LIVING A GREAT LIFE PART D
CHANGE YOUR THINKING CHANGE YOUR LIFE
By Brian Tracy
CHAPTER 12: Living a Great Life
BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
Honesty means that you are always true to the very best that is in you. As Polonius says in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Being true to yourself is the starting point of developing a great character.
This begins with always living in truth with yourself. You do not delude yourself or play games with your own mind. You don’t try to believe things that are completely impossible. You don’t hope and pray that things would be different than they are. You deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it were.
ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST
Every job bears the signature of the person who did it. Being true to yourself means that you always do your very best at whatever job or responsibility you take on. Honesty and integrity on the inside are expressed as quality and excellence in your work on the outside.You can tell what you are made of on the inside by the amount of time and attention that you put into doing the very best job possible at everything that is given to you to do. Don’t take it on unless you are willing to do it in an excellent fashion. Integrity means that you are always truthful, straightforward, and honest with everyone in your life. Just as you are true to yourself, you are true to others as well. You live in truth with others, at home and at work.
If you ask people whether they are honest, almost everyone will say that they are. Most people do not lie, cheat, steal, or engage in dishonest behaviors of any kind. But being truly honest means that you are honest with everyone in your life. This means that not only do you never lie; you never live a lie. You never stay in a situation that is wrong for you or in a condition that undermines your integrity or makes you unhappy. You never compromise your integrity by biting your lip and refusing to say what you truly think and feel.
YOUR HIGHEST GOAL
One of the hallmarks of the truly honest person is that they set peace of mind as their highest goal. Once you have set peace of mind as your primary aim in life, you organize your other goals and activities around it. Being truly honest means that you refuse to compromise your peace of mind for anything or anyone. You only do and say the things that you feel to be right in every situation.
Honesty and integrity mean that you listen to yourself and that you trust your inner voice. You listen to your intuition and you let it guide you to do and say the right things at the right time. When you are disturbed or unhappy, you sit quietly by yourself in solitude, waiting and listening for the guidance that always comes. When you get an idea or insight into the right thing to do, you put it into action. You trust your higher mind. This is the key to living in truth with yourself and others.
THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR OWN MIND
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Self-Reliance,” said, “Guard your integrity as a sacred thing.” He went on to say, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Truthfulness is the indispensable requirement for the development of character, and the development of character must be a central aim of your life.
Aristotle said, “The purpose of education is the development of the character of the young.” Today, in the United States, many young people have not been brought up with a clear sense of right and wrong. Many people have been told that values are relative . Many people have been told, for example, that if they like to shoplift, then that particular value is just as good as a person who believes that shoplifting is wrong.
This form of value relativity leads down a blind alley. It leads to failure, frustration, and unhappiness. The fact is that values are not relative. There are values that are life-enhancing and there are values that are life-destroying. If a value is positive, living by it improves the quality of your life and your relationships with others. A negative value hurts your relationships and detracts from the quality of your life. You can easily tell the difference, because living by a positive value makes you feel happy, and practicing a negative value makes you feel unhappy.
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