What Does Doing Good Mean to You?

Britt Bravo — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:16:37 -0500

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I've been thinking about how to spend the 40 days before my 40th birthday in a have-fun, do-good way to celebrate this particular aging transition.

It's pretty easy to come up with ways to have fun, but I've been thinking a lot about what it means to "do good." Here are some of the way Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines it:

As an adjective it can mean virtuous, kind, benevolent, and true. It is also defined as bountiful, suitable, fit and fertile like "good land" and "good to eat." It can also mean right, which is where it gets tricky, because we all have different versions of what we think is right.

As a noun it can mean, "something conforming to the moral order of the universe," (again, tricky, since different people have different morals), and it can also mean, "something that has economic utility or satisfies an economic want," which I think is interesting because sometimes things related to money and economics aren't associated with being good.

To me, "doing good" means:

Using your gifts and talents to their fullest.
Using your gifts and talents to help others.
Caring for yourself so you can care for others.
Being respectful of all people (even if they annoy you--tough one for me)
Enjoying your life as it is, even it's not how you want it to be at the moment.
Making choices and taking actions with the needs of others in mind, as well as your own.
Making choices and taking actions as if we are all connected.

What does doing good mean to you?

Check out how these blogs and sites with "good" in their names talk about doing good:

All for Good
GOOD Blog
GoodSearch
The Greater Good Blog
Network for Good
Riches for Good
Sublime Goodness
United Nations Good Works

Butterfly photo by me.

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Britt Bravo, also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and is a Big Vision Consultant.

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What Does Doing Good Mean to You?