The Traits to Win Hearts

 The ignorant and vain alike have convinced us the way to win love, trust and respect is to achieve dominance by the conquests of our adversaries. They have misguided and deluded us into actually believing that what makes a man or woman great is to make achievements and victories that put them above others, and then work to keep others down beneath them.

The world, in its ignorance and vanity, tells us this tyrannical approach will win us praise, affirmation and glory – and put us in every heart – so then finally, at long last, our souls can be satisfied because we’ve opened the gates that lead to the inner fulfillment us mortals secretly crave above all else. 

But it does no such thing!

Do not be deceived by the lies of this world that try to lead you astray!

Let them not mislead you into error and its corresponding miseries!

For assuredly:

Those who have reached such stations and statuses by this destructive route, if their pride would permit a confession as to their erroneous ways and the disappointing results they produced, would be first to testify to these truths, that:

It leads to emptiness and meaninglessness.

Not fulfillment.

So if excelling and dominating others for the sake of winning love, trust and respect does not lead to such soul blessings, and in fact actually repels them, what does attract them?

What must we think, say and do to win the love, trust and respect of those we care about, along with our communities and perhaps the larger world?

1. Humility and Accountability

Humility is the capacity to see ourselves, our conduct and how it impacts others not as we may have deluded ourselves through a lack of self-awareness into believing they are and it does, perhaps prompted and urged on by our ego and grossest vanity, but as we and our actions, along with the responses they instinctively trigger in others, truly are, objectively; and then hold ourselves responsible and accountable for those reactions which are elicited in others as if they were our own.

When a person holds them self to such a high standard as this, having first gained the knowledge and wisdom to discern in themselves their own faults and errors, that they master that old rotten pride which tells them to deny and defend their short-comings and mistakes, they come to:

See and admit them, and then seek to put them right!

To carry out this demonstration is to exemplify humility and accountability, even though it may carry with it temporal embarrassment (but which requires courage), and it is this that wins and earns the love, trust and respect of others – whether those directly involved in the ordeal, those who bear witness and testify to it, or those who hear the account from those who report it.

Humility is to see and accept the truth about ourselves without resistance, and the quality is highly advantageous to all who possess it when it is coupled with accountability.

Everyone knows we are all prone to errors and mistakes and it is the conscience that prompts us to forgive them when those who have committed them, instead of being proud and denying and defending them and maybe retaliating and lashing out against those who make them known, embody humility and openly confess and admit them and take ownership of them, all with the intention of correcting them and their negative results.

But woe to those who seek to shut out self-awareness and circumvent responsibility and eliminate accountability for their faults and mistakes, for they will bring down on their heads the contempt they so rightly deserve and their incoming circumstances will not let them soon forget it!

2. Fairness and Honesty

It is human nature to want to see that we receive back an equivalent for that which we give, and this is what we consider fair: when what we have to offer is equal to what the other person has to offer us in return.

For when we give something and do not receive back an equivalent, do we not deem it unfair, unjust or corrupt? And do not such things earn only hatred and contempt for those who practice them, and furthermore don’t they lie and deceive to cover up and conceal their unfairness and injustice to avoid criticism and responsibility all the while still gaining for themselves undeservedly, which just wins more animosity for them?

So let the lessons be learnt from foolishness such as this!

Those who would win love, trust and respect must utilize the principle of fairness in all their relations and affairs, and be honest and transparent about these dealings. They must seek to give an equivalent for their every gain, and even seek to give before trying to gain that which is desired, and finally never seek to gain where nothing has been first given; for this puts the Law under obligation to remunerate us for our every accredited, uncompensated service.

Fairness and honesty instill goodwill in all those affected by it, and honest goodwill in the hearts of others for us win their love, trust and respect.

For is it not true that when others do services, favors and courtesies for us, we feel in their debt, and our natural inclination is to see those services returned back to them and see them compensated in full for them? 

Since this is true and natural, the prudent person seeks to serve and perform courtesies in their homes, workplaces and communities, knowing it is in them to give, and knowing goodness builds goodwill and this is returned to those who embody and express the practice of unselfish service in the world, as when people experience the rewards of being truly served, a place in their heart has been won and earned, and that abode deserved!

The end result of being fair, and honest about it, is love, trust and respect from those served by it, along with those affected or impacted by them.

3. Kindness and Compassion

There are the vicious who seek out conflict and start it, the misguided and weak who retaliate and keep the dispute ongoing when someone else instigates it, and finally the enlightened who return no evil for evil and thus aim to end the cycle of retaliation, seeking to bring peace.

Let it be known with great certainty:

The hardest thing in the world is to refrain from injuring back those who injured us or those whom we perceived to have injured us. For this is to overcome and rule the instinct, that animal nature in man. 

But refraining from this foolishness sets a mighty example to the recipient and witnesses alike.

Kindness is not only extending it to those who have done us no wrong, but it’s noteworthy and exceptional when it’s extended to those who have done us ill; for this calls for the exercise of complete self-control of and over the emotions, the foundational stone of self-mastery, the hardest task any person will ever seek to complete.

But with the self mastered, kindness becomes a byproduct. Instead of seeking to be cruel to those who harm us, because we haven’t been triggered into blind anger that recognizes only the hurt from the assault, we look upon them compassionately with pity and sorrow, as being victims to their own baser natures which carry detrimental sentences of their own by way of the law of retribution.

Then instead of seeking to harm who harmed us, we aim to understand them and their motives for doing what they did, which leads to a very different outcome.

Instead of dehumanizing and demonizing them, we look upon them as being slaves to evil, harming not only us or others, but themselves to greater degrees as their destinies will yet unfold for them to their great dismay.

When these truths are recognized, compassion takes the place of rage, resulting in kindness for the good and the evil alike. And it is this sense of truth and justice that is admirable because it exudes strength, nobility and wisdom which is what causes others to want to give us their love, trust and respect when they acknowledge we exhibit these traits and that it takes true personal power to embody them.

If you would win hearts, cultivate kindness and compassion.

Being a Beloved Person

The person who wins love, trust and respect, and keeps it, has grounded themselves and their lives in the aforementioned traits.

They seek to ever and always improve their self-awareness of what they’re thinking, saying and doing, and the effect these have upon others, and they hold themselves to account when the results are negative through confession and corrective action.

They seek to give in accord with their talents and abilities, all the while serving and honing their gifts at the same time, knowing full well that when they reach a level that makes their services irreplaceable and they carry them out in a positive mental attitude, the right compensation will find them.

They seek to master their retaliative response, and instead of returning evil for evil, they replace it with the desire to understand those who wrong them and their inclinations and motives.

And if you too work on developing these traits, dear reader, you can expect more and more people to start loving, cherishing and appreciating you, being recognized and praised by the world for serving them, and by refusing to return evil for evil, be a model and set an example for others who want to grow in strength, nobility and wisdom.