A short Heroic +1 podcast by Brian Johnson (Feb 12, 2023) encouraging listeners to clarify personal standards and live in integrity. Johnson synthesizes wisdom from thinkers (Stockdale, Covey, Jim Rohn, Nathaniel Branden), defines integrity as alignment between ideals and behavior, and urges practical clarity about everyday moral convictions to reduce regret and enable flourishing.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic plus one. In our last plus one we talked about wisdom from James Stockdale, Stephen Covey, Jim Rohn and David Brooks. They all said the same thing in their own idiosyncratic way. Stockdale told us that integrity describes a person who is integrated, blended into a whole, as opposed to a person of many parts, many faces, many disconnects. He also told us that when we are living in integrity, we are not preoccupied with riding the crest of continual anxiety, but we're free to ride the crest of delight with life. And I repeat, when we close the gap between who we are capable of being and and who we are actually being, there is no room for all the regret, anxiety and disillusionment that shows up when we don't have the wisdom and self mastery to live in integrity with our highest ideals and best selves. I also repeat the moment we live with Arete we are heroic. You don't need to wait a decade until your vision board comes to fruition. You are a psychological success right now. Or not. We also talked about the Jim Rohn wisdom that the word character comes from a Greek word that meant chisel or the mark left by a chisel, as we reminded ourselves that it's hard work to chisel our character as we move from theory to practice to mastery together today. Perfect. And as you may recall, I asked you, how's your integrity? What's important to you? Who are you at your absolute best? And I asked, have you taken the time to get clarity on who you are at your best? Then I playfully told you that if you haven't taken the time to unplug from Time Suck Inc. To figure out who you are and what's important to you, then, well, you have even more issues than someone from falling short of their standards hug emoji. Now I promise that we'd talk about that idea in this plus one, so let's Nathaniel Brandon came to mind when I typed that out. In the Six Pillars of Self Esteem, he talks about personal integrity. In fact, personal integrity is the sixth and final pillar required to create a strong sense of self. Not in a woo woo, everyone wins a trophy kind of way, but in a deeply grounded, earned trust kind of way. Brandon tells us, and I quote, integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs and behavior. When Our behavior is congruent with our professed values. When ideals and practice match up, we have integrity. Then he gives us the line I was thinking about when I threw some shade your way. Right after that sentence he tells us, observe that before the issue of integrity can even be raised, we need principles of behavior, moral convictions about what is and is not appropriate judgments about right and wrong action. If we do not yet hold standards, we are too low on a developmental wrong even to be accused of hypocrisy. In such a case, our problems are too severe and to be described merely as lack of integrity. And that's today's plus one. Have you taken the time to get clarity on who you are at your best establishing moral convictions about what is right and wrong? Note when I say that I'm not just thinking about the big abstract moral questions of life. In fact, I'm not thinking about things like that at all. I'm thinking of the way more important everyday kind of things like how you show up in your relationships and at your job and how you take care of yourself energy wise so you can show up heroically in your work and in your love. If we haven't taken the time to get clarity on those basic fundamentals, I quote Brandon Again, we are on too low a developmental wrong even to be accused of hypocrisy. In such a case, our problems are too severe to be merely described as a lack of integrity. The truth can be painful. But good news. We love pain, uncertainty and hard work. We love poo. It takes that uncertainty, that pain, that hard work to make a hero grow. Let's bring it on and let's experience the eudaimonic delight of living in integrity with our highest ideals. Not Someday Today.
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