Many people keep pictures of their kids on their desks. Are those pictures supposed to be reminders of what the kids look like? Are they showing off their kids for whomever comes into the office? Perhaps, but there’s an even more important reason why those pictures are there, or why they should be there. They’re to remind us of what’s at stake when we make the decisions that affect our integrity, and we make many of those decisions every day.
As a person of integrity yourself, you’ll find it easy to teach integrity to your kids, and they in turn will find it easy to accept you as a teacher. This a great opportunity and also a supreme responsibility, because kids simply must be taught to tell the truth, to mean what they say and to say what they mean.
Native Americans of the Southwest had some interesting ideas about the skills they felt were important for their children to know. Hiding was one of them. In a desert environment, with seemingly nowhere at all to hide, the Native American children could literally disappear. And running was another very important ability. Beginning as young as six or seven years of age, children were taught to run long distances while holding a mouthful of water in order to develop breath control. Of course, both running and hiding were skills that could save the life of a Native American child, as well as preserve the security of the group.
Kids today must be taught skills that will save their lives. Integrity is one of those vitally important skills. Maybe it’s hard to convince yourself of that. I (Jim Rohn) heard a story of a man who flew propeller-driven anti-submarine planes for the Navy, piloting them on long flights over water. He told of an incident when a storm was coming up, and his crew was faced with a difficult navigational problem. Things became even more dire when the navigator revealed that he could not handle it. He had cheated his way through some parts of the training–but that training material didn’t seem like it would ever be very useful. His attitude was not only harmful to his own integrity, it was potentially very harmful for those depending on him.
I can’t promise that it will ever save their lives, but nothing you will ever do is more important than teaching integrity to your children. There’s an old saying: “Those who can, do. And those who can’t, teach.” But you really can’t teach honesty unless you are honest yourself. You really can’t teach integrity unless you also live with integrity. It’s actually quite simple.
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn