Brian Tracy argues that the primary life goal should be achieving personal happiness by cultivating moral character. He links virtue and happiness (citing Aristotle), stresses character and reputation as key success factors, and identifies trust and truthfulness (integrity) as central components—urging consistent, honest behavior and high personal standards to increase self-esteem and effectiveness.
Hello. No matter what you do, your ultimate goal, beyond what you're trying to accomplish at the moment, is to achieve your own happiness and become a good person. An individual can exercise a key success factor for developing a moral character to achieve the kind of happiness that everyone longs for. And I'm going to tell you how to do it in our time together on this video. Now. People are successful in life to the degree to which they can organize their world in such a way that they are genuinely happy. The only difference between people in this area, happiness, is that some people are better at achieving their own happiness and others are not particularly successful. They're basically unhappy most of the time. Some people make choices and decisions that make them unhappy and worse off than they ever would have been if they had done nothing at all. But always happiness must be your major goal. If you can become a happy person, that everything else will work out for you. So start off by striving to become a good person. In his time, Aristotle examined the human condition and came to a remarkable conclusion. He said, only the good can be happy, and only the virtuous can be good. Now, this is one of the major breakthrough ideas in philosophy. Imagine you can only be happy if you're a good person. And you can only be a good person if you practice the virtues that are associated with goodness. What this means simply is that if you want to have a wonderful life, you must continually strive to become a good person. Any deviation from this course will lead you to lower levels of happiness and dissatisfaction. Every single time you act consistently with the highest values and virtues that you know, you feel happy and strong inside. Your self confidence and self esteem go up and you become more effective in your relationships and in your work. That's why they say virtue is its own reward. It pays for itself in the inner feeling of pleasure and contentment you have when you live consistent with the best you know. Now let's talk about developing a moral character. In order to achieve happiness and become a good person, you must know that character is the greatest success factor of all. If you want to change your outer world, you must go to work like a computer programmer at a keyboard to reprogram your subconscious mind, your world of values and beliefs and inner convictions, so that the person you are on the inside is exactly the mental equivalent of the life you want to enjoy on the outside. Now, in our world, your reputation is your greatest asset. Your reputation can be defined as how people think about you and talk about you when you're not there. As you know from your own experience. When people talk about you in either positive or negative terms and you find out about it, it has a major impact on your thinking and on your emotions, either positive or negative. Because of the Law of Attraction. As you develop a moral character and live more and more by the highest and best virtues that you know, you will become a happy and good person. So you must always strive to exercise this success factor and develop a high moral character. You must compare everything you have to do and say, is this the right thing to do? And the rule is always do the right thing. And you always know inside what the right thing is. Now there is a success factor for greatness that I want to share with you. If character is the greatest success factor to your life. The fundamental component of one's character is trust. In relationships, trust is the glue that holds it all together. It's impossible for us to proceed in any kind of a relationship unless we trust and feel confident with the other person. All good friendships are based on trust. All strong families are based on trust. And in companies which are larger business families, trust is the fundamental ingredient that determines the success and the prosperity of the enterprise. The very best companies to work for or to buy from are companies that have high trust environments. Everyone in the company at every level absolutely trusts and believes that what other people say is true. In almost every company of value, telling a lie can be sufficient reason for losing your job. Now, the ultimate expression of trust is truthfulness. Your very best friends and closest associates in life will always be those who tell you the truth. The willingness to be absolutely truthful with yourself and others is the critical mark of a person of outstanding moral, moral character. Now, if integrity is the core quality, then truthfulness is the most obvious expression of integrity. Shakespeare said, and this above, to thine own self be true, then it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man. You must always be absolutely true to yourself. This means being true to the very best that is in you. This also means that you always do your very best in every situation, especially at work where people are counting on you. Now, if the inner expression of integrity is truth, then the outer expression of integrity is quality work and quality behavior under all circumstances. In Abraham Maslow's studies of self actualizing people, he found that one of the characteristics of the most advanced people he studied was that they were extremely objective and truthful about themselves, about their strengths and about their weaknesses and about their situations in life. They never tried to convince themselves or others of things that weren't true. These self actualizing people exercised the success factor of character and they lived in truth with themselves. As a result they were able to live in truth with others. So refuse to compromise your moral character. Refuse to pretend or wish or hope that something is not true when in your heart you know it is. This means that you live in truth with everyone around you. You state your truths, what you really feel, simply and honestly. You do not stay in relationships that are wrong for you or do things that you do not agree with or believe in to remain true to yourself. You do not say things to people that are not honest and sincere expressions of your true beliefs. You adamantly insist on living in truth in every aspect of your life and you constantly strive to become a better and better person. You set high standards and you refuse to compromise them. Remember, whenever you live consistent with your highest values, you feel wonderful about yourself. Whenever you compromise your values, you feel unhappy about yourself. So always live up to the very best that is in you.
