Doing the things you say sounds simple enough, if you were to ask most men, they would tell you that they indeed do the things they say they’ll do. However this is not a simple lie, it’s not meant to lie to you, they are lying to themselves through lack of integrity and self-determination. Doing what we say we will do is not only about keeping promises we gave to other people, it is as important to do the things that have been unspoken. One of the core principles of being a good man is summarized in the famous saying: “To thine own self be true.” Most people who I’ve talked to on this subject seem to interpret it as a call to being unique or different than other people in your own way. Being a ‘special snowflake’ so to say. I disagree, I think that this famous line refers to doing the things you know you should be doing when you should be doing them. It’s a call to integrity, not a call to uniqueness. The most important promise that you need to keep is not the one given to other people, but the one you give to yourself every time you know a job needs to be done, or an action taken. Being a man on integrity is not only about not telling lies, it’s also about not deceiving yourself with false gods.

No man is meant to live a passive life, challenges and obstacles present themselves to us, and it is upon us as men to resolve them and push pass them. This is our evolutionary, our moral and our spiritual duty which cannot be overlooked no matter in hoe comfortable of a time we live in. The only difference between your duty to exercise daily and keep your body and mind sharp in order to be ready for any situation which arises, and your grandfathers duty to serve in the war (for example) is that he knew he had to take the action that needed to be taken, and you come up with excuses to push further your work, and dust distance yourself from achieving your goal and fulfilling your masculine potential.

I myself struggled with being a man of integrity for a long time. In a world where we are conditioned by comfort to be weak in mind and body, it is hard to get past one’s own inertia and to keep pushing until your duty is fulfilled, and furthermore, to do so every single day without (or with minimal) failure. People respect and look up to the man who possesses the trait of integrity. Other men want a man who keeps his word and is able to take action by their side, and they respect and honor such a man as a brother, and women are attracted to a man of integrity because they know he will keep his word and stay true to himself no matter what troubling times may bring. Be this man, it is of vital importance for a man to elevate himself above the common men, who in their weakness fail to achieve their potential.

In each one of us there is a voice of guilt and duty calling to us to do the things that must be done, do stay true to our own selves, to fulfill our duty and to maximize our potential. Silencing that voice with your own whining and endless excuses makes you weaker, and takes your goals further away from you. In order to get myself to be more consistent in doing my duties, I have developed a four rule system to keeping my integrity intact in any situation that I am confronted with, both when it comes to human interaction and to doing my duty:

Always speak (and think) the truth — no matter whether it’s in a conversation with another man or woman, or if it’s about telling yourself whether you can do something that needs to be done, lying kills your integrity, and lying to yourself kills your confidence. If you’re not feeling like doing something that needs to be done right now, it’s better to say to yourself “right now, I will be weak and skip my duty”, than to delude yourself with bullshit excuses. If something needs to be done, do it now — pushing away your duties and procrastinating will only make the thing you need to do more difficult, and the mental torture of leaving things undone will affect your inner integrity and the way other people see you. Look up how to get over procrastination and to the things that need to be done as soon as you can. Do the most difficult, the most painful thing first — this is a reference to he “eating the frog” principle from Mark Twain. Essentially, in the beginning of your day, you should do the most difficult, most important or the biggest task that you need to finish, this way you spend your most energized time of the day finishing the most important thing, and you’ll be mentally free from the thing for the rest of the day, while if you were to do minor tasks before starting the big task, you will spend most of your energy before you even start doing the big task and it will keep bugging you for the rest of the day. If it goes against your moral code, even a little, always refuse to do it — having a stern and unshakable moral code is at the core of a man’s mindset. A man is only as strong as his morals allow him to be, being a man of virtue and integrity means that you will refuse to do anything against your own moral principles no matter the punishment or reward that follows your decision.

These are the simple four rules I apply when I perceive that my integrity is in question. Being a trustworthy man is not only good for your own mindset and for the way in which others view you, but it is also a cornerstone of living a virtuous, Stoic life. Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed the article consider sharing it with other, if you want to stay up to date with any new content on this blog you can subscribe to my mailing list via the form at the bottom of this page, have a good week.

More resources of this topic (Jordan Peterson on feeling integrity and Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen on the concept of ‘solid wood’):