In recent years, spirituality has not been taken seriously in certain parts of the world. I myself have had not delved into my own until recently. The reason for that is that spirituality is often automatically associated to religion, and religion is seen as restrictive and ‘boring’.
The problem is that spirituality is a driving force that gives us direction and a set of moral rules that we want to live by. And by not having something to believe that is greater than us, we are often directionless and hurt ourselves and others repeatedly.
We need to have morals and intrinsic values to grow
The reason people don’t set morals and intrinsic values is either because they feel that doing so will restrict their options, or they fear that they will break their own morals and thus feel bad about it.
The problem with this is that we need to restrict our options and we need to figure out how to stop behaviours that break our morals. If you don’t restrict your options at least a little, you will have no direction, try to do too many things at once and are more likely to fail. If you don’t figure out how to stop breaking your morals, you will continue with bad behaviours and give yourself excuses that it’s okey. This will expand the distance between who you are and who you want to be.
You don’t need to believe in God or a higher being
Spirituality can be completely personal. My personal criticism of modern religions is that often people who practise that religion are very harsh if you do not believe or practise all aspects of a religion. This makes people uncomfortable, so they abandon all types of spirituality.
Instead, make your own mind by what spirituality means for you. It can be God, it can be certain parts of a religion, it can be a religion that doesn’t necessarily have a God like Buddhism, or it can even be your own creation of why you should have a moral code.
For example, I believe in karma. Not because I think there is necessarily a higher force that rewards good deeds and punishes bad ones. It’s just nature. If you do good deeds because it feels good, you will be happy whether or not it is reciprocated. If you do bad deeds, even if you stop feeling guilt and shame, and benefit from it, negative energy will follow you and you will attract people who tolerate and probably practise bad deeds themselves. This will keep you miserable and make you believe that everyone is a selfish, horrible person.
You can change your morals
Another reason people don’t have morals is that they believe that once set, they can never be changed. This means that its better to have no morals and thus anything you do is okey with you. In truth, that just makes you an unreliable and often manipulative person. If people don’t know what your boundaries and moral code is, they cannot fully trust you.
That’s why it is important to be able to change moral values. However, the ideal way of doing this is.
1) Identify a moral value that no longer resonates with you
2) Let anyone who needs to know (partner, family members, etc) that you plan to change your moral view
3) If it still seems the right decision, then embrace the new moral value.
Many people however reverse the order or even skip steps. This is when lying, cheating and betrayal happens. Because people are too scared of being judged for changing their moral views and so they attempt to hide the actions that break them.
You should always be upfront with any changes or confess anytime you break the moral code. Why? Because often, it is not the action that hurts people. It is the betrayal.
If you lie to someone, you take away their opportunity to make up their own mind on what they want to do. Either way they will be hurt, but if you don’t tell them, you hurt them infinitely more. Once for the action, two for the betrayal, and three for the lack of trust that they now have against you and potentially others. In reality, you also hurt yourself more, because you either develop more and more feelings of guilt, or you become a untrustworthy person.
Additionally, sometimes we can add more moral codes. The steps are the same. You cannot one day say that you will no longer accept XYZ and expect everyone close to you to automatically align with you, but letting them know will allow them see if they can align with it. Sometimes changes in morals will lead to people leaving your life and that is okey. It is better to lose people than to be someone you are not, to lie, or to expect someone else to be someone they are not.
It’s okay to break your moral codes as long as you learn from it
We are human. Everyone makes mistakes. However, if you do not learn from them, you will lose trust in yourself and others will in you. Many times, the reason we repeat mistakes is because of unhealed trauma, undealt insecurities, or lack of consequences.
The best way to learn is from others’ mistakes, but sometimes we need to go through certain experiences to fully understand why doing something is wrong. But if you justify and do it again, then you really need to go deep into why that is happening. The excuse that many people have no morals is a horrible one. Most people are also miserable and do not achieve their goals. Do you want to be known as the person who was able to overcome their difficulties and became trustworthy, successful and fulfilled, or do you want to be the person that hurts others and does whatever gives them the most short-term gain?
A good measure of whether you will repeat a mistake is your ability to own up to it completely to any relevant parties. If you feel the need to hide or withhold information, it’s very likely you will repeat the mistake because there is no accountability.
Unhealed trauma is tough but needs to be prioritised
Unhealed trauma is previous negative experience, especially during childhood that instinctively makes us to do things to protect ourselves right now, regardless of whether it hurts us and others in the long term. Because the trauma can be extremely painful at the times when it is triggered, the short-term relief of it feels absolutely justified and overwrites the long-term pain from any consequences of this action. The response to traumatic events is justified. We should react with an immediate response to get out of a dangerous situation. However, it is when the actions from trauma are triggered by things that are not dangerous is why healing needs to take place.
It can be easier to find solutions and manage trauma with help from a therapist or a partner to reduce the intensity of the pain, and reduce the number of triggers. If the pain from a trigger is not as sharp, then you will learn to control unwanted actions.
It can be easy to give up on trying to heal your trauma. After all, it’s not your fault that you have it. It feels unfair, it can cause feelings of shame, guilt, self-blame, and many other negative emotions. It can be extremely difficult to trust someone that you have trauma but you have to believe that you can make it better. Everyone is capable of change, it might take time but if you work on it, if you let others you trust to help you, it will become better.
Insecurities are believing things that are not true
Undealt insecurities can trigger you to break your moral code too. If you have unfounded trust issues that in turn make you controlling of your partner, then you are breaking your own morals on something that isn’t true.
If you are insecure about say your appearance, then you are more likely to act immorally to either confirm or deny it. E.g. you would do something immoral if that led to someone calling you beautiful.
Sometimes, the opposite is true. In our attempt to prove to ourselves that our insecurity is not just a belief, but actual truth, we will commit something that breaks our moral code. This is often self-destructive behaviour. Say you have a fear that you can never be loved or never be in a healthy relationship, or you have commitment issues. Then any time anyone gets close to you and it feels healthy, you will lash out in an attempt to prove that insecurity. You will purposefully find a way to turn the relationship sour.
The importance of dealing with insecurities is clear and the first way to do that is to admit it to yourself and anyone you trust. Get a plan of action on how to deal when they pop up. E.g. send a message to a good friend or a therapist when you get those feelings and ask them to hold you accountable. Or set a ritual that will change your point of view. “I’m worthy of love and this is just a negative feeling that has no power over me. In a short amount of time, I will feel good again”. Even if it seems silly, repeat each time the insecurity props ups. Over time, this will become automatic and replace the insecurity with a confidence boost.
Do prioritise your health and dealing with traumas and insecurities
The more you do actions you do not want to, the more you start to identify with the action and justify it to yourself. It will become much more complicated trying to unlink the actions and the cause of the actions and may mean that you give up. If you give up, you become that person to your core. That means that if you hurt people, it will no longer even feel like you are hurting them as it will feel justified given the situation. The empathy will be exhausted, and you will push away people that are good for you. No matter how hard it is, this is a tough challenge that can be overcome and should be prioritised as it will make the rest of your life easier and more fulfilling.
Lack of consequences is why the world is becoming so conflictive
Lack of consequences, leads to lack of morals and lack of morals leads to the acceptance of bad behaviours.
In the western world, we fear losing our freedom so much, that we would excuse bad behaviour to maintain the feeling of freedom. We justify cheating, we justify being horrible towards others, we justify people taking advantage of others to get ahead in life. We justify manipulative behaviour because “everybody does it”. The lack of consequences for these “bad but not bad enough” actions means that they have become the norm rather than the outlier. The more people that do it, the easier it becomes to justify it, creating a negative cycle.
The problem is that people have such wide different views on morals, and morals often get conflicted with opinions on how the world should be. For example, you may have the moral value to always tell the truth, but if telling the truth means that you go to jail and you do not believe that what you did was wrong, then what the fuck do you do?
This is where knowing what you want out of life is important. If you want to focus on having a simpler life, exploring cultures, travelling and raising a family away from politics, then you need to differentiate between morals you have with the people close to you and society and be consistent with that. E.g. if you can lie to the police officer that you were not speeding, but admit to your partner that you were, and that you believe that speed limits are stupid, then no one is going to blame you. But if you lie to both the police officer and your partner, because you know that your partner will be upset that you got a speeding ticket, then you have a problem.
If you truly believe in something and want to create change in society, then you have to stick with your moral code even when society treats you unfairly for it. The reason most politicians are not trusted is because even if they have noble goals, if they used immoral methods to get in power, people now lose trust in them regardless if they are truly doing their best to help people. This is the reason why people treat politicians like Nelson Mandela with such respect. Because he was willing to risk it all to stand up to his morals. It’s not that he was perfect, but that level of self-sacrifice makes it really tough to judge him on his moral compass.
Respect people that admit their mistakes
As said earlier, everyone makes mistakes. Some people admit them, others try to hide them. The problem is, society currently lashes out at anyone found to have broken a moral value that is held by the majority of the country/world. Cancel culture means that certain actions have no consequences, while others have disproportionate amounts of it.
If the punishment does not serve the crime, then it just means people will go to extreme lengths to hide the truth, which creates a dishonest and mistrusting society which no one wants to be in.
Instead, we should praise people who both admit their mistake and learn from it. That way, good behaviour is encouraged which is always a better motivator than trying to punish bad behaviour. So, whenever someone makes a mistake and admits it openly, don’t be harsh on them. Praise them instead. Of course, if they repeat the mistake multiple times, that’s a different story.
How to build your own set of morals
Think of your family, your best friends and your ideal partner. How would you like for them to treat you? Do you want them to be completely honest, do you want them to be able to admit mistakes, do you want them to be completely free from trouble from the law or do you not mind small rule breaking if it is justified? Do you want them to forgive mistakes, are there any mistakes that can never be forgiven? How should they treat others, their business partners, their bosses, their employees, the waitress?
Then think of spiritual reasons. What makes your soul burn with passion. What lessons do you want to learn from this life and abide by. What are the things that you do not like to see in the world? What are the things you would wish everyone in the world to be like? What would your spiritual guide say to you, whether that is God(s), the Buddha or any other teacher that you believe in?
Write the qualities of those that inspire you and of those that you wish for your direct family, best friend, and partner. If you are not sure on some morals, start with being more restrictive first and then reduce them if need be. The reason for being more restrictive first is that it reduces the chance that you do something you regret later and tends to give you an initial direction to aim for. If that direction doesn’t seem right, you can steer away.
What to do if you break one of your morals
If you break one of your morals. Always write down why you did it in either a journal or a computer/phone file. There are two reasons for this.
- The pain of writing it down confirms it and makes it more difficult to push it aside, therefore making it less likely to be repeated.
- It gives you the chance to read over if the mistake is repeated. Does it mean that you don’t believe in the moral or does it mean that you need to set up extra precautions (therapy, accountability, restriction to triggers etc) to avoid breaking your values again?
Then always let people related to the act know the full extend of what happened. Even if it hurts. Even if they seem to have forgotten, even if it could have negative consequences. Even if you have previously lied about it. Even if you may lose them. This is the sign of maturity and growth and people will respect that even if they are hurt or need to let you go. The long term positives of doing this will always outweigh the short term pain.
