Here is your Thursday STORY on:
ADAPTING TO CHANGE:
Often the big fear with CHANGE is the position it leaves you in. It may result in your respect being lost, your house, your job or your standing in the community. If we put too much of a value on these, then the change is feared most.
At the end of the day these do have value, but what about your health, your smile and all the other values?
We can often forget that in reality our health has more priority than our house. If we lose our house, we haven’t lost our health, our depth of character, our smile, our honesty and our integrity. We can always get another house, but we can’t always get our health fully back to its original state.
Rather than see a change as the end, the sorrowful and pitiful, the miserable and frustrating; and ultimately wallow in this sadness and wonder what to do. We should realise that with every end there is a new beginning. We should forget all the pity, forget all the need for consolation and allow this period of sadness to end too. We should SEE a chance to start again, start over. What better position can we be in, if we’ve experienced the troubles that has caused an ENDING, we’ll be aware of the pitfalls and avoid them in our new beginning.
Sometimes as we stay with the moral high ground and find we suffer as a consequence, is it not the case that we’re obviously putting too much value in the sufferance?
If you stick with your good morals and for some reason you go down one rung of the ladder, why have you suffered? You haven’t suffered, what you have done is chose to give value to the subject that’s taken you down the rung of the ladder. It may have been the house you lost, when you should have considered that although the house has gone your health and fit mind remains intact.
More often than not it isn’t what happens in life that is the problem it is how we perceive it upon our lifestyle. If we adjust our view, we can get back on track.
Today’s story is the perfect illustration of keeping the moral high ground and at first thinking you’ve suffered a loss; but with due consideration the values had been wrong until you’d reconsidered.
WHAT GOOD IS INTEGRITY?
After a workshop, Paul (that's not his real name) said that he still has 10-year-old scars from the time he quit a good job rather than lie. When his boss asked him to issue a press release containing patently false statements, he refused, putting his employee badge on the table.
His boss calmly handed the badge back to him saying, "Think this over. Why throw away a good job and a promising career?"
Paul walked out so frustrated and frightened, he had to find a private place to cry. What's worse, he said that his act of moral courage was a meaningless waste. Someone else issued the press release and his boss's career flourished. "It took me years to find a job as good as that one and my family suffered," he added. "So, what good did my integrity do for anyone?"
Paul was looking for validation of his principled stance in the wrong places. We exercise integrity not to get what we want, but to be what we want. Integrity is not essentially about winning; it's about staying whole and being worthy of self-respect and the esteem of loved ones. It's about being honourable, not as a success strategy, but a life choice. Though Paul suffered for a time because of his moral courage, he would have suffered far worse had he betrayed his own values.
While he didn't appreciate it, Paul preserved for himself and his family something far more valuable than his job -- his honour. And it's no accident that he now has a better job with no pressures to cheat or lie.
(Michael Josephson, Speaker and Radio Commentator)
QUOTE: “It is not financial wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.”
(W. Somerset Maugham, ‘Of Human Bondage’, 1915)
Wisdom and Philosophy
How to be Happy
