate	Inconsiderate, neglectful, rude
Controlled	Savage, stupid, wild
Courageous, brave	Fearful, cowardly
Courteous	Impolite, rude
Creative	Unoriginal, boring
Detached (absence of prejudice or bias)	Biased, prejudiced, racist
Determined	Indecisive, waffling
Disciplined	Wild, disorderly, mismanaged
Enthusiastic	Boring, tired, old
Excellent	Inferior
Faithful	False, disloyal, treacherous
Flexible	Stiff, rigid (not always bad things…)
Forgiving	Vengeful, spiteful
Friendly	Antagonistic, hostile
Generous	Greedy, miserly, selfish, stingy
Gentle	Cruel, harsh
Helpful	Ineffectual, useless
Heroic	Cowardly, fearful
Honest	Cheating, dishonest, lying
Honorable	Disgraceful, degrading, despicable
Humble	Arrogant, conceited, egotistical, haughty
Idealistic	Apathetic, stoic
Integrity	Dishonest, corrupt
Intelligent	Ignorant, stupid
Joyful	Gloomy, depressed, dejected
Just	Unjust, partial, unfair
Kind	Brutal, cruel, mean
Loving	Abhorrent, hateful
Loyal	Treacherous, unfaithful
Mature	Childish, immature, inexperienced
Merciful	Cruel, merciless, ruthless
Moderate	Gluttonous, greedy, piggish
Modest	Excessive, extravagant
Obedient	Disobedient, defiant
Orderly	Confused, disorderly
Patient	Hasty, hotheaded, impatient
Peaceful	Conflict, disruptive
Purposeful	Irresolute, vacillating, wavering
Reliable	Unreliable, disloyal
Respectful	Disrespectful, insolent, impudent
Responsible	Irresponsible
Reverent	Disrespectful
Self-disciplined	Undisciplined, wild, disorderly
Steadfast	Disloyal, unfaithful, treacherous
Tactful	Rude
Thankful	Dissatisfied, ungrateful
Trusting	Doubtful, jealous
Trustworthy	Deceitful, disloyal, treacherous
Truthful	False, lying, dishonest, deceitful

One thing you will notice is that as people become mature, they normally take on virtues and shed vices. Adults are respected because of the virtues they incorporate into their personalities. Teenagers tend to be much more haphazard in their behavior and hence they are not respected.

People Make Mistakes

All of this is fine. It sounds great on paper. In fact, it sounds easy on paper. Anybody can be moral and good when the situations are not those that you face personally. When something is happening to you, especially with one or several people standing around you demanding that you do something that you know is wrong, it is much more difficult. In real life, in real situations—especially when you are young—it is easy to make mistakes. What do you do after you do something that you know is wrong? What if you did not realize something was wrong when you did it, but now you do?
People make mistakes. That is a fact of life. There are two things you should keep in mind about mistakes:

1. You can admit the mistake and then work to correct it.
2. A mistake does not absolve you of guilt or responsibility. You are still responsible for the consequences of the mistake.

You can admit your mistake and say, "I’m sorry," if you have hurt someone. You can return something and take the consequences if you have stolen something. You can turn yourself in if you are guilty of a crime. Will it be easy? No. Are you likely to lose something in the process? Yes. In many cases the consequences are irrevocable. If you sleep around and a year later find you have AIDS, that’s a problem that you cannot fix. That brings us to a fact of life that is important:

If you think about your actions ahead of time and do the right thing to begin with, you will not have to pay the consequences later

It is as simple as that. The advantage of having a conscience and listening to it is that it keeps you out of trouble. If you get lucky and avoid the consequences of a wrongful act, then you should be thankful that you were able to learn a lesson before it was too late. Then work on making sure the mistake does not happen again.
As you become an adult your moral framework and your conscience strengthen. Matters of right and wrong become obvious. That is one of the important things that distinguishes an adult from a teenager, and one of the things that lets adults be sure of themselves.

Honesty is the Best Policy

Your moral framework is most often tested in the area of honesty. Honesty is therefore the cornerstone your reputation. Upon this cornerstone you base your character.
Each day you come into contact with people and they interact with you:

• People ask you questions.
• People ask you to do things.
• You say things.
• You offer to do things.
• You act in certain ways in certain situations.

It is from these very simple interactions with people that people form their impressions of you. It is from the combination of many interactions like these with a variety of people that you form your public reputation.
In everyday life you have the option to be completely honest:

• You can tell the truth.
• You can keep your promises and commitments.

In doing these two simple things, you will find that:

• People will learn that they can trust you.
• People will learn that they can rely on you.
• People will learn that you are responsible.
• People will learn to have confidence in you.
• People will learn that you are dependable.

In other words you will earn a good reputation, and that reputation will bring you strong friends, important business associations and a great deal of inner peace. People—all people—would rather deal with an honest person than a dishonest one. That is a fact of life.
Once you get away from the truth, people’s trust in you falters. For example, if you tell someone a lie (even a small "white lie" that avoids confrontation or an awkward situation) and you are caught in it, then the next time that person needs to rely on you he or she will have a problem. A collection of lies, large or small, leads to a situation where no one can trust you. Then you are stuck.
The act of being honest all the time is difficult. For example, it requires you to confront people on occasion. It requires you to find diplomatic ways to tell people things they do not want to hear. It forces you to admit to things you would rather hide. In every case it is better to take the discomfort up front rather than delay it and compound it with a lie. That can be a hard thing to face at the point of confrontation or admission, but it is a fact of life.

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