如何正直地生活

Your integrity and your relationship with yourself are the only things you can truly own; the only firm point in universe you can have. If you compromise it, you lose trust in yourself and in future it will be more difficult to rely on yourself. That means losing the most important and the only permanent source of support in life. If this happens, it can be repaired and healed, but it takes a lot of time, effort and testing yourself in real life. That’s why it’s wise to understand what integrity means to you and how to follow it.

什么是诚信？

Integrity means living in aligment with our highest values, even when it’s in conflict with our temporary pleasure, profit, or avoiding discomfort. Dignity is a close term, although dignity seems more related to external behavior, while integrity refers to our inner world, solving our inner conflicts and making decisions.

正直往往意味着 选择自身品格的长期品质而非短期利益 或解脱。这意味着选择能带给我们内心平静的东西，即使这暂时意味着要经历一些外部的不稳定。有时，这也意味着为了维护更重要的价值观而放弃一些不那么重要的价值观。

诚信包括 尊敬为自己，也为他人。如果我们认为自己和他人都很重要，都值得考虑和付出努力，那么决策可能会更加复杂，但这样的决策会更加干净利落，更有建设性，也会带来更多和谐。

在做决定时，你也需要考虑自己的需求，而不仅仅是他人的需求。 忽视自己的需求不是诚信, it’s self-sacrifice. 诚信的核心是找到健康的平衡。

诚信还假定 接受我们的决定和行为所带来的后果并以建设性的方式处理它们。这也是对责任的一个很好的定义。健康的责任感，无论是对自己还是对他人，本质上都是对做好事的渴望。责任意味着希望并注意把事情做好，并在我们的权力范围内和依赖我们的人身上取得长期的良好结果。因此 健康的责任感是爱的表现而不是满足外部期望和标准。

在交流中，正直意味着不屈服于自私的原始冲动，即使这种冲动很强烈。这意味着不滥用我们在谈话中可能获得的任何优势来感觉自己很强大。不扭曲事实，使其更符合我们的利益。接受道歉，而不是咄咄逼人。愿意道歉。

Many people give up their own dignity just to achieve a short term or even an illusional “victory” in an argument. Losing the complexity and the humanity of another person from sight in order to indulge your own selfish urges, is a way to 自取其辱.唯一重要的胜利是战胜我们自身对权力的需求，无论这种需求表现得多么微妙。

如何认识自己的人生价值？

正直包括倾听自己内心对平衡和道德的感受，而不是外在的道德。我们不会固守僵化、简单化的态度，而是分别看待每一种情况，感知其复杂性。我们寻求一种内在的判断，即在特定情况下，什么最能代表 我们与他人之间的健康平衡.

As I wrote in the article “Falling In Love With “Bad Guys” (And Girls)“, if you have to choose between an important relationship and your key life values, I’d always recommend 选择你的价值观而不是关系.但我们也需要知道我们的哪些价值观足够重要。人们通常喜欢过于简单化和走极端，但因为小小的挫折或分歧而放弃一段关系是没有意义的；每一段关系都需要围绕我们不太重要的价值观做出一些妥协。

孰轻孰重，因人而异。通常会有 身体的不适感会提醒你是否偏离了自己的价值观如果有人违背了你最重要的价值观，你可能会立即失去信任和尊重。如果有人打破了你最重要的价值观，你可能会立即感到失去了信任和尊重。一旦失去了信任和尊重，健康的爱情也就不复存在了。迷恋或童年的条件反射可能仍然会让你感到不健康的结合，但快乐、亲密和轻松将从这段关系中消失。

健康的价值观不是琐碎的宗教教条，也不是任何鼓励僵化对待他人的东西，这可能是你在童年环境中学到的。健康的价值观是通过我们的亲身经历并基于我们对以下方面的洞察力创造出来的 造福世界, rather than just ourselves and people close to us. (Of course, this works for people who actually care about the rest of the world.) Your key values might be what “makes your heart sing”. Some of them might not be compatible with other people’s values. That’s fine, as long as you are not doing something to damage others. You don’t have to agree with everyone and everyone doesn’t have to agree with you.

If you have trouble finding your inner guidance and if you don’t trust your own judgment and experience, a fairly good guideline for making decisions could be: how would the world look like if everybody chose this way? Of course, prejudice and lack of information could cloud the answer, but this question can at least bring you closer to integrity. Overall, the more you understand your own inner world (on this topic, check the article “观察感受“), the better you can understand what is really important to you.

正直、自尊和来自内部的支持

Integrity includes being able to overcome your fears, if those fears sabotage following your key values. It might be the fear of how others might react if you tell them the truth, fear of “what would people say”, of material loss… 为了克服恐惧，我们需要直面恐惧；为了直面恐惧，我们需要支持自己，相信自己。 

正直还意味着能够 多角度看问题, including those you might not like, those that don’t fit your expectations and beliefs, or don’t make you feel right, powerful, important and such. To be able to explore such perspectives objectively, we need to be able to 认错 sometimes, that sometimes other people’s needs are stronger and more important than ours, or that certain beliefs we associate with safety and belonging might not be very wise.

To do all that, we need to accept that sometimes our ego might be a bit shaken, which requires being able to accept ourselves as we are – imperfect, with limited knowledge, humans among humans. 你的自尊越健康，就越容易接受自己的不完美自尊越少，就越需要自我幻想。因此，自尊是正直的一个重要方面（反之亦然）。

诚信与生存

我们不能指望那些仍在为生存和满足基本需求而挣扎的人们会忽视这些需求，而去追求更为抽象的价值观，比如诚信（尽管有些人会这样做）。通常，当人们感到 够安全 优先考虑 长期 良好的感觉和人际关系的质量胜过短期利益。因此，我们可以说 诚信是内在安全感的外在表现. I’m not talking about basic fairness and cooperation with other people – this is by itself a way of ensuring our survival by being accepted by a group. I’m talking about a higher level of integrity – those choices which probably nobody will ever find about, or which might require risking being rejected by important people or groups.

为了能够正直地生活，你需要发展情感和物质。 独立, so that toxic people and toxic jobs cannot have power over you. Independence doesn’t mean amassing so much money (probably hurting other people and environment in the process) that nobody could touch you; it doesn’t mean never allowing yourself to love and avoiding emotional hurt (which, the more you avoid, the more you are likely to experience). It means developing your abilities, learning new skills, facing challenges, until you 相信自己 to be able to deal with hardships and emotional pain. Money cannot give you that. (Check out the article “将情感痛苦转化为激情和灵感“, too.)

Being truly independent means being able (and willing) to support yourself through pain… and here we come full circle. You cannot be supportive of yourself if you don’t like yourself; you cannot like yourself if you don’t respect yourself, and you cannot truly respect yourself if you don’t live with integrity. However, this circle can be broken, or a new one started. It’s never too late to create yourself anew.

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