Henry Ward Beecher, a nineteenth-century clergyman, once said: “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself and be lenient to everyone else.”
The development of character is the great business of life. Your ability to develop a reputation as a person of character and honour is the highest achievement of both social and business life. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear a word that you say.”
Brian Stacy says that the person you are today, your innermost character, is the sum total of all your choices and decisions in life up to this date. Each time you have chosen rightly and acted consistently with the very best that you know, you have strengthened your character and become a better person.
The reverse is also true: Each time you have compromised, taken the easy way, or behaved in a manner inconsistent with what you knew to be right, you have weakened your character and softened your personality.
The great virtues
There are a series of virtues or values that are usually possessed by a person of character. These are courage, compassion, generosity, temperance, persistence, and friendliness, among others.
Coming before all these values, however, is the most important one of all when determining the depth and strength of your character: integrity. It is your level of integrity, living in complete truth with yourself and others, that demonstrates more than anything else the quality of your character.
In a way, integrity is actually the value that guarantees all the other values. When your level of integrity is higher, you are more honest with yourself and more likely to live consistently with all the other values that you admire and respect.
However, Stacey believes that it takes tremendous self-discipline to become a person of character. It takes considerable willpower to always “do the right thing” in every situation. And it takes both self-discipline and willpower to resist the temptation to cut corners, take the easy way, or act for short-term advantage.
He further postulates that “All of life is a test, to see what you are really made of deep, down inside. Wisdom can be developed in private through study and reflection, but character can be developed only in the give and take of daily life, when you are forced to choose and decide among alternatives and temptations.”
The test of character
It is only when you are under pressure—when you are forced to choose one way or another, to either live consistently with a value or to compromise it—that you demonstrate your true character.
Emerson also said, “Guard your integrity as a sacred thing; nothing at last is sacred except the integrity of your own mind.”
You are a “choosing organism.” You are constantly making choices, one way or the other. Every choice you make is a statement about your true values and priorities. At each moment, you choose what is more important or of higher value to you over what is less important or of lesser value.
The only bulwark against temptation, the path of least resistance, and the expediency factor is character. The only way that you can develop your full character is by exerting your willpower in every situation when you are tempted to do what is easy and expedient rather than what is correct and necessary.
The big payoff
The payoff for becoming a person of character, for exerting your willpower and self-discipline to live consistently with the very best that you know, is tremendous. When you choose the higher value over the lower, the more difficult over the easy, the right over the wrong, you feel good about yourself. Your self-esteem increases. You like and respect yourself more. You have a greater sense of personal pride.
In addition to feeling excellent about yourself when you behave with character, you also earn the respect and esteem of all the people around you. They will look up to you and admire you. Doors will be opened for you. People will help you. You will be paid more, promoted faster, and given even greater responsibilities. As you become a person of honor and character, opportunities will appear all around you.
On the other hand, you can have all the intelligence, talent, and ability in the world, but if people do not trust you, you will never get ahead. People will not hire you, and if they do, they will de-hire you as soon as possible. Financial institutions will not lend you money.
Because “birds of a feather flock together,” the only associates (never friends) you will have will be other people of questionable character. Furthermore, since the people you associate with have a major effect on your attitude and personality, you make or break your entire life with the quality of your character—or the lack thereof.
The development of character
Aristotle wrote, “All advancement in society begins with the development of the character of the young.” This means that advancement in your life begins with the learning and practice of values.
According to Stacy, we learn values in one or all of three ways: instruction, study, and practice. Let’s look at each of these more closely.
Teach your children values. One of the chief roles of parenting is to teach children values. This requires patient instruction and explaining values to them over and over again as they are growing up. Once is never enough.
The value—and the importance of living by that value—must be explained. Parents must not only give illustrations but also contrast the adherence to a value, especially that of telling the truth with its opposite, that of lying or telling half-truths.
Study the values you admire. You learn values by studying them closely. The Law of Concentration says that “whatever you dwell upon grows and increases in your life.” What this means is that when you study and read stories about men and women who demonstrated the kind of values that you admire and respect, and then think about those stories and that behaviour, those values sink ever deeper into your mind.
Once these values are “programmed” into your subconscious, they create a propensity within you to behave consistently with those values when the situation requires them.
The core virtue of character is truth. Whenever you tell the truth, however inconvenient it may be at the time, you feel better about yourself and you earn the respect of the people around you. One of the highest accolades you can pay another person is to say that “he or she always tells the truth.”
Emulate the people you most admire. Much of your character is determined by the people you most admire, both living and dead. Who are they? Looking over your life and history, make a list of the people whom you most admire, and next to their names, write out the virtues or values that they most represent to you.
Practise the values you respect. You develop values by practising them whenever they are called for. As the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Circumstances do not make the man; they merely reveal him to himself.” When a problem occurs, people tend to react automatically based on the highest values that they have developed up to that moment.
We develop values by repetition, by behaving consistently with a particular value over and over again, until it becomes a habit and locks in so that we come to practice it automatically. Men and women with highly developed characters behave in a manner consistent with their highest values, and they do so without thought or hesitation. There is no question in their minds about whether or not they are doing the right thing.
BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)
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