Tag: integrity

Love vs admiration

For someone to know you and love you is more impressive than getting the admiration of those who only know your public persona. Anyone can put on a show in public, being on their best behavior, and most people do. So when you to let someone into your life and they see the real you, with all of your imperfections, and still love you? That’s what really matters.

Don’t worry about popularity or fame (which are always fleeting), just treat people well and try to do the right thing as much as you can. By doing this, you can help win the love and respect from those who truly matter.

Success, money, and fame

“I’d rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.” – Sophocles

Don’t trade your integrity for fame, money, or “success.” Those things come and go, but you’ll always have to live with your decisions. Outward success does not mean you’ll feel inward contentment. It may take longer, but if you live in a way where your actions align with your values, you’ll end up happier without sacrificing your honor or time with loved ones. And, to me, that is a truer measure of success than only counting fame or money.

Luck and work

“Care and diligence bring luck.” – Thomas Fuller

Sometimes, you have to make your own luck. It’s not always the case, and it doesn’t always come easy, but if you work hard at doing the right things and treating people the right way, good things often come to you.

If you feel like you’re unlucky, that just means you have to work harder and focus on the positives around you. The world isn’t out to get you. It just is what it is. It’s not going out of its way to hurt or help you. You have to work as hard as you can, controlling what you can, and let everything else fall into place.

“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” – Samuel Goldwyn

Prioritizing core values

What are your core values? Have you ever thought of ranking them in order of importance?

In a perfect world, you would be able to always stand by your core values. But life isn’t perfect. Sometimes other people’s actions affect you and you need to respond. If push comes to shove and you encounter a situation where you have to decide between core value #1 and core value #2, which would you choose?

For example, say you have core values that include integrity and loyalty. Which one comes first? For many people, the answer would be loyalty. And while I don’t blame them for that answer, I feel you need to put your personal integrity above being loyal to a person, an organization, or a cause. Here’s why…you can control your actions, which make up your integrity, but you can’t control the actions of others. So if you are loyal to someone and they do something heinous, do you stay loyal to them?

Let’s use an example to illustrate my point. My family is critically important to me. They play the biggest role in my life, bar none. But despite that, my personal integrity and the choices I decide to make still have to be my priority over loyalty. In this example, let’s say a family member robs a bank or cheats on their spouse. Do I defend them at all costs? No. That was their decision and with that decision comes potential consequences. If they don’t like the consequences, then they shouldn’t have taken the action. They don’t get to take only the “good parts” and do whatever they want without taking the bad parts that come with their decisions. If I defend them or lie for them to cover up their mistake, not only does it reinforce their poor decision (because now they have no consequences for their actions), but it also makes me lose integrity. You can only be accountable for your own actions. This is why I would prioritize my integrity over loyalty.

Do the best you can

All anyone should ever expect of someone else is that they do the best they can based on the knowledge and experience they have. How can you fault someone (including yourself) for making a poor decision when they were only acting based on their past experiences and the information they had at hand? That’s like me judging my 10-year old self for doing something dumb. Should I hold a grudge against 10-year old me? (Hint: the answer is no.)

Hindsight is always 20-20. We have all said or done things that we wish we wouldn’t have said or done, whether it was a minor offense or a major transgression. But you can’t change the past, you can only change how you will act in the future. The best way to make sure you improve your future actions is to continually be evolving. Work on improving yourself everyday – improving your mindset, working towards having an attitude of gratitude, teaching yourself to be more forgiving.

We all make mistakes, but all we can do is continue to try our best. As we watch others or experience something ourselves, we should take note as to how certain actions affect others. How did that make them feel? Was that the best way to handle the situation or would it have been more productive to approach it another way? Lastly, don’t judge others for doing something that you yourself may have done just a few years ago. Everyone is journeying through life together. They may be a little further ahead or behind you on the path, but don’t be so harsh to criticize when that could have been you making the same poor decision.