Romanticizing Calamities

                                        (photo: YouTube.com)

Kibali bibo kun bahaan? A question occurred on the mind of a sane individual as he sees people showing photos making fun out of the flood which recently took place in the vicinity. There were those young people who made fun out of the situation by posting jokes and insensitive comments as the typhoon intensified.

Being an archipelagic country sitting on the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Philippines is a hotspot of calamities. In fact, the past year ended with a Typhoon right on Christmas day wrecking regions in the country’s central islands. And in less than a month, Filipinos again faced another catastrophic event to kick-start their New Year, the eruption of Taal Volcano in Batangas after half a decade (Pangilinan, 2020).

To some, there is this portrayal of victims of calamity as resilient and discerning groups. This rosy view of disaster-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful. It allows corporations, governments, and nonprofits to deny this vulnerable population the protections it needs. Romanticizing the poor also hobbles realistic interventions for alleviating poverty.

A lot of people who are also using the social media platforms falls prey on this romanticizing thing. Good for those who make such platforms as sources of information and avenues to facilitate help and rescue but there are those who seem to over-romanticize the events. It is good to be resilient but making disasters as avenues for selfies and posts to gain number of “likes” can be psychologically-skewed.

We also see those who are making the flood look like the worst disaster that happened. Instead of facilitating help, there are some who sends the wrong messages creating anxiety to the families of some in far places. Information can be thwarted, you see…

Jain (2001) said: "Information is power" and it is a catalyst to sustainable development. Complete and correct information to the community is clearly a very important tool to assist in developing a transparent system free of bureaucracy, corruption and general mismanagement of already limited resources.

The role of information and communication changes in emergency situations and can play important role at varied levels based on different needs, Jain continued. Flashing warning news - Incorrect or unreliable information while forecasting the disaster can often result in great damage.

The most effective information dissemination system is community based participatory approach where technical know-how is provided through training to enhance internal capacity of community and local NGO’s of the region. The information and knowledge thus provided enters the system and stays effective in the long run. To accomplish this, the group has now developed an archive of user friendly information packages, which include posters, brochures, pamphlets, information leaflets and training manuals designed for different end users. These include beneficiary families, community workers and site supervisors. These packages include interactive literature in form of user manuals, production manuals, family passbooks, and other documents customized to their needs in regional language (devalt.org).

Legislators and political leaders play a great role in disaster and risk management. In fact, this is one of the competencies the elected officials must have. It was already mentioned that our country is prone to natural calamities and so, the officials must put a lot of premium on this.

Eva (2020) wrote: We see the same things happen over and over again: we weren’t prepared for a disaster, the disaster strikes, and we depend on aid and relief goods with politicians’ names on the plastic bag. It is the inaction from our government that perpetuates the vicious cycle of patronage politics.

BANGON SURIGAO is not just a tagline. It is not only fortifying resiliency. It is in fact a message sent to the local leaders to stand firm and not collapse every now and then when natural calamities strike. A thorough study and recommendations must be in place. The system of disaster preparedness is needed. An orientation on “what to do, when to do and how to do” can empower the vulnerable communities with valuable lifesaving information.

Designing appropriate relief and mitigation projects for natural disasters requires a solid understanding of the magnitude, geographical distribution and frequency of these hazards. This level of information requires both horizontal and vertical flows within the relief providing organizations and from organizations to community. Information is not an end in itself, but a tool to assist the community to organize themselves in the hour of emergency.

After any disaster, there is sudden decline in the confidence of people in traditional / prevailing building systems. The reconstruction phase is considered as a second chance to start afresh with something more "reliable".

Indeed, let us rise from the old beliefs and inefficient ways. The poor will always be the victims of indifference, natural and MAN-MADE calamities. 

Incapable of Appreciation

          

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Dili mahibayo maghatag nan bili. This is one thing that a lot of people lack; they do not know how to appreciate. Most of the things they see are the mistakes and the errors one can commit. When one displaces a good deed or creates an act of goodness, people dismiss them as commonplace. Although a lot of mature people do not demand for appreciation, it is more on the development of the attitude that matters.

The Harvard Medical School defines gratitude as “a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives … As a result; gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals–whether to other people, nature, or a higher power”

It is also a social emotion that signals our recognition of the things others have done for us (Fox et al., 2015).

Then why is it difficult to be developed among people? What are the causes of such deficit? You see, we often hear people complain about their life, the situations they are in, their jobs and how they get busy with it. A lot of people complain on almost everything including the weather!

According to Dr. Robert Emmons, the feeling of gratitude and appreciation involves two stages (2003): First comes the acknowledgment of goodness in one’s life. In a state of gratitude, we affirm that all in all, life is good, and has elements that make worth living. The acknowledgment that we have received something gratifies us, both by its presence and by the effort the giver put into choosing it. Second, gratitude is recognizing that some of the sources of this goodness lie outside the self. One can be grateful to other people, to animals, and to the world, but not to oneself. At this stage, we recognize the goodness in our lives and who to thank for it (i.e., who made sacrifices so that we could be happy?).

Despite the great and many benefits that it confers, gratitude is hard to cultivate, because it opposes itself to deeply ingrained human traits, in particular, our striving to better our lot, our need to feel in control of our destiny, our propensity to credit ourselves for our successes while blaming others for our failures, and our belief in some sort of cosmic equality or justice.

According to Burton (2014), since human nature does not leave much place for it, appreciation or gratitude is an attainment associated with emotional maturity—which is why children taught to parrot ‘thank you’ never really mean it. Conversely, many grown-ups express gratitude, or a semblance of gratitude, simply because doing so is useful or the ‘done thing’. Expressing gratitude is good manners, and the aim of good manners is to ape profundity when profundity is lacking.

Emotional maturity and good manners are two major factors of displacing appreciation. These are two main reasons why people lack it. They oftentimes cultivate on envy and other negative emotions to the point that their emotional maturity is curtailed. Manners can be learned from the family and the education that people get. We can then consider the gaps families are giving input to the children which they later practice as adults. And, what about the educational institutions’ role in developing the affective part of the students… is this aspect considered properly?

There are many reasons some people don't appreciate others. One might be that they like to mind their own business. They don't care how others are performing. Another reason might be that appreciation is not in their nature. They don't like saying good things to others. One important reason for not appreciating or motivating others might be that they are jealous of others. They don't want others to do well (Upadya, 2020).

The psychologist Orlando M. Lourenco mentions: Some reasons may have to do with people's biological inheritance. Psychopaths, for example, are not able, say, to put on another's shoes and, hence, they are deprived of any empathetic concerns for others' well-being. Other reasons are situational. If people are born and grow up in a competitive, instead a cooperative, atmosphere and environment it is likely that they fail to value people. Other reasons have to do with people's moral development. The less morally developed people are, the more they are likely to fail to value people. The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, for example, found that people located at his Stage 1 or Stage 2 of moral reasoning are dominated by egocentric interests and desires and, because of this, think, feel and act without taking into account others' needs, interests and concerns.

Indeed, the harshness of life can affect the things inside people’s heads and their emotions. Yet, it is also the mind that allows us to weigh things carefully including the way we LOOK at things. Self-examination is one key in opening up to improvement and maturation. There is no other person that can help you change for the better but the SELF.

Morality is not an easy thing to master. We have different criteria on what is good and what is not. Also, we need to understand that moral beliefs must be paired with moral actions to make them tangible. But there are things we call as universal values. These can be applied anywhere and to everybody. 

Appreciation is one. While developing this behavior, we are also assured that our mental well-being and manners are nurtured.

 

At Risk

                                       (photo: Unicef)

Amo baja ini ila kahimtang?. This is the thing to register in the head of a teacher as he/she sees the situation of the learner. The heart will then be gripped with compassion. The innate empathy in the educator will then be awakened as a myriad of things bombards the mind: the required readings the teacher gave, the online activities they sometimes demand, the products like collage from magazines and even the bond papers they require for the outputs to be written. These things merge with the muddy area as a porch, the dilapidated house, the near-naked kids the learners are babysitting, the sores on their skin and the putrid smell of poverty.

According to UNICEF, despite rapid economic growth and overall declining rates of poverty in recent years, the situation remains extremely challenging for children in the Philippines. In 2015, a staggering 31.4 per cent of children were living below the basic needs poverty line (down from 2012), with poverty rates actually increasing for children in ARMM: from 52.6 per cent in 2006, to 63.1 per cent in 2015.

With such data, it is not surprising that a lot of learners who have the capability to work are pushed to the work force even if child labor is not allowed by the legislation of the country. The young learners would opt to work so to survive making education as a second priority.

Adding to the difficulties is the pandemic. The COVID-19 is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction. Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, is likely to affect between 9.1% and 9.4% of the world’s population in 2020, according to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report.

The corona virus pandemic’s impact on the economy could lead to 1.5 million Filipinos becoming poor, according to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) in an August 2020 study.

Although there is this cliché that poverty is not a hindrance to success, come to think of how one person can learn with an empty stomach? Aside from it, there is this looming fear that the virus can be acquired by them. Experience has taught the poor that they are the most vulnerable to calamities, illness, violence and oppression.

This is the one of the reasons why the teachers visit the learners. They need to encourage them to pursue their studies so that they will become empowered. Current research findings support the continued use of teacher home visit programs as a tool to encourage students’ academic success and parent involvement in the classroom, with many studies also noting teacher home visit programs’ improvement of students’ behavior (Lin & Bates, 2010).

With the distance learning modality, a lot has changed in the delivery of the curriculum. The educators were groping in the dark how to come up with a feasible modality where learning can take place. As part of the teachers’ job, they are expected to visit the learners who manifest difficulties based on their tracking forms. This is not a unique task of the teacher but with the health risk, it is an additional hazard to their safety. Still, they adhere to the belief that NO ONE must be left behind.

Teachers later understand that they also benefit with the activity. They commented on their teaching beliefs and practice as impacted by their home visit. Results of a study indicated that home visits enabled educators to see the families and children that they work with from a different and more positive perspective. The guided home visit questions/tools allowed them to better understand children and their families from historical and cultural perspectives. Also, teachers were better able to create a more diversified learning environment and lesson plans for their learners (Lin, Bates, 2010).

Empathy, the ability to connect others’ feeling without losing himself/herself (Chiu and Yeh, 2017), is found to play an important role in education (Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016). Research has suggested that empathy is one of the crucial factors that influence how successful teachers are in leading their personal and professional lives (Vucinic et al., 2020). Therefore, empathy is regarded as one of the core contents of teachers’ professional development (Bullough, 2019).

The more empathetic the teacher is, the better he/she understands the situations of the learners which can lead to a more compassionate adjustment he/she will do to make learning take place. Empathy will also make the teacher’s life more meaningful. The educator will then understand his/her role in molding the community through the students and eventually makes the world a better place.

In social psychology, empathy can be categorized as an emotional or cognitive response. Emotional empathy consists of three separate components, Hodges and Myers (Encyclopedia of Social Psychology) say. “The first is feeling the same emotion as another person … The second component, personal distress, refers to one’s own feelings of distress in response to perceiving another’s plight … The third emotional component, feeling compassion for another person, is the one most frequently associated with the study of empathy in psychology,” the authors  explain.

There is a need for the educators to feel more empathy. The activity sheets which are allocated with a lot of funds are just papers. The one using them is the main concern. Without affection, all of the printing efforts and the gargantuan cost will be put into waste.

You Want To Be the Boss?

                                             (img: onmogul.com)

Di mahibayo mangamo. It is a sad thing that others did not reach the position that they aspired. They wanted to be the one to man a group but they were not blessed with the opportunity to be the boss. Yet, their hunger to be the one to direct people overpowers their  sanity to the point that they often have problems with both the authorities and with their companions.

For adults, attention-seeking behavior is a conscious or unconscious attempt to become the center of attention, sometimes to gain validation or admiration. According to the National Library of Medicine, histrionic personality disorder is characterized by feeling underappreciated when not the center of attention.

Since the person is probably not equipped with competence and the necessary behavior to become a leader or being the boss, the conscious and unconscious behavior to compete with the appointed or designated leader is intense. He or she will try to look for the weakness of the present boss and highlight this in his and her words around to gain sympathy. The person will even resort to perform character assassination so that he or she may sound right.

A persistent pattern of anger, defiance, and vindictiveness against authority figures could be a sign of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). It is a behavioral disorder that results in defiance and anger against authority. It can affect a person’s work, school, and social life (Gotter, 2018).

According to Healthline, there is no proven cause of ODD, but there are theories that can help identify potential causes. It is thought a combination of environmental, biological, and psychological factors cause ODD. For example, it’s more common in families with a history of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

It is also possible that ODD develops as a result of learned behaviors, reflecting negative reinforcement methods some authority figures and parents use. This is especially true if the child uses bad behavior to get attention. In other cases, the child could adopt negative behaviors from a parent.

So, if you noticed that you have a problem with your boss and you feel that you are better that him, try to reflect on the genetic history of your family or remember the way your parents raised you in terms of the way they impose authority over you. This might help you to understand your behavior and start taking control over that behavior not on the roles of other persons.

Also, some people are predisposed to “control aversion” given their neurological structure, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The control averse doesn’t like it when others hold sway over their decisions and actions and feel strongly inclined to rebel. This tendency is linked to strong brain connectivity between the parietal lobule and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, two regions “commonly associated with attention reorientation and cognitive control,” the study’s co-authors note (Belanger, 2018).

On the flip side, more compliant people just might not have the skill set to rebel, a study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology found. Their brains might not be as hardwired to express their desire to skip certain tasks through “silence or hesitation, groaning or sighing, laughing nervously, challenging the authority figure, refusing to carry on” or other means.

Whether or not the behavior of these people is caused by nature or nurture, it is but proper for them to consider personal reflections so that they know how to situate themselves in an organization or a group. If they persist, they will constantly encounter trouble and misunderstanding with the leader or the companions. There is no other person to take control over the behavior but the SELF.

Social psychologists have found that respect for authority is a universal instinctive trait in human psychology. As Haidt and Graham (2007) explain, "People often feel respect, awe, and admiration toward legitimate authorities, and many cultures have constructed virtues related to good leadership, which is often thought to involve magnanimity, fatherliness, and wisdom…[Societies may also] value virtues related to subordination: respect, duty, and obedience."

While respect for authority figures is a universal human trait, it is more salient for some. These individuals believe strong authority figures are necessary to maintain social order and prevent society from devolving into chaos.

Biblically, it is also mentioned in Romans 13: 1-3 - Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.  So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.

Whatever the situation might be, there is a fact that we are oftentimes blessed to have the positions that we have right now. Then, out from this reality, we can work on our own by displacing the best that we can give. Then, we will try to develop respect to the persons appointed or even anointed to manage us.

If we still could not accept these facts and continue to rebel, we might as well seek medical interventions. The battle-cry for mental health is loud during these trying times.

 

The Hunger for Power

                                              (image: pinterest.com)

Pinakadato, Pinkasikat, Pinakagamhanan… There are those around you either in the office, school or anywhere else who is feeding on power, fame and/or the root of all evil – money.

Frederick Herzberg (1923 to 2000) and Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 to 1915) were towering figures who presented differing motivational theories on money. Taylor stressed money as a motivation in the workplace. Indeed, workers were motivated only by money, Taylor said. That's why his theory is often referred to as the money as a motivator theory.

Herzberg said his study found that factors other than money are the best motivators for workers. Things like achievement, praise, responsibility, meaningful work, and advancement are the true motivating factors, he argued. By contrast, Herzberg classified things like money, benefits, insurance as "hygiene" factors: items that are necessary to employ workers but that do not lead to satisfaction.

It can NOT be argued however that most of the people look for jobs for the salary. But that can later be clouded with the MEANING of his/her work. If the person finds a sense of purpose on the job, the individual will be more motivated to work because he or she finds meaning to what the tasks are. But, we cannot deny the fact that there are also those who do not transcend to the next level. Performance will be affected once the money won’t come in easy,

David McClelland built on his motivation theory in his 1961 book, "The Achieving Society." He identified three motivators that he believed we all have: a need for achievement, a need for affiliation, and a need for power. People will have different characteristics depending on their dominant motivator. According to McClelland, these motivators are learned (which is why this theory is sometimes called the Learned Needs Theory).

McClelland says that, regardless of our gender, culture, or age, we all have three motivating drivers, and one of these will be our dominant motivating driver. This dominant motivator is largely dependent on our culture and life experiences.

Those who are hungering for power have these characteristics: He/she wants to control and influence others; likes to win arguments; enjoys competition and winning; enjoys status and recognition. These are the things to motivate the person to work hard. Once power is not felt, the individual will NOT be motivated to perform well.

Those with a strong power motivator are often divided into two groups: personal and institutional. People with a personal power drive want to control others, while people with an institutional power drive like to organize the efforts of a team to further the company's goals. As you can probably imagine, those with an institutional power need are usually more desirable as team members!

The New York Times reported: For most of its existence, the field of psychology has ignored fame as a primary motivator of human behavior: it was considered too shallow, too culturally variable, too often mingled with other motives to be taken seriously. But in recent years, a small number of social scientists have begun to study and think about fame in a different way, ranking it with other goals, measuring its psychological effects, characterizing its devoted seekers.

These yearnings can become more acute in life’s later years, as the opportunities for fame dwindle, “but the motive never dies, and when we realize we’re not going to make it in this lifetime, we find some other route: posthumous fame,” said Orville Gilbert Brim, a psychologist who is completing a book called “The Fame Motive.” The book is based on data he has gathered and analyzed, with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

There are those who will grab opportunities to have positions in the government or companies to satisfy the FAME need. By hook or by crook, they oftentimes “buy” these positions out just to address the need. They do not care if they have the capacities or not. They simply do not understand what drives them.

This is where self-discovery comes in. The process of self-discovery is one in which a person is guided, through self-questioning and examination of one's own thoughts, words, and actions, in order to reach his or her own conclusions regarding who they truly are.

Mubashir Mazhar (2019) mentioned that the way to discovering yourself involves a lot of breaking up your life into different layers and removing those layers that do not serve any purpose. Once you know that your layers consist of only those memories that reflect who you truly are, you can start the crucial act of building up new layers that are based on what you learned from the previous experience. These new layers enable a person to recognize their true potential while allowing us to be open to new experiences and lessons. 

With such realizations, we then can focus on MEANING and PURPOSE. We then can infer the importance of a more deep motivation in us.

Intrinsic motivation is the act of doing something without any obvious external rewards. You do it because it’s enjoyable and interesting, rather than because of an outside incentive or pressure to do it, such as a reward or deadline (Santos-Longhurst, 2019).

Let us be contributors to the healing of the universe, not for its destruction.

Submerged

                                      (photo: Malacanang)

Tabang! Tulong! Tulungan n’yo kami!  Eerie sounds and pleas for help can be painful to listen as the video showed nothing but darkness. The audio was hauntingly real as we can imagine kids, elderly persons, women, the sick, pets and other helpless individuals being submerged as the floodwater continued to rise. The social media sites were then filled with screen shots of messages coming from the people who were trapped at their houses asking for help.

We thought that Marikina, Rizal and nearby places were the ones severely affected by Ulysses. We were not prepared when the images of devastation materialized on our phones via the newsfeed. Cagayan Valley, Isabela and other parts near these areas looked gloomy as brown water swallowed their place only showing the helpless roofs and the tips of the surviving trees…

 Emmanuel Tupas of the Philippine Star reported: Ulysses (international name Vamco), the 21st and deadliest cyclone to hit the country this year, tore through the main island of Luzon late Wednesday into early Thursday, just as the country was reeling from Super Typhoon Rolly (Goni), the world’s strongest typhoon of 2020, which killed 25 people and flattened thousands of homes.

Tens of thousands of homes were engulfed by the floods, and as the water receded in areas such as Marikina, homes covered in debris and caked in mud emerged.

The report continued that the Philippine National Police (PNP) reported yesterday that the number of people who died during the onslaught of Typhoon Ulysses has climbed to 53. It is mentioned that 17 of the fatalities were recorded in Cagayan Valley, followed by Calabarzon with 12.

As the sad facts were being presented, there are pictures of the so-called “Filipino humor” posted on the social media sites cropping up. There were those who made their flooded houses as pools where the people are enjoying the dip. Some were shown drinking with their buddies amidst the flood as if everything is normal.

Some politicians and even writers started having commentaries and suggestive inputs the Filipinos are indeed resilient with such natural calamities.

But there are those whose senses are intact. As Typhoon Ulysses caused widespread damage to Luzon last Thursday, many people were demanding a much more efficient government response. Moreover, holding leaders into account for negligence was called for. However, there are some who highlighted the resiliency of the Filipino race (Corcuera, 2020).

Ella Hyacinth Golez from Forum-Dimensions said that “We, Filipinos, are more than our stories of struggles and resiliency. We should be the reminder and the face of accountability. We deserve better.”

Joshua Corcuera of The Daily Guardian wrote: We tend to over-romanticize individual stories of suffering and recovery to the extent that we forget holding into account those who are unresponsive to the plight of such individuals. As a result, the resiliency of the Filipino has been abused. It is important for all of us to call out those in power and force them to do their jobs, and not merely sharing how the people — whom they should serve — are standing up to their suffering. Merely telling such inspiring stories imply that the people are on their own and cannot expect anything from the government.

Accountability is not simply taking the blame when something goes wrong. It’s not a confession. Accountability is about delivering on a commitment. It’s responsibility to an outcome, not just a set of tasks. It’s taking initiative with thoughtful, strategic follow-through (Bregman, 2016).

But we as a people must also understand that we have to learn from our mistakes. We just do not have to accept the fact that “KAYA NATIN” is always applicable to every situation be it tragic or not. There is always a room for us to be able NOT to waste resources and worse, lives.

Personal accountability simply means you choose to take responsibility for your words, actions, and behaviors, and for the outcomes that they produce, managing those outcomes if necessary. And that you do what you tell yourself you will do. In this case, we need to do what is best like: following orders from the local government to evacuate, do something to protect the environment and the like.

A responsible citizen does not just blame the government officials but becomes a good team player with them. Based on the principles developed by Glenn M. Parker in the best-selling Parker Team-Player Survey, this shows in detail the four primary team-member styles in action -- the contributor, the collaborator, the communicator and the challenger. The object is to make the most of each team player's unique perspective. To accomplish this goal, team players must learn to identify their own style and the style of other team members, use the appropriate style to maximum team advantage, and learn to switch their style when it suits the needs of the team.

We need to work hand in hand and be part of the efforts to learn from our past mistakes. Pointing fingers will always be counterproductive and this is high time for us to ascend from being submerged.

Instead of saying “Kaya natin ito,” let our mantra be “Hindi na dapat maulit ito”.

  

Indolence

                                 (art: artnet.com)

Poloho! There are theories that as people age, their drive towards being productive would lessen. A lot of studies refuted that. There is no direct relationship with age and the interest to be functional. Although physical movements can really be affected as time goes by, it is the mind that stimulates the so-called interest. Motivation, as countlessly mentioned, comes from a psychological point of view. That is addressing the needs or deficits in a person. Ergo, the motivation of a person simply depends on his or her drives to satisfy a certain need. If this will be curtailed or impossible to attain, the person would simply become unmotivated.

According to Kiki (2019), many people have a lack of responsibility for their life and live blaming others, justifying, seeking pretexts and even giving up their dreams. They believe that the world is against them and that the “enemy” is outside them, not inside. They fail to realize that their own enemy is themselves.

One of the major reasons why people become unmotivated is that they are SELFISH. They do not perform anything which cannot benefit them in one way or the other. LIFEHACKS mentions that focusing on yourself will not get you far. You will be your own enemy when you refuse to give, help and serve others. You should be a generous person who knows that by giving and sharing (time, effort, knowledge and even money) you are sowing the seed to make a better world and leave your mark on it. Helping others will come back to you, sooner or later.

But is laziness or sloth an innate characteristic developed during childhood in the confines of the home? The probability is strong. Children are great mimics and can adopt the behaviors of their parents until sufficiently motivated to change their own behavior, most likely in pursuit of a relationship or objective goal. This was theorized by Levine in 2015.

This is one of the problems in organizations during these demanding times. There are those who do not SEE the enemy in them. The Dalai Lama said: When your mind is trained in self-discipline, even if you are surrounded by hostile forces, your peace of mind will hardly be disturbed. On the other hand, your mental peace and calm can easily be disrupted by your own negative thoughts and emotions. So I repeat, the real enemy is within, not outside.

Usually we define our enemy as a person, an external agent, whom we believe is causing harm to us or to someone we hold dear. But such an enemy is relative and impermanent. One moment, the person may act as an enemy; at yet another moment, he or she may become your best friend. This is a truth that we often experience in our own lives. But negative thoughts and emotions, the inner enemy, will always remain the enemy.

They are your enemy today, they have been your enemy in the past, and they will remain your enemy in the future as long as they reside within your mental continuum. Therefore, Shantideva says that negative thoughts and emotions are the real enemy, and this enemy is within.

When the person cannot identify the inner foe, he or she will continue to blame the outside forces and then become unmotivated and eventually become unproductive. There is nothing more powerful for self-motivation than the right attitude. You can’t choose or control your circumstance, but you can choose your attitude towards your circumstances.

A person is being lazy if he/she is able to carry out some activity that s/he ought to carry out, but is disinclined to do so because of the effort involved. Instead, s/he carries out the activity perfunctorily; or engages in some other, less strenuous or less boring activity; or remains idle. In short, s/he is being lazy if the motivation to spare effort trumps the motivation to do the right or expected thing (Burton, 2014).

Synonyms for laziness are indolence and sloth. Indolence derives from the Latin indolentia, ‘without pain’ or ‘without taking trouble’. Sloth has more moral and spiritual overtones than laziness or indolence. In the Christian tradition, sloth is one of the seven deadly sins because it undermines society and God’s plan, and because it invites sin.

A mature person must understand how to situate in the community where he or she belongs. The understanding of what the person can give to others is the main consideration since selfish motives are beyond the individual’s mind and intentions. The person is able to transcend the SELF and has defeated the inner enemy.  He or she must find the meaning of life through the small tasks he or she is doing. The person is not indolent for it kills the inner gift to be of purpose to the greater good.

Else, the person’s life will become meaningless if not absurd.

Albert Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd in his essay of 1942, The Myth of Sisyphus. In the final chapter, he compares the absurdity of man’s life with the plight of Sisyphus, a mythological king of Ephyra who was punished for his chronic deceitfulness by being made to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll back down again.

There is more to life than doing nothing. There is meaning in life when we work hard in serving people. There is no other enemy worse than the inner one. Let us conquer it and become better versions of ourselves.