It’s Easier
It may not seem like it at first blush, but living with
integrity is easier than living a deceitful life. While making
unethical decisions is often easier in the short term, it
eventually takes its toll. There’s no real happiness to be found in
struggling to remember your lies, living in fear of getting caught,
and not feeling like you truly earned your reward. It’s empty and
stressful. Bernie Madoff may have lived high on the hog, but did he
really enjoy his wealth knowing that one day his house of cards
would collapse? Living with integrity brings wholeness and peace.
Your conscience can rest easy, and you can look at yourself in the
mirror with pride.
It Builds Trust
A man of integrity is a man others can count on. They know he
will do what he says he will do. He is promoted at work because he
can be trusted with greater responsibility. His wife knows that
when he says he’s working late, he really is. His friends feel
comfortable opening up to him and turning to him in times of
crisis. When you choose to live with integrity, all of your
relationships will be healthier, stronger, and more satisfying.
It Serves as a Basis for Value Judgments
The questions given above raise some sticky issues. Every day we
are faced with similar dilemmas. A commitment to live a life of
integrity allows you clarity when you have to make hard choices.
You won’t be at war with yourself over which path to choose.
Instead, you’ll experience the confidence that comes with having
every aspect of your life knit together in a unity of purpose.
Living a life of integrity is a daily process that’s doesn’t end
until your life does. Here are some ways to develop integrity:
Decide now, not later. Many men have not
thought through their personal value system. They’re not sure who
they are or what they stand for, and they wait until the breaking
of a crisis to make their decision. At that point, it’s too late.
Faced then with great pressure, you will be more prone to take the
route which is easier in that moment. Decide now what you will and
will not compromise on. Then, when faced with ethical choices, the
decision will have already been made.
Quit the rationalizations. There’s always a
million reasons to compromise your integrity. You hear them on the
news every day as corporate bigwigs struggle to justify their fat
bonus checks. You can always come up with justifications that
seemingly make good sense and let you sleep better at night. But at
the end of the day, when you place your rationalizations on a scale
next to integrity, you’ll realize you sold out something priceless
for a measly pittance. There’s nothing more valuable than your good
name and the ability to look at yourself in the mirror each day
with a clear conscience.
Don’t take the first step. When a great man
falls from grace, we often wonder how he could have ever messed up
so royally. The truth is that he didn’t wake up one day and decide
to commit an egregious blunder. It started with a little fudging
here, a tiny bit of lying there. From there he just kept on sliding
down the slippery slope of compromise. Don’t compromise on the
little things, and you won’t on the bigger ones.
Don’t justify the means for the end. This is
probably the most popular rationalization for breaking with your
integrity. In reality, the journey towards an accomplishment or
decision is just as important as the destination itself. Even if
you are richly rewarded at the end, if you cannot look back on the
means used to get there with anything but shame, your victory will
be hollow indeed.
Take personal responsibility for you life. At
the heart of integrity is the ability to own up to the fact that
youare in control of your life.
You are responsible for both your successes and
your failures. Nobody else but you.
Integrity is a value that we should strive for in all areas of
your life. Here are some of the areas and situations where it
should always be applied:
Integrity Within Yourself
I once read an acquaintance’s blog in which he wrote of running
into someone at a bar and struggling to remember what story he had
told her about himself. Apparently, he enjoys telling people that
he meets at bars and such that he is different people-a pilot, a
doctor, a soldier, etc. He said that it sometimes gets hard to
remember who he told what.
While this is an extreme example, how many men do you know who
act like social chameleons; they are a different guy with you, a
different guy at home, a different guy at work, a different guy
when traveling, ect. Instead of being a single self, they live as
multiple selves, transforming into who they think each group wants
them to be. William James, the philosopher and psychologist, said
that men have “as many different social selves as there are
distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares.”
Even if you aren’t outright lying like my acquaintance, turning
on some alternate persona in different situations can be
exhausting. You end up feeling fragmented and confused as to who
you really are. No relationship should require you to pretend to be
someone you’re not. If people don’t like who you really are, why
would you want to be friends with them in the first place?
The first step towards integrity is being honest with yourself.
Be who are. Say what you mean. Do what you say you will do.
Don’t just walk the walk; talk the talk.
Integrity at Work
Integrity with your Friendships
http://artofmanliness.com/2009/04/07/living-a-life-of-integrity/
nice site leh!