Living a principle-centered life.
Last week we talked about the importance of the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” in the Triumph program and the role paradigms play in our lives. Whatever is most important to us (or our kids) will become our paradigm–our “life-center”. There are many different centers we can have: friend-centered, stuff-centered, boyfriend/girlfriend-centered, school-centered, parent-centered, sports/hobbies-centered, work-centered, etc. All of these life-centers don’t give us the stability we need to live a successful, fulfilling life. We can get so focused on those centers, we lose focus on living a whole, complete life. The one center that does work is living a principle-centered life.
“Throw a ball up and it comes down. It’s a natural law or principle. Just as there are principles that rule the physical world, there are principles that rule the human world. Principles aren’t religious. They aren’t based on nationality or race. They aren’t mine or yours. They aren’t up for discussion. They apply equally to everyone, male or female, rich or poor, famous or obscure. They can’t be bought or sold. If you live by them, you will excel. If you break them, you will fail. It’s that simple.”
Some examples of principles: honesty, service, love, hard work, respect, fairness, integrity, responsibility, gratitude and several more.
“It takes faith to live by principles, especially when you see people close to you get ahead in life by lying, cheating, indulging, manipulating, and serving only themselves. What you don’t see, however, is that breaking principles always catches up to them in the end.”
Principles will never fail you. They’ll never go away. A principle-centered life is the most “stable, immovable, unshakable foundation you can build upon.” Living a principle-centered life is the key to excelling in all other areas of our lives. When we understand this, teaching our children to live principle-centered lives becomes most important.
