It’s been a tough year and a half. It’s not just all the stuff that’s happened (a bitter election and a deadly pandemic), it’s the dismay you feel over friends and family who see these events very differently than you. If you’re not arguing with them, you’re griping about them to anyone who’ll listen. The rifts and the bad feelings that result make a terrible time worse.
Elaine Parke suggests trying something new: instead of trying to change their attitude, focus on uplifting yours.
“Trying to convince others to change not only doesn’t work; it makes you angry and miserable,” says Parke, author of The Habits of Unity: 12 Months to a Stronger America…one citizen at a time (Outskirts Press, 2021, ISBN: 978-1-9772-4276-1, $21.95, www.12habits4allofus.org).
“It would be easy to just cut people off—and many have—but these relationships matter,” she adds. “In hard times especially, we need our friends and family in our lives.”
Parke isn’t saying we shouldn’t have political convictions. She’s saying we can find a way to disagree with those on the “other side” while treating them with dignity and respect. We can still love and value them. And making that shift starts with the man or woman in the mirror.
Parke—who’s distressed by what she sees as a complete lack of concern for cooperating, connecting, and treating others with dignity and respect—is on a mission to reunify America. That will happen when we master the “get along” skills we should have learned as children.
Her book gives readers a simple, doable framework for uplifting themselves and practicing unity that simultaneously improves their mental health. Her big goal is to get everyone focused on the same branded behavior each month. The idea is that the sheer force of all that concentrated positive energy sparks a unity revolution that rises from the ground up and sweeps the nation.
Yet, until that happens, we can leverage the power of The Habits of Unity on a personal level by absorbing the book’s 365 “one-magic-minute-a-day” motivationals to form one good habit per month:
January: Help Others
February: You Count
March: Resolve Conflicts
April: Take Care of Our Environment
May: Be Grateful
June: Reach Higher
July: Become Involved
August: Know Who You Are
September: Do Your Best
October: Be Patient and Listen
November: Show a Positive Attitude
December: Celebrate Community, Family, and Friends
Those who’ve tried it say the plan is easy to put into practice. It feels good, so you’ll want to keep doing it. And you’ll be shocked by how fast your “difficult” relationships improve.
“It reminds me of the saying about how prayer doesn’t change things for us, it changes us for things,” says Parke. “Adjusting our own attitude makes us more centered and peaceful. We’re just happier. We’re no longer so desperate to get others to come around to our way of thinking.”
And here’s the irony, says Parke: that’s precisely when they might. The less you beat your head against the wall trying to sway people, the more influential you become.
“The bigger your attitude shift, the more others will be drawn to you,” she says. “When they actually enjoy being around you they’re far more likely to listen to what you have to say.”
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About the Author:
Elaine Parke, MBA, CS, CM, NSA, is the author of The Habits of Unity: 12 Months to a Stronger America…one citizen at a time. For 30 years, her scalable and evidence-driven 12 habits of social unity model has transformed several million community citizens and youth across the USA’s Midwest and in Rwanda, helping them feel more caring and connected to one another. In 1993, her monthly branded and colorful habit-forming model was deemed a “Social Invention” by the London Institute for Social Inventions.
Parke spent 25 years fine-tuning her mass-market media skills in corporate America. Then, in 1987, she redirected her focus to helping people get along better. Her first book, Join the Golden Rule Revolution: Practice One Habit…Each Month of the Year, was published in 2000. She has won many awards and recognitions for her work.
Parke is certified in public speaking, violence prevention, conflict management, and mediation, as well as meditation, and has been a popular speaker in her field of driving health and positive social and civic engagement with managed media strategies. She has been an occasional guest marketing lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carnegie Mellon University. To learn more, please visit www.12habits4allofus.org
About the Book:
The Habits of Unity: 12 Months to a Stronger America…one citizen at a time (Outskirts Press, 2021, ISBN: 978-1-9772-4276-1,
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