Always Stick to Your Principles
Our personal integrity determines how we behave when there isn’t anyone else watching us. Will we cut corners, or will we live by our values? There are additional ramifications to our self-image each and every time we compromise our personal beliefs.
Most people believe that it can take just two weeks to develop or drop a habit. It’s important to always remember that it takes a lot less time than that to annihilate a lifetime of built-up integrity. When you live by a belief system, your actions are guided by this on a daily basis. You won’t just go out and hit someone with your car if you value human life. Along the same idea, you wouldn’t wake up and quit your job because you didn’t feel like going to work.
These examples might seem farfetched. Who would do a thing like that? You’d be surprised. When our integrity and personal standards are under fire, we certainly won’t just get up one morning and decide to chuck it all in. At the times when our integrity and personal standards are put to the test, we shouldn’t choose to throw it all away. There are a series of steps leading up to leaving our principles behind. It’s necessary to keep ourselves in check in order to keep that from happening.
In the movies, when the bad guy is finally caught, he looks like an ordinary person. He tells the police that he’s not a bad person, and that he never set out to embezzle a billion dollars from his company.
Manning our principles is one of those twenty-four hour career opportunities - one chance to succeed, and many chances to fail. Our principals are not coming under fire all the time, but only when we least expect it. Something will happen, at some point, and it could be a pivotal point in our lives. It’s like seeing the man in front of you drop his wallet as he attempts to put it in his pocket. Do you pick it up and give it back - or keep it, thinking he should have been more careful?
The defining moments are the little ones. Each little decision changes us somehow. At work, our boss may ask us to let something slide for the “greater good.” We may wrestle with the decision, but in the end, most people will usually decide to go along, just to keep the job.
With each compromising decision, a little more of our integrity is chipped away. It becomes easier to give in each time. What we don’t realize is that we no longer look at ourselves in the mirror – so to speak, and for the same reason, we seldom go against the status quo for fear of being labelled as a hypocrite. In such situations, our principles deteriorate and become almost completely fluid.
If you’ve felt that way, it means you still mourn the changes that have brought you to such a dismal point. Regaining your integrity won’t be easy, especially around those for whom you compromised your ideals. However, with the help of truly understanding and trustworthy people, your self-image can be restored - and you can take control, begin again and rebuild your life.
Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the Learning 2 Live Enterprise, an online Lifestyles resource which explores various aspects of business and pleasure, comprising an array of Lifestyle topics which cover Relationships, Health, Wellbeing, Career, Travel & Coaching, and more. Alan has a great deal of hands on experience throughout a wide variety of business disciplines including Coaching and Mentoring, Change Management and NLP training techniques.
