Integrity (who I am when nobody's looking..)

Before I say anything about integrity, please understand that I am not there yet, in all the values mentioned. I'm still pretty much work-in-progress and I just want to share some insights on these values, based on my own personal experiences.

Let me begin with a story.. 10 years ago, when I first got my driving license, I did something that was shameful and till date, it still pricks my conscience. I was involved in a 'hit and run' incident. (Ok, I didn't kill or injure anyone, in case you're wondering..) I was trying to park my car and I hit a pick-up. I made the worst decision possible - that is to drive off. I was afraid of the consequences and since no one saw the incident, I might as well...

My act came out of fear and total lack of integrity. Though in a sense, I got away scot-free, this whole incident replayed itself in my head many times. Even now, I could still remember how it all happened.

Upon reflection, I realized that many times, we need to make choices in life. And usually, the choice that is more difficult to make, that would be the choice of character.

The above incident taught me a good lesson. From then on, I decide to always make choices of character. I want to be consistent about who I am on the outside (which everybody sees) and who I am on the inside (which few or on one would see).

A person with no integrity, no matter how talented, just a hypocrite. Once someone finds out his true character (or lack of), he would be deemed as untrustworthy. And once you break the trust in any relationships, it would take a long time to heal.

To sum it up, people would trust a person who has integrity.

Let me end of this post with a more positive story. A few years after that incident, my uni course-mates and I had to take this quiz in a lecture theatre. It was supposed to be a closed-book quiz and there was only 1 supervising lecturer. You can guess.. many of the students actually discussed answers with one another during the quiz and some even took out notes and referred to them.

I made a decision not to do any of the above. I did the whole quiz on my own without cheating. Whatever results that I got out of that quiz truly belonged to me. 

The Last Lesson

Last Thursday, I had my last Science lessons with all my classes in my current school. Instead of just doing the usual teaching, I shared with my students some things that really matter to me. This was kind of inspired by Randy Pausch, who did the famous 'Last Lecture'.

Basically, I shared briefly about values and life lessons that meant a lot to me personally. I hope that my students would not make the mistakes that I did.

Here it goes (I amended some stuff below after listening to Dr John Maxwell earlier today):

1. Integrity (it's about who I am when nobody's looking)
2. Humility (appreciate diversity and consider others better than myself)
3. Resilience (it is okay to fail - no big deal)
4. Run my own race (excel and not compete)
5. Have a purpose in life and be passionate about it!
6. Be others-centred (the world seriously doesn't revolve around me)

Over the next few blog posts, I would share more about the above-mentioned things!