To get you a little more focused
in on this concept, let’s take a look at a few synonyms:
honesty, honor, reliability, uprightness. Integrity is consistently,
not perfectly, adhering to a code of moral values. Integrity
can help you overall, help you in your relationships, and
how you feel about your self. This is a major factor in
achieving success in all areas of life. But let’s get into
what integrity is in a little more detail.
According to Abraham Maslow, the father of humanistic psychology,
integrity is a characteristic that belongs to people who
are self-actualized, or the motive to realize all of one’s
potential. Note: not some potential but a desire to achieve
or reach all of one’s potential.
I gave a general lecture one time on the principles behind
my work, specifically that which is expressed in my novel
Black Body Radiation and the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, and
I was attempting to show this innate or natural desire of
human beings to reach toward perfection. One student doubted
that most people desired this. I asked him if he played
sports. He said yes. I asked him if he ever desired to lose.
Of course he said no. I then asked him if he was going to
school to get F’s. He began to see my point. Integrity is
simply a desire to achieve moral success. Unfortunately,
we see little of this today. When the word achievement is
invoked we often think of those achieving in academics,
sports, business, the arts, science, and politics. Very
rarely do we admire, look to, or think of great moral achievers,
especially in a day and age when self-service and winning
is a priority over and above valor and honesty.
Nevertheless, we admire, at times even come close to worshiping
these great achievers: Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Warren
Buffett, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordon, David Ortiz, Oprah
Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Madonna. A point to
keep in mind is that even high achievers, or those who have
self-actualized in their careers to a greater degree than
others, often times suffer a majority of failure. Tiger
Woods, of course, a great winner, still loses about seventy-five
percent of the time. Michael Jordan, even with all his success,
missed more shots than he made and won the championship
only six out of the fifteen years he played. David Ortiz,
one of the most prolific and clutch hitters in Major League
Baseball, still fails seventy percent of the time. And even
the most successful people in business and entertainment,
like those listed above, still fail more than they achieve.
But it is this human desire to achieve that is above all
else an innate desire, and this innate desire to achieve,
to work towards perfection requires one to use many of the
attributes I’ve listed above to get there. They are essential
to helping you work towards your potential.
Knowing oneself heightens a person's integrity. According
to Abraham Maslow, having integrity can take a very long
time to reach and is very hard to obtain. It's at the top
of Maslow's pyramid.
You’ll notice the word at the very top: morality. And there
are a couple of other very important elements of self-actualization:
lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts. I’ll discuss
each element one at a time.
Morality. What does that mean? It is not, according to some,
a shifting or changing principle, meaning that one can modify
it according to one’s needs and desires or as they see fit.
For example, it is not right to say that stealing is immoral
and then qualify it when you find some money on the street
and say, “Well, attempting to track down this person is
futile. Finders keepers.” Now I’m not saying that we should
all be a goody-two-shoes (what does that mean anyway?) but
more that we should look at this issue of morality and focus
on the absolute definition of morality or what is moral.
However, when you look up the definition, it is not absolute,
meaning it’s a little vague. What gives? So how do we know
what is “right of just behavior” or what it means to have
a “sense of what is right or wrong”?
Well, let’s take a look at the definition of a word that
often implies a lack of moral character: steal. Stealing
is the “taking of the property of another or others without
permission or right, esp. secretly or by force.” Now, in
attempt to work to the best of one’s ability, the person
should reach for perfection, meaning that if you take something,
anything that is not yours, it is stealing. Let me give
you an example I gave me students.
You’re in Blockbuster Video looking for a movie. You’re
roaming around the back shelves, and looking down for a
movie you see a twenty dollar bill. What do you do? Put
it in your pocket? Bring it up to the cashier and tell them
that you found it? Or do you start asking people in the
store who tell you it’s theirs what is the serial number?
To answer this question, let’s take a look at the definition
of stealing again. Stealing is defined as taking something
without permission or right. To be perfectly moral in this
situation, doing that which is right, you would have to
one, either leave it where you found it— disassociating
you from any degree of stealing—or two, give it to the cashier.
I’m not saying what you or anyone should do here, but I
do bring this up to make a point. Any move whatsoever toward
taking property that you are not given permission to take
is moving toward the stealing. Now, many may say that it’s
ridiculous to believe that if someone takes twenty bucks
that was left behind by someone in Blockbuster that it’s
stealing and that it’s going to lead to bank robbing. It
may. Consider this, not everyone who takes a drink becomes
an alcoholic, but some do. Nutritionists tell us that the
more you eat food that is bad for you the easier it is to
not only keep eating it but to eat more, and that if you
begin eating food that’s good for you, the greater propensity
you have to continue to eat it. One of the reasons people
go off their diet is because they say to themselves, for
example, “Well, I know I told myself that I would only eat
ice cream on the weekends but it’s been a hard week and
I’m going to eat today. Hell, the weekend is only a day
away.” Certainly, not a problem, but then it’s being eaten
on Thursday, then Wednesday, then Tuesday and so on.
There’s a man I know who only eats ice cream when it’s a
full moon. Why? Well, he wants a treat, don’t you? Consider
this part of the story. During the celebration of his birthday
one year, someone brought ice cream. They knew his rule
but they figured that he would eat the ice cream. After
all, it was his birthday. Let’s live it up. However, the
man said no. He would not eat it. That is discipline. That
is sticking to one’s rules. That is working toward perfection.
Hell that is perfection. The closer we get to perfection
with our thoughts, words, actions, and deeds the greater
joy we will have. Let’s have Brutus tell us again how it
is.
"It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life [that]
those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the
strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things
in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest people."--Brutus
Hamilton
About The Author Jeff Brown has been writing
for over 25 years: poetry, novels, essays, and humor. He
reads everything that isn't nailed down: history, philosophy,
theology, science, math, marketing, fiction.
is available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com
