Holding to your principles 100% of the time
Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 12:33 pm
This month, from Keith Sharp's issue of "Meditate on these Things: June 2011":
Keith Sharp wrote:Quoting Clayton M. Christensen, Rhodes Scholar and Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School in Reader’s Digest, Feb 2011 — One of his major points is "how to live a life of integrity."
He goes ahead to tell how he, the starting center on the undefeated Oxford University basketball team, refused to play in the game for the collegiate championship of England because it was played on a Sunday, and he had made a commitment at age 16 not to play ball on Sunday. He observes and notes:
Clayton M. Christensen wrote:Often when we need to choose between right and wrong, a voice in our head says, "Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s okay." The lesson I learned is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time." After all, life is a series of “extenuating circumstances.”