THE TWELVE BASIC VIRTUES (PART 3)

9. COURAGE

· It takes courage to be a real winner – not a winner in the sense of beating out someone else by always insisting on coming out on top – but a winner at responding to life. It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the very unique person you really are. New ways are often uncertain ways and, as Robert Frost expressed it, “Courage is the human virtue that counts most –courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That’s all any of us have. –Muriel Jones

10. GOOD HABITS

· Character is necessarily strengthened by the cultivation of good habits. Habit is second nature. As it is said: “All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself.”- S.Smiles

11. PATIENCE

· The patient man is surely one who is unhurried in his mind and who finds it possible to relax within. One thing is sure, so long as the din and jar of life do not get into the inner essence of a man, he is safe.

A ship in a storm at sea may be pounded hard by the wind and waves, but if she has a steady captain and a dry engine room with her motors throbbing on, she will ride out the storm.-Norman Vincen Peale

12. UNSELFISHNESS

· There is a difference between self-love and selfishness. Self-love means having the personal security, knowledge and skills to be able to affirm your existence. Self-love is based on sufficiency, not deficiency.

Selfishness on the other hand, is a deficiency disease. The selfish person does not love himself too much but too little; in fact he hates himself.- Richard Nelson Jones

· When you put yourself in the center of all your thoughts, to the exclusion of everyone else, you are close to committing personality suicide. Self-pity and self-interest are destructive maladies causing the personality to wither and die. A person at any age, under any circumstance, can feel better by reaching out to others. Helpful people are joyous people, and joy “does good, like medicine.”-Norman Vincent Peale

Chandru Gidwani