Knowing Good: Worksheet

1. Someone taught you your Sense of Good.  That  person or those persons are your prime influencers. That Sense of Good  resides within you changing and evolving as you grow yet struggles to remain true to your first influencer’s essential teachings.  These teachers of good may have been a parent, an uncle, aunt, sister, brother,  a coach, a teacher, or one of those flash nurturance relationships that occur on the streets of life.  Name and list at least three of those teachers who planted the seeds of good in your life story.
2. Difficult as it may be list  the attributes of goodness each of these personss brought to your life.  These attributes  can be described in  a single word, simple phrases or  short sentences. Again it helps initially to write them down
3. As you contemplate the options before you in a decision process hold these prime influencers and their attributes in your mind and monitor your feeling states as you run the options on the future decision. If necessary you may want to pull a sheet of paper and rate your feelings for each consideration of option with 1 being fear/anxiety, 5 being ambiguity, and 10 being unfettered enthusiasm.

These attributes of goodness are in effect tracers represented in language attached to feeling states in your body.  In any decision that aligns with these words and feelings will empower you and motivate you.  To contradict these tracer words and their feeling states  in making a decision is to contradict your Sense of Good  and can result in distress or moral distress.  

Cautionary notes and recommendations:  Pause I is about you and not about  your religious convictions or beliefs which are addressed in Pause II.   While Pause I and II are  closely related, Pause I deals with your inner authority regarding good which hopefully is in line with your religious  precepts and commands and yet may not always be a fit.  Pause I is your individual personal refuge time with your body-brain-mind trinity.  If your inner Sense of Good cross grains a spiritual/religious component of your life in The Good Decision, the message is you have work to do at the conscious level and perhaps mentors and friends to consult.  Very few decisions will align perfectly with your inner Sense of Good which is why your inner Sense of Good is alway a work in progress. 

Pause I works very well as an actual daily personal practice.  Pauses II and III remind us soon enough that we as individuals  are never wholly individual or communal.  We do however have  responsibilities to our individual selves while  attending to  family and community.  Keeping your Sense of Good  current and accessible to you through daily meditation, contemplation  or prayer  actually enriches your practice in a very practical way.