[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #4 FRANKLIN ON HIGH QUALITY LIVING

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall   

2021 Neurons #4 

January 25, 2021

High Quality Living #4

Benjamin Franklin's Wisdom

 

FRANKLIN ON HIGH QUALITY LIVING

 

If high quality living is an inside-out process, what are the inside
qualities we need to bring out?  In summary: Begin with quality thinking so
that you establish high quality values, intentions, and motives.  That will
give you the energy of purpose, hope and passion to move forward with
persistence and resilience.  Next focus on character-the quality of person
you are and want to be so that you can take the initiative to take
consistent action and treat people with compassion and optimism. Integrate
these two quality thinking and quality being so you an actualize your
highest and best.

 

A long time ago Benjamin Franklin wrote and talked about living "a life well
lived" focusing on character, thinking, motives, and style.  By living fully
in the here and now and moving gracefully through time, when you come to the
end of your life, you can say, "I have lived my life well!"  This phrase "a
life well lived" was Franklin's way of talking about a high quality life.
What follows comes from George L. Rogers (1990), Benjamin Franklin's The Art
of Virtue.

 

1) Begin with quality thinking.  That's because, "As you think, so you are."
And you won't be better than your thinking.  Franklin focused on good
thinking- thinking long-term, thinking about consequences, thinking with
tomorrow in mind.  Doing this reduces acting rashly or impetuously.  Good
thinking is the work of thinking about what is really important (your
values) and your purpose (intentions).  What do you want to experience and
achieve?

 

Quality thinking is thinking things through, getting clear, thinking about
"things to come." Do this optimistically so you don't torment yourself with
all the things that could go wrong.  What a waste of thinking that is!
Quality future thinking begins with a well-formed desired outcome aligned
with your values.  

 

For Franklin, good reasoning meant getting accurate information. "Correct
action is dependent upon correct opinion."  You need an accurate map for
where you're going.  Good reasoning detects bad information and avoid poor
judgments.  To engage in this good thinking, Franklin recommended ask lots
of questions, regularly doubt your reasoning, stay thoughtful and
open-minded, openly admitting your errors, don't let your reasoning be
contaminated by self-interest.

 

2) With clear thinking, set valued intentions.  Quality living comes from
mindfully choosing quality values which makes your mind alive and
intentional.  Now you can live on purpose.  Chart out for yourself high
values and visions as your way of being.  By clarifying your values, you
construct a world-view which becomes your "spiritual" perspective on life.
If "values govern life" (Franklin) then choose values you want to govern
your life.  Choose values that uphold human dignity like love, faith, and
hope.

 

Quality values lead to high level motives.  "Motives of personal gain tend
to be opposite of one's true self interest"(Franklin).  He saw mere
self-interest as a danger to true success and said self-gratification, as a
primary or sole motive, narrows your life, makes you small-minded, and
undermines trust.  The solution: expand your motives beyond self-interest,
think about contributing to others.

 

3) Focus on a high quality character.  An inside-out principle is that the
most important factor is who you are- your character.  What kind of person
do you want to be?  Your achievements will mean little if your "way of
being" is of low quality.  Given your values and intentions, how will that
make you the person you want to become?  Have you chosen the kind of
meanings and values you want to live?  Franklin made a list of thirteen
virtues for himself and then he set out to develop his character based upon
them.1 You can do the same - perhaps, compassionate, contributing,
disciplined, and collaborative?  What are yours?

 

4) Now live it out with style and elegance.  When you get the inside stuff
right, you'll be fully ready to live it.  This has to do with your actions,
how you relate, and how you carry yourself.  Franklin said beginning with
your tomorrow in mind, enrich your future with good planning. Develop a time
consciousness that "the days of your life" run by the wisdom of yesterday's
learnings and tomorrow's hopes.  Meanwhile be present fully in the
here-and-now living your meanings.

 

Aim to live the virtues you've chosen (e.g., live with integrity and
honesty).  "Without honesty, there can be no happiness." (Franklin). An
inner joy arises when you know yourself as honest and holding integrity.
Honesty refers to "being true to oneself, true to the facts, and true to
reality."  In honesty, you speak truth.  Integrity is the state of doing
what you say.  Your words can be trusted because they correspond to your
actions.  You live your truths.

 

Dishonesty is lying to self and/or others and it undermines trust. It leads
to incongruency. This inside-out principle is living from within.  Franklin
wrote, "True happiness depends more on one's own judgment, than on the
condition of external things."

            "I give myself as little concern about [reports of criticism] as
possible.  I have often met with such treatment from people that I was all
the while endeavoring to serve.  At other times I have been extolled
extravagantly, where I had little or no merit.  These are the operations of
nature.  It sometimes is cloudy, it rains, it hails; again it is clear and
pleasant, and the sun shines on us.  Take one thing with another, and the
world is a pretty good sort of world, and it is our duty to make the best of
it, and to be thankful.  One's true happiness depends more upon one's own
judgment of one's own self, or a consciousness of rectitude in action and
intention, and the approbation of those few who judge impartially, than upon
the applause of the unthinking, undiscerning multitude, who are apt to cry
Hosanna today, and to-morrow, Crucify him." (p. 151).

 

Now live proactively with consistent effort.  When you have a purpose, you
have something specific to implement.  For constant effort- take the
initiative, be proactive, delightfully accept responsibility.  As you now
add value and make money, do so intelligently.  "The proper acquisition and
use of money may be a blessing, but the opposite is always a curse." 

Wealth may be a blessing-it depends on your attitude and focus. He said
focus on the process not the end results. Use the virtues of industry,
frugality, and meaningful engagement as you work.  Doing what you love
brings inherent rewards.

 

Access a joyful state in all you do.  "Happiness springs immediately from
the mind." Things will not make you happy.  It is your attitude which
creates happiness.  Franklin "...there are no uninteresting things, only
uninteresting people."  Take charge of what happens inside you.

            "Many who are good and virtuous in other respects have not
learned to gain sufficient control of their thoughts and feelings as to be
able to experience a full enjoyment of themselves or of the world around
them.  ...  To develop a happy constitution requires a conscious effort to
see the good around us, to make the best of things, to look at the bridge
side.  Learn to have a little fun with the problems that come our way." (p.
203)

 

As for your style, make it collaborative. "Life is immeasurably more
satisfying to those who get along well with others than to those who do
not."  This will reduce the unhappiness of conflicts (quarrels,
fault-finding, criticizing, etc.). Franklin recommended adopting a modesty
in how you communicate.  For himself, he didn't allowed himself the pleasure
of directly contradicting others and aimed to make others feel good in his
presence.

            "I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the
sentimental of others, and all positive assertion of my own.   I even forbid
myself ... the use of every word or expression in the language that imported
a fix opinion ...

"When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself
the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some
absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right [he paced and
validated first], and in the present case there appeared or seemed to me
some difference" [then he lead].

            "I soon found the advantage in this change in my manner; the
conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which
I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less
contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong,
and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join
me when I happened to be in the right. ... For these fifty years past no one
has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me." (p. 235)

            "Criticizing and censuring almost everyone you have to do with,
will diminish friends, increase enemies, and thereby hurt your affairs." (p.
247)

 

Finally, in terms of style, adopt a modest diffidence.  Here Franklin framed
power as selflessness, moderation, and modesty- attractive traits. 

            "...I continued this method some years ... retaining only the
habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using, when
I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly,
undoubtedly, or any others that give an air of positiveness to an opinion,
but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears
to me, or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken."

            "This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I
have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures
that I have from time to time engaged in promoting; and, as the chief ends
of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I
wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good
by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to
create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which
speech was given to us,-to wit, giving or receiving information or
pleasure." 

"For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing
your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.
If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and
yet at the same time express yourself firmly fixed in your present opinions,
modest, sensible men, who express do not love disputation, will probably
leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.  And by such a
manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers,
or to those whose concurrence you desire." (pp. 130-131)

 

References:

1. Franklin's 13 virtues for the character and person he wanted to be.

           Temperance in eating and drinking

            Silence when speaking wouldn't add benefit to others.

            Order to create proper sequencing of things

            Resolution to perform duties and responsibilities

            Frugality to waste nothing


            Industry to stay engaged in useful activities

            Sincerity in seeking not to hurt or offend others

            Justice to do no injuries to others.

Moderation to avoid extremes, to forbear resenting injuries even if
undeserved

            Cleanliness in body, clothes, habitation

            Tranquility in taking an undisturbable attitude toward trifles,
accidents, etc.

            Chastity in sex and sexual behavior. 

            Humility as modeled by Jesus and Socrates

 




 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

 

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work against us and it is far too easy to default to pseudo-decisions:

emotions, gut feelings, intuitions, circumstances, others.  

Executive Decisions (2021) offers a way to decide intelligently and wisely.

 

 

130969 Neuro Semantics Executive Decisions Book Cover

 

 

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