In this episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick reflects on the teachings of his mentor Mack Newton, emphasizing integrity as the core value that underpins personal success, happiness, and effective leadership. Brian explains that integrity means aligning words with actions, and illustrates how lapses in integrity erode self‑esteem and "face"—the internal sense of moral standing. He connects martial‑arts training to the development of self‑respect, which, when habitual, builds self‑trust rooted in high ideals and strong moral convictions. The episode outlines how a lack of integrity damages self‑respect, while consistent integrity restores it. Brian challenges listeners to examine whether they show up with integrity in personal relationships, business, and daily life, and invites them to make concrete changes to honor their words through thoughts, behaviors, and actions.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today we're going to continue on discussing my good friend and mentor, good friend of our podcast, Mack Newton, his life, and the interview that we listened to this past Monday, a couple days ago. Mack Newton stood for a lot of things. As a matter of fact, Mack had a lot of what he would say value words. You may recall in the interview, if you haven't listened to the interview, make sure you go back a couple days and listen to the entire interview. I promise you it will change your life. I asked Mack, what was the most important value word of the 100 or so value words that, that he lived by, that he aimed to honor, that he aimed to teach. And the number one word, the number one value word was integrity. Mack believed that integrity was the most important thing for each of us to possess in order to live better lives, be more successful, impact more people, parent, lead, whatever it may be. Integrity was the foundation for all of it. Mack believed you have to be true to yourself. He would say, "Be true to yourself." And what that meant was your words and your behaviors, they have to match. Your words and your behaviors have to match. And when your words and your behaviors match, that in fact means you're operating with integrity. Not being on time to something is a lack of integrity. Not honoring your word is a lack of integrity. Asking others to do something that you're unwilling to do yourself is a lack of integrity. When you don't trust someone, when you don't believe in somebody, It very well may be because you perceive that they lack integrity. Now, if you have integrity, it does not mean you'll always make the right choice, but it does mean you'll put in the effort. It does mean you will care. It does mean you will do everything within your power to connect the actions and the words. And he leaned into effort when he described this because effort is in fact authentic. And so if you're putting in the effort, that was good enough, at least in terms of foundationally understanding integrity—your actions matching your words. Now, we didn't get into it too much that day, but in having previous conversations with Mac, I know that one of the primary benefits of training in the martial arts is the building of self-respect. I did not train in martial arts with Mac, but having been around him and all the students he had trained, I know that one of the primary benefits was absolutely the building of the self-respect. And as the feeling of self-respect becomes habitual, it becomes a strong sense of self-trust. So if you have self-respect, you start to build this sense of— the strong sense of self-trust. This self-trust is based on behaviors revolving around what Mack would call high ideals, strong moral convictions, strong standards or beliefs and values. Mack would say that this is called the face. Like, I would use quotes here, right? He would say this strong moral conviction, these standards, the beliefs, the values, the self-trust is called the face. And if we behave in ways that can conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face. If we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes. We start to respect ourselves less, and integrity, or the lack of it, is likely the issue. When we lose face, it's probably because a lack of integrity has shown up. So what is integrity again? Integrity means words and behaviors match, words and actions match. There are people we know that we trust and people we know that we don't trust. The people we trust have words and actions that match, and the people we don't have words and actions that don't match. It's, it's, as Mac would tell you, it's that simple. There are examples all around us. Parents who lecture their, their kids on honesty yet may lie to their friends or neighbors or employers who ask for honest feedback and then penalize the employee who disagrees with them. People who say, "Do as I say and not as I do." And full transparency, I, I've probably messed this up a number of times, right? Now, to me, this is a self-awareness thing. I forgive myself. Go back to yesterday's episode and, and Mac's interview. You know, you got to forgive yourself and you've got to do better. Mac would say, I don't want to hear that you're sorry. I want to hear that you'll be better. A lack of integrity is a direct attack on the self-esteem. Whenever behavior lacking integrity destroys self-esteem, only behavior practicing integrity can restore it. Let me say that again. This is a direct quote from Mac. Whenever behavior lacking integrity destroys self-esteem, whenever a behavior that lacks integrity destroys your self-esteem, only a behavior practicing integrity can restore that self-esteem. To understand why lapses of integrity are so destructive to self-esteem, we've got to really understand what a lapse of integrity means. A lapse of integrity is a betrayal of your own mind. It damages you, as Mack would tell you, it damages you as no external force can possibly damage you. It's a direct assault on your self-respect. You lose face. So how do you build self-respect? Always match your thoughts and your words with your behaviors and your actions. If you match your thoughts and words with your behaviors and actions, day in and day out, and you screw up everything else, but if you act with integrity and therefore build self-respect, and that self-respect through habit becomes strong self-trust, and that self-trust is built around high ideals and standards and beliefs and values, you could screw up everything else foundationally you can come back from anything. However, if that foundation is weak, no matter your skill, no matter your intelligence, no matter your relationships, if you have a weak foundation in terms of self-trust, self-esteem, and most importantly, your integrity, it's going to be very, very difficult hill to climb. So I think the focusing question for all of us today Are we showing up with integrity everywhere? We showing up in our personal relationships with integrity within our family? How about in the businesses we run or with our customers and clients? Do we show up with integrity? Are our actions and words aligned? If in fact we're not, to what extent is that occurring? And what changes do we need to make today, today to change the way that this is in fact playing out for us? Again, Mack firmly believes of all things, having integrity is the most critical. It is the most critical in terms of your success and your happiness. So how can we all show up a little bit better today a little bit more integrity? How can we be honoring, you know, our words through our thoughts, through our behaviors, through our actions? That's all I have for you today. Again, thank you, Mac, for such, such great words for the No Days Off podcast. Remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]
