A634.6.3.RB – What are Virtues?
What are Virtues?
Virtue is a conduct that conforms to an accepted standard of right and wrong (Merriam-Webster). My mother has the most significant influence in my life when it comes to living and committing to practice and maintaining a positive, forgiving, and courageous life. She had taught my siblings that and me we should persevere in achieving or attaining our personal and career meaningful goals regardless of fear, self-doubt, or obstacles that we may encounter along the way.
While taking Benjamin Franklin’s virtue quiz, I did not realize that I have to ponder on the things that I would really do when faced with the specific situation. Before taking the quiz, my first thought was that it should be a breeze to take it since I have been living my life ethically and virtuously. But, I was wrong. For every question, I have sincerely read the options twice to deeply understand and recollect what I have done in the past and I would I would honestly do.
My responses to the quiz were closely reflected in Benjamin Franklin’s self-improvement plan. I may not be able to formally develop and create a self-improvement plan to live my life more virtuously based on Ben’s thirteen virtues, I have decided to at least try to live my life by consistently and sincerely leave my life daily based on three of his virtues.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e., Waste nothing.
Frugality does not run smoothly in my family. My husband and I leave on a two-person household, but we spend at least $250 on our weekly groceries in addition to our once a week date nite out and other expenses like cable television. Although we do not go out to watch movies in a movie theater, we buy at least two newly released movies through our cable provider. One movie cost at least $5.99 per movie and once in every two months, we buy the UFC fight that cost $59.99 to even $99.99 per fight sometimes.
Moving forward, my husband and I planned to spend less on our once a week dinner night out. Rather than ordering two entrees, we decided to order one appetizer and one entrée to share. We usually order 2 salads, two appetizers, and two entrees that we could not usually finish and we boxed for a take-home of which we generally throw out anyway.
On our grocery shopping, we decided to make a shopping list that is only a household necessity. When it comes to fresh produce, we planned on only purchasing just enough that we need for the week. This way, we do not have to waste too much on throwing the items since the produce products such as salad items, fruits like bananas, etc. are no longer fresh.
Leaving a frugal lifestyle has its own benefits. According to Dassent (2015), frugal lifestyle improves our health, brings about a greater appreciation of what we have, and gives us a sense of accomplishments. Our mind and body need sufficient sleep for us to successfully and effectively function daily. The peace of mind knowing that we are financially stable to pay our monthly bills is priceless.
Frugal spending also helps us appreciate the things that we already possess. It requires us more be attentive to our household furniture ensuring that they are always in pristine condition. Frugality also gives us a sense of accomplishments everytime we find a way to fix household stuff that needs fixing without spending extra money to pay someone to fix a broken chair for example. Living stress-free is living healthy.
Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Living in moderation is my most significant challenge. For the past years, I have been on a slippery slope of disciplining myself in finding a balance between work, school, and personal life. I have been living my life overworked and sometimes, I find myself entertaining and taking care of others needs such as my staff, our company employees, and my husband. Sometimes, even my husband feels neglected at times. He and I work five days a week with different schedules. He is still sleeping when I leave for work and either I am still studying or already sleeping when he comes home from work.
One thing I am very sure of is this. I need to learn how to take care of myself first before I can continuously and consistently take care of others. According to Puddicombe (2012), our mind whizzes away like a washing machine that keeps on turning trying to deal with or process varied emotions that are complicated and confusing. Those conflicting emotions are distractors that pull us away from the most significant and essential things in our lives, and subsequently, we are no longer present in the world that we dwell in. We assume that this is normal, and we just get on with it thinking that we cannot do anything about it.
Moving forward, I plan to learn to be more mindful of my personal psychological and mental condition by doing nothing for 10 minutes on a daily basis to recharge and relax. I have also had also decided to develop and strengthen my spiritual intelligence to find a balance between life, work, and school. Vaughn (2002) noted that spiritual intelligence does not only regard mental ability. Instead, it is also a correlation of personal to transpersonal as well as the self to spirit. I will always start my day with meditation and with a daily devotional reading of the Bible. Strengthening my spiritual intelligence is consequential to the development of my leadership skills and abilities as well as my strengthening my personal character and traits.
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
During challenging times, I tend to bottle up and try to handle demanding undertaking by myself. At times, I even find myself angry without knowing what is causing the anger which I find very unhealthy in my relations with the people that I work with and my husband. Self-regulation is of importance so that I can be aware of my emotions, regulating my feelings and maintain flexibility and direct negative behaviors toward positivity.
As a leader, I must be able to ensure that the people I work with and the people around me, to be honest. I must also accept the reality that their honesty will not always be to my liking. Living stress-free means finding a balance between work and life meaning having the ability to be organized and having the capacity to prioritize. It is only for my benefits in having the capableness to practice the art of recharge and renewal not to stress with small stuff that is out of my control.
References
Dasent, K. (2015). 5 Rewards of living a frugal lifestyle. U.S. News & World Reports. Retrieved
living-a-frugal-lifestyle.
LaFollette, H. (2007). The practice of ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Puddicombe, A. (2012). All it takes is 10 mindful minutes [Video File]. Retrieved from:
Vaughn, F. (2002). What is spiritual intelligence? Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol
42. No. 2, 16-33. Sage Publication.
virtue. 2018. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved July 6, 2018 from
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/virtue
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