Integrity. Everyone talks about having it. As a glass-half-full kind of guy, I believe that most people do have it.
What I don’t think we talk about enough is what it really means. You might say, “Clayton, it’s easy. It means doing what you say you’re going to do”.
I think that’s partially correct. The part that’s missing is, “Doing what you say you’re going to do (even when there’s an alternative available that is personally more beneficial)”.
Let me use an analogy to explain why that last part matters. Consider a man who claims to be peaceful, but has no capacity to be violent. He is not peaceful, he is harmless. The man who knows violence and chooses not to use it is the peaceful man.
The same applies to the person claiming integrity. If whatever action they took was the only action available, that in and of itself is not acting with integrity. It is only when that much tastier (albeit the wrong choice) option is presented that doing the right thing can be claimed as having integrity.
Big actions and small, they all count the same. Remember this not only when you’re closing on a multi-million dollar land transaction, but also when you’re dog tired, just want to go to bed, and you’re hoping your spouse doesn’t remember that you said you’d finish cleaning the dishes or folding that last pile of laundry.
