Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say. 

Integrity is something that will strongly define who you are. We are in a society that has allowed us to use our words in many ways. We have our in person options, telephone, internet, and now countless forms of social media to share thoughts and perspectives and simply speak our mind. And by all means, I’m a fan of it. I think that social media can be used for great things and create an amazing platform to live out your dreams or change lives and influence others for the better. However, I also see it for what it can be on the other side of things, evil, dirty, scary, and flat out wrong. Where do we find balance? How we do we protect our future from the harms of what it can bring? How do we make it a place for the good? These can’t be answered through an email, and I certainly won’t be sharing anything that you’ve heard for the first time in today’s email, but I have an idea. 

We can teach the basics to a high degree and put them into practice. There is a simple rule that we can teach and it is for us to be men and women of our words. It is for us to mean what we say and say only what we mean. There is a large gap from reality of life and what we are all willing to be on social media. But see, this isn’t where it starts, sadly social media is just what gives us a platform to do what we already do in our day to day lives. We often say things we don’t mean, we often build up our lifestyles to look like something they aren’t only for the simple purpose to impress people we often don’t like anyways. (haha. Sorry it always makes me laugh, it’s true.) Most social media platforms like IG or FB allow us to do this to no end, you can always appear happy, lively, thriving, most of the time wearing a mask. You can make promises or guarantee’s no one will call you out on, make up fictional events or circumstance just for show, to look cool or better. Essentially we have turned into liars. Hurts right? It hurts me to write it and I even do my best to be as transparent as possible as a husband, father, business owner but even I want to “appear” a particular way to others. 

What can we do? Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Be a man and woman of their word. Keep things simple. Share who you are, care less what others think. We can love each other and still not care at all about what others think, it’s hard, but possible. We can remove our pride by being transparent and also not just always sharing the “great news” that we are dying to share, and sometimes sharing even where we need growth, where we struggle or where we are falling short. This is human, nothing less. Integrity will be held high when you are you. Stay true.