The basic values and principles for being human are as viable today as they ever were. Or, are they? Have any new ones been invented? Have we given up on any by convincing ourselves they no longer apply? Have our breakthroughs in technology made any of them no longer applicable to daily living?

Maybe, I am just stuck in the past. Maybe, I was just asleep for the invention of some new values or principles. I don’t think so. What I do think we may be doing is modifying some to suit our circumstances. We may have given ourselves some backdoors out of living up to them.

I think the most important one we fail often to live up to is integrity. I am not looking at integrity through the filter of morality. I am talking about an engineer’s view of what has the machinery work. For human beings what works is keeping our word. Doing what we say we will do in the best possible way we can see to do it.

In action it is “being” our word as in “that’s just who we are.” It is how we choose to be known. Not because we are better or smarter or right. It is just what works. We are capable of powerful relationships. Trust is not an issue and will see us through successes and failures.

Yes, we will fail. If we are playing a game worth playing we will fail. A person of integrity will acknowledge the failure, repair any damage and get on with life. You might want to ask yourself this; “What did I learn from this failure?” Then, take what you learned and put it into action. If there is nothing to learn, let it go and get on with life. Hanging on to a failure is your next excuse for failing and being the victim of it. Victim’s have no power. Being the person we say we are takes practice. Just like anything we attempt to master.

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