be mature

A subproject of the SpreadPositivity project.

A sparse and partial work very much in progress on ways to be mature instead of being immature. Much of this is admittedly from personal experience (mistakes made, lessons learned, and experienced first hand). Documenting as a reminder.

Learning to BeNice is a good place to start. Then:

practice

• emotional calmness. when others get strongly emotional, practice staying calm and collected.
• forget gossip.
• ignore drama.
• focus on and respond to positive statements (related: InterpretPositively)
• EncourageGood

avoid immature behaviors

(consider moving this to a separate page)

While avoiding (unlearning) an immature behavior is often more difficult than learning a mature behavior, it's still useful to list things to avoid. Much of this has been abstracted/extracted from CommunicationFilters.

• avoid mean behaviors. fundamentally, being mean is an immature thing to do. grow beyond it.
• avoid repeated use of logical fallacies in arguments. I say "repeated" because everybody makes mistakes, and often the best way to learn is by making a mistake. once. if you persist in (consciously) repeating your mistake after it's been pointed out, you're being stubborn in an immature way.
  • e.g. avoid repeated (especially repeating the same) straw man arguments
• avoid gossiping
• avoid emotional instability / emotional freakouts
• avoid being a drama amplifier
• avoid publishing primarily to draw attention to yourself, especially in a juvenile sort of "look at me! look at me!" way. obviously some amount of "here's what I've been up to" stated simply and directly is both healthy and good/transparent. learn the difference between that and publishing just for attention.
• avoid being judgmental. this is a tough one. the point is not to avoid critical thought (which is itself is a very good thing), but rather to keep an open mind towards individual preferences, cultures, and practices which may be very different than what you've been raised/cultured/socialized with.

handle negativity

Calmly handling negativity in a rational and (at least semi) considerate way is another way to be more mature.

• DefuseEmoCommunications

acknowledge mistakes and apologize

When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, and apologize.

In contrast, the opposites are signs of immaturity:

• failure to acknowledge mistakes. stubbornly holding an untenable position, simply for the sake of having been right in the past or never having to have admitted ever doing anything wrong. often a result of excessive ego / insecurity (or both - there tends to be a high correlation).
• failure to take responsibility for a mistake. i.e. always/frequently blaming others or external sources/situations for their own mistakes.
• failure to apologize. often times a result of insecurity / fear that apologizing will show weakness.

gracefully accept apologies

When someone does apologize, gracefully accept their apology in a way that acknowledges their act of apology as a positive one, and work to move forward beyond whatever mistake was made.

Avoid gloating or any form of "rubbing it in", except perhaps in a lightly humorous way, used to make light of the situation and help move on in a positive way.

related

• BeNice
• InterpretPositively
• EncourageGood
• OvercomeHatred
• CommunicationFilters

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