We have been looking at the subject of character in the past few weeks, Part-1, Part-2 and Part-3. Here in this final post, I want to close with something practical for being able to maintain character.

In his book "There's No Such Thing as 'Business' Ethics", Dr. John C. Maxwell says that in order to maintain one's character before anything they do, one must be able to answer one of three questions. He refers to them as 'The Golden Triad'.




The three questions are:

      o Is it good?
      o Is it right?
      o Is it true?

If we can answer 'yes' to all three questions then our character will not be in question in light of what we do. Before we make a decision, we must ask ourselves these three questions. It's worth waiting and pondering over rather than risk losing character.

Writing out this whole series of posts here has opened my eyes to many things in my own life I was not aware of. I want to cite an example in my own life that happened because I was not aware of these principles at the time.

When I was a child, I used to do very well academically. I would score the top marks in the class. As I grew older, I used to notice that those who did well in sports were celebrated like heroes in the school. Many people would just gather around and cheer them. I wanted that. I wanted to be accepted and have people around me. I thought that if I did well in sports then I too could become like one of them.

So I began to get into sports. The truth is that I am not really a sports person. I was usually one of the worst players on the team. I knew that and so did everyone else but I never quit. I thought that if I practiced hard, I could get better. As a result, I stopped focusing on studies and my academic performance began to drop.

I entered college with the same thought. One of the games that I used to enjoy was basketball. I told everyone that I was very good at it. Initially it worked. I was accepted by all. Later, a time came when basketball was introduced into our college sports. We had our sports meet and they wanted players who could play.

One of my close friends who was responsible for finding players from our batch suggested my name for the team. He even said that I was so good that I should be made the captain of the team. I didn't have the nerve to tell them the truth so I kept my mouth shut.

Game day arrived and we barely had players on our team. Even if you were tall enough, you could get to play! Being a knock out tournament, we played our first and last game that day. We lost. And quite badly too. The score was 22-4 if I remember correctly. Losing that game was expected by all because most of our team players barely knew the rules! But what I lost that day was not just the game but the relationship with my batch mates.

They knew I had lied all the time! What pained me was to see my close friend go away. He lost all his trust in me. I went into a shell and faced rejection by most of my batch mates. All I wanted was to be accepted by all. And since I had flawed my character to get it, I got rejected.

The truth about lies is that over time every lie will come out into the open someday in one way or the other. And when it does, it often does not come out very pretty. I had to learn this the hard way.

Character is the like a foundation stone in our lives. When we begin to flaw, cracks begin to appear on the stone. And as people begin to see our character, everything that we have built on it like trust, relationships, respect etc also begins to crack. That is why it is so important to maintain character.

I pray that this series has helped you as much as it helped me. As we live our lives, let's focus on building our character over every other thing we can possibly gain.