[Blog] Integrity and Character

Integrity and character. That’s all you have. At the end of the day, they can take your money, your house, your car—everything you have. But no one can take your integrity and character away from you. It’s something only you can give away.

What is integrity? It comes from the Latin word “integer,” which means “whole.” A totally complete individual is known as somebody who has integrity. The two hemispheres to your wholeness are your talk and your walk. They have to match one another. There should be total congruence between who you are and what you do.

What is character? It’s made up of your decisions. If nobody ever found out about these choices, you would still make the same ones. Character decisions are decisions that are going to find you out sooner or later. We can recover from most competency decisions; but a bad character decision can have lifelong consequences.

When your life is a whole, you don’t have to remember what you said to whom—because the truth is always the same. That is something more precious than anything. You cannot buy character. You cannot buy integrity. They come freely. But boy, are they expensive.