Quote of the Day: Integrity is adherence to your code of moral values

When I speak of establishing a strong moral foundation, I’m talking about possessing a clear set of values that guides your day-to-day behavior. You need to know what you believe in ahead of time so you don’t have to think about the right action to take at the moment of truth.

What do you believe is moral? What do you believe is immoral? What do you believe is ethical? What do you believe is unethical? What do you believe is good? What do you believe is bad?

If you don’t formulate your moral beliefs ahead of time, your actions may inadvertently be based on spur-of-the-moment whims, emotion, or instant gratification. In other words, you’ll be in danger of revising your ethical standards to fit each new situation as it arises, a practice commonly referred to as “situational ethics.”

An individual who engages in situational ethics is someone who does not possess a fixed standard of right and wrong. Right is simply whatever he perceives to be in his immediate best interest at any given time, which is a fool-proof formula for failure.

That’s why it’s so important to decide on a clear, concise set of moral values when your intellect is in control. Then, in highly emotional situations, you’re more likely to act in accordance with the moral standards that you have decided — in advance — to live by.

Which brings us to the subject of integrity. Integrity is an impressive sounding word, one which people like to bandy about rather carelessly. Unfortunately, very few people really understand what the word means, and even fewer practice it — including, and especially, those who expound on it the most.

Integrity is adherence to your code of moral values. It’s one thing to talk about moral values, but quite another to consistently adhere to them.

The above excerpt is from self development author and entrepreneur Robert Ringer—who writes about ‘concentricity’ which he says is the consistency of one’s words and actions—at his website.