Are You Playing Well with Others?

Just think about it when you're learning in kindergarten. There always seemed one kid whose report card said, "Does not play well with others." Do you think that this will affect the kid's future life when he grows up. Similarly, you can reflect yourself. Do you have issues in your marriage you want to work out? Would you like to get along better with people in your life, especially your spouse? In the personal growth and self-help fields, there's a lot of talk about core values. Most of the teachers and coaches will tell you to identify your personal values in order to figure out the right direction and real purpose for your life. This is true but there are other reasons for discovering which values are essential for creating a happy life and successful relationships.

We learn things below in kindergarten:

1. Share.

2. Play fair.

3. Put things back where you found them.

4. Play together so that everyone has fun.

5. Clean up your own mess.

6. Say you're sorry if you hurt someone.

You might think that these lessons are obvious and even juvenile but at their heart, these are profoundly fundamental to living a happy life. Of course, we all learned them at a surface level in kindergarten but no one told us why we should act like this. We were never told the values embedded within these behaviors.

What we were taught in kindergarten seem to be as simple as just rules and we hardly think about it deeper. Think about it. What would be possible if in kindergarten, instead of being told "nice little girls and boys share things with each other", we were taught these behaviors in a different manner. What if our teachers and parents instead asked us "is sharing important to you?" "How does it feel when you share something with other people and they seem so happy?" or "Do you like it when people share things with you?"

Imagine the possibilities if we learned to look inside ourselves and recognize how these behaviors enrich our lives? How different would the world be if children were taught to see how acting in this fashions mattered to them and how their choices could positively affect their lives as well as everyone around them?