Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you.

All right: one can work out for himself the human virtues just by recognizing how he himself would like to be treated. And from that, I think you will agree, one has settled any confusions as to what “good conduct” really is. It’s a far cry from being inactive, sitting still with your hands in your lap and saying nothing. “Being good” can be a very active and powerful force. There is little joy to be found in gloomy, restrained solemnity. When some of old made it seem that to practice virtue required a grim and dismal sort of life, they tended to infer that all pleasure came from being wicked: nothing could be further from the facts. Joy and pleasure do not come from immorality! Quite the reverse! Joy and pleasure arise only in honest hearts: the immoral lead unbelievably tragic lives filled with suffering and pain. The human virtues have little to do with gloominess. They are the bright face of life itself.
Now what do you suppose would happen if one were to try to treat those around him with justness, loyalty, good sportsmanship, fairness, honesty, kindness, consideration, compassion, self-control, tolerance, forgivingness, benevolence, belief, respect, politeness, dignity, admiration, friendliness, love, and did it with integrity?
It might take a while but don’t you suppose that many others would then begin to try to treat one the same way?
Even allowing for the occasional lapses—the news that startles one half out of his wits, the burglar one has to bop on the head, the nut who is driving slow in the fast lane when one is late for work—it should be fairly visible that one would lift oneself to a new plane of human relations. One’s survival potential would be considerably raised. And certainly one’s life would be a happier one.
One can influence the conduct of others around him. If one is not like that already, it can be made much easier by just picking one virtue a day and specializing in it for that day. Doing that, they would all eventually be in.
Aside from personal benefit, one can take a hand, no matter how small, in beginning a new era for human relations. The pebble, dropped in a pool, can make ripples to the furthest shore.
The way to happiness is made much brighter by applying the precept, “Try to treatothersas you would want them to treat you.” http://www.thewaytohappiness.org/thewaytohappiness/precepts/try-to-treat...
From the book THE WAY TO HAPPINESS, by L. Ronnald Hubbard.