Follow through

Integrity is doing what we say we will do. Even when it hurts us. Especially when it hurts us. This requires a sharp and tuned degree of consistency and self-awareness that takes time to grow.

a. Do not make commitments you know you can’t uphold. When we fail to deliver on a promise, we cause other people to have a worse impression of us. Because we use our past actions as information about who we are, failing to deliver on what we set out to do, often damages our own sense of worth. This is also true for when we set personal goals or intentions we fail to work towards. Every tiny action matters.

b. Avoid relying on people who didn’t follow through in the past. We’re not always able to pick who we work with. Having that in mind, we can choose the people we rely on. These are the people we make an active decision to build personal and professional projects with. Because the stakes are higher, we should be especially cautious and not let our hope and dreams blind us. By picking a partner we know to lack integrity, we are corrupting our own sense of virtue and there will always be a price to pay later on.

Better to disappoint early on and to be less ambitious about what we can do than to break our reputation and self-esteem. We deserve to go to bed every night knowing we can trust ourselves. Knowing we can be relied on.