You Are Allowed to Be Successful — Why Success and Integrity Are Not in Tension

Well, hello there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle with you once again.

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One of the next tensions that people can feel on the journey of personal

development, growth, and success is this nagging feeling which leads

to all kinds of self-sabotage that if you become successful You won't

be somebody that you respect.

Stay with me here.

There's this subtle, pernicious, quiet little voice in the back of our heads

that goes, "You know, you don't wanna get too successful because, you know,

you'll, you'll make people uncomfortable, and you might end up becoming somebody

that you really don't respect or admire."

It's kind of this belief that if you're successful, that you've

gotta get there by becoming somebody radically different to who you are.

In a sense, that's true.

You do need to become a different person in one sense because you're gonna do

different behaviors, different habits.

You're gonna prioritize and value different things.

But it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna become some awful

parody of a used car salesperson.

No offense to any used car salespersons listening or anybody

who has friendships or family members with used car salespersons.

It's a legitimate business.

Let's just be clear.

But do you know what I'm getting at?

It's like, well, what if I do really well and then, you know,

everybody thinks, judges me?

And I remember growing up as a kid, uh, my father used to tell me that

if he was driving with his mother, she was pretty full on, and if they

pulled up next to somebody in an expensive car, my grandmother had

this thing where she would like, she, she was a pretty full on person.

She'd go, "Don't look at them.

Don't look at them." And it was this rule in their family that you mustn't

look at people driving expensive cars because I guess she kind of believed

that it was encouraging them or, or it was making them-- It was pumping

up their ego, pumping their tires, so to speak, and so we mustn't do that.

So you know what I'm getting at?

Just this sense that if you become somebody successful, that

you're gonna become somebody kinda awful in the process.

So we're gonna blow that up quickly.

We wanna, I guess, deal with this idea that success and integrity are intention,

which means that if you become successful, you're gonna have to trade some of

your virtues and values to get there.

You're gonna have to, you know, do some shady things, and there's

absolutely no reason that that's true.

So if you become somebody you don't respect, it won't be that you--

that happened because you succeeded.

It will be because you transgressed your own character in the process.

You see what I mean?

If you become successful but your integrity and character are rock

solid, you're gonna be just fine.

So the real issue isn't about success at all.

The real issue is about the habits, the behaviors, the dispositions

that shape you along that journey.

Now I've been teaching on character for many, many years, and I'll

try to make it very simple.

That character is essentially the sum total of your choices and decisions.

That's your character.

So when I'm speaking on stage, I often talk about the opening scene

in, uh, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, where the protagonist is

a young man thinking about murder.

And then early in the book, he goes on to commit this murder, and the

point I make to the audience is, at that point, he goes from a person, his

character is that of a person thinking about murder, but once he commits the

action, he becomes a murderer, right?

So the action shapes the actual identity.

So on this journey of personal development and success and growth,

really, the success is the endpoint, and you're gonna get to that endpoint

with whatever character or integrity you have built along that process.

So if you've got there by rejecting your family and treating your friends poorly

and doing some shady business deals and, and, uh, all sorts of dodgy stuff, then

you're gonna get to that point of success with character that's pretty flawed.

And yes, you will-- at 2:00 AM in the morning, you will wake, and 2:00

AM is always the time of you wake when, you know, the world is quiet

and the truth about yourself is there as you stare at the ceiling.

N-not that I've ever done that, I'm just, I'm just hearing other people have.

But you get the point, is that even if you become successful having done dodgy

things, it's not worth having because there's gonna be a part of you that'll

always be in rebellion because you don't really like who you became in the process.

So to wrap up, it doesn't have to be this way.

You can have extraordinary success while building an

excellent character along the way.

I struggled with this for many years as a Christian.

I really did, and I know I've got a lot of Christian listeners.

It's because for some of us, you have this idea that God loves the poor and God

loves humility and God loves simplicity.

These things are all true.

They're absolutely true about the nature of God.

But somehow in our own human psyches, we kinda twist that a

little bit to, well, if God loves the poor, He must not love the rich.

And if you get rich, God must be… Maybe He tolerates it.

Maybe God's like, "Well, look, I'll put up with it this time, but I'm really

not very pleased about it, and I'd prefer that you were completely broke."

Now, I know that's not everybody, but it is possible because we're human.

We're gonna get things slightly off sometimes.

And then we-- the value of humility, you know, can, for some of us, can, can

be a problem because we're like, "Well, I can't be successful 'cause then I

wouldn't be humble." I think it was C.S.

Lewis who said that humility isn't thinking less of yourself.

It's thinking of yourself less Isn't that great?

Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

So humility is kind of like that your fundamental disposition, your interface

with reality, is one of service and energy and blessing people and doing cool

things because they're cool and, and they encourage people, and that's a good thing.

Whereas false humility is, "I'm a miserable worm and I don't deserve

anything." You get that tension?

All right, so let's finish up.

You are allowed to be successful.

Maybe your parents didn't tell you, maybe your teachers didn't tell you.

Uh, I think it was Brian Tracy who said that the best way you can help

the poor is by not being one of them.

You know, who do you think funds huge numbers of charities around the world?

I got a friend in Dallas who is, uh, you know, did really well in a

particular section of the economy and has just built this, this big social

enterprise encouraging and helping people less fortunate, and he would

not have been able to do that had he not been successful in the original

career that God had given him.

So maybe you disagree, but it's an interesting quote from Brian Tracy,

that the best way you can help the poor is by not being one of them.

Because if you're broke and miserable and, and operating so far below your potential,

you are not gonna wake up in the morning and think, "How many people can I serve?

How many people can I help?" I can promise you that the more abundance

that has come into my life financially, professionally, relationally, I

can promise you the greater my desire to serve and help people.

It's just like this weird dynamic.

The more that comes to me, the more I wanna give away.

I mean that, and I want you to experience that.

So summary, I know I keep saying I'm doing a summary, but don't be afraid of success.

Don't be afraid of losing yourself in the process, because you can be poor

and miserable and have a terrible character, and you can be s- a

billionaire and have a terrible character.

What matters in both ends of that spectrum is who you become in the

journey of integrity and character, and you build that by individual choices.

It's literally that simple.

It, it f- it frustrates people 'cause when it comes to character, people

wanna write a thousand books about it and get really complex, but your

character is your decisions and choices.

If you lie all the time, they're choices, they're decisions, you become a liar.

If you're dishonest all the time, you become dishonest.

If you're generous all the time and you do generous things, you become generous.

You become what you do.

All right.

That's it.

Don't be afraid of success.

You're gonna be just fine.

Get out there.

Get after it.

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God bless you, my friend.

This has been The Daily Podcast.

You and I are gonna talk again tomorrow