A PERSONAL COVENANT

The Integrity & Self-Trust Declaration

TWENTY-TWO PRINCIPLES · IN ORDER OF WEIGHT · FIRST EDITION

From this day forward, I declare my commitment to the word I keep with myself. I will conduct the business of living with the utmost honesty and integrity, beginning with honesty about myself. I will build character as a practice rather than claim it as a possession. And I will design the conditions I act under, knowing that conditions decide more than intentions do.

I BUILD Building the character

  • 1Practise it until it is automatic, because deliberation fails under load. Habitual behaviour is governed by stimulus-response associations that operate largely independently of intention. Character strengths become reliable only when practised enough to require no decision. What you have to decide each time is what you will fail to do when tired.

21 more principles

The rest of the Integrity & Self-Trust Declaration

21 principles remain — including the Unpretty Truths, the principles that contradict conventional wisdom outright, with the evidence for why. That is the part nobody else prints.

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What this does not claim

No finding licenses judging another person's character from their conduct in a single situation — that is precisely the inference the situational literature forbids. The honest claim is narrower: self-regulation predicts a remarkable range of adult outcomes and remains trainable; character strengths are real, measurable and modifiable; and the conditions a person acts under explain more of their conduct than most people, assessing themselves or anybody else, are willing to allow.