Being vs. Doing

BEING Vs. DOING
As part of the book “Conspiracy for Greatness” by Behnam Bakhshandeh

We all are experts in DOING.

By the way, just DOING is not enough for us; we have to DO IT GOOD, or DO IT RIGHT!

Take a look around, you are either good at what you DO or you go to school to become good at what you are going to DO, or know someone who is very good at what they DO, or what you need them to be good at! Or you hire someone who is good at what you want them to DO! It is all about DOING, and we have to DO it right!

That is what makes things work around our lives, and what we need! We have made our environment so complicated and so out of control with doing rules, doing laws, doing governments, doing parenting, doing this and doing that, which forces us to go through many years of education and do a lot of other DOINGS just so we can afford doing the education. We teach our children to do the same thing to become someone that does something that will make us proud of what they do, and then we are all getting busy doing what we all do! How is that for a great picture of our lives and our world that we have created around us?

As I said, just doing it is not enough. We must to do it right! If we don’t do it right, we suffer for years and are stuck in a battle with ourselves. We make ourselves wrong for not doing it right the first time, and the first try! Can you see yourself there? I am sure you can, as can I. We have started so many things and have not finished them, because it was not RIGHT ENOUGH, it was not GOOD ENOUGH. The result? We just dropped it.

When Did YOU Give Up?

We have put aside, stuck on shelves and stored in garages so many dreams and ideas that make us sad to think about them! Look for yourself and see how many dreams, or interests in life, you put aside because you failed after a couple of tries, or maybe you haven’t even started because you were not sure if you could succeed or accomplish it. Or you were not sure if you could do it RIGHT! How many times and for how many years have you judged yourself or others for not doing “it” right? How many times were you sad? How many times did you cry or get depressed because you did not do something right? In business, work, education, sports, friendships and relationships? If you notice, everyone around you is the same way! Even people who look confident and have succeeded in life have dealt with this issue of not “doing it right,” and most important, not being good enough to do it right. Or not being good enough to be loved, not being enough for someone or something. Not being enough to be selected on a school sports team. Not being good enough to pass the test in school, high school, college or work. Not being enough to be trusted. You know as well as I do that this list can go on. It was in your life from the beginning, it is there right now, and it will be with you until you leave this earth! Maybe it started when you fell from your tricycle the first time, or when you did not get asked out to your first prom night, and all the stuff in between. Either way, you started developing this mindset a long time ago, and you still carry that big baggage with you wherever you go.

Come back, stay with me, right here and now. There is a good ending in this very sad dramatic story, a very good one, with a great protagonist, and it is called “YOU!” Yes, you are the hero in this drama because you can and you will win! So stay with me here and you will see how you can turn this sucker around.

What is common in all these incidents, and/or events in our lives that cause all that mischief is the BEING part of human being that makes us all be in the same boat.

Human Beings vs. Human Doing

Very interesting. We are human beings, but all we do is “human-doing.” It sounds funny, doesn’t it? That is because it is funny! If you pay attention, you will notice that regardless of nationality, race, age, sex, sexual orientations, and even social-upbringing, when a person is upset, angry, sad or happy, we can recognize it without them even talking. Why is that? We can recognize resentment, we can see regret, we can smell unhappiness, and we can recognize so many different ways of being in others. We can also see being committed, being interested, being communicative, being excellence driven and having leadership qualities. Even without them doing anything special, we can see those characteristics on others regardless of how hard they try to hide them or express them.

“State of being” is what makes us all do what we do, or even feel what we feel. It makes us interested in what we do, it allows us to get related to others, or take ourselves away from them! It makes us succeed or fail, and it makes us love or hate ourselves and others!

I can talk about myself here. I have done this many times in my own life, which has impacted other’s lives. If you read my biography you know that I was born and raised in Iran, and I am Persian, which brings with it more than 2,500 years of monarchy, over 7,000 years of civilization and more than 10,000 years of history. For a long time, this history separated me from so many people. What kind of people? Anybody who was not Persian! I know this seems pretty arrogant! So, how I was doing that? I did not have any American friends. I was working with them, but not socializing with them. I was taught that I was better than them. I was from a very rich and deep culture, and they didn’t match up. I was BEING better than them. I was not saying that I was better to them nor to anybody else, but who I was BEING with them was arrogant and snooty! Can you understand that? I am sure that you have done that toward other people, maybe some of your friends or even some of your family members.

When I realized what I was doing, I saw how shallow it was and how empty my life was. I was isolated and kept myself away from a lot of great people, but I was not seeing it that way. As I said, BEING is like air to a bird or water to a fish. We do not recognize our own way of being. Sometimes it takes a shocking incident or event to wake us up. Sometimes a shocking experience of how we have hurt others might wake us up, or sometimes when someone you love leaves you because your way of being is too much and is too destructive.

Unfortunately, sometimes we wake up too late. I am guilty of this.