Do the right thing

Every day you have decisions to make.

Often those decisions are easy. When the choice to do the right thing is also the profitable choice, it’s easy to choose.

But lots of decisions aren’t like that. For most decisions, there are two choices:

• The quickest, easiest way to make more money.
• Doing the right thing, which often will cost you more in the short term.

For example:

• Do you charge your employer for an expense that you didn’t actually incur?
• Do you lie to a prospect to close a sale?
• Do you make a surreptitious choice that will benefit you and screw over a coworker?
• Do you do cut corners to complete a job so you can spend more time on yourself?

If you’ve got a mortgage to pay, a kid who needs braces, or a chance to buy a new car, it’s awfully tempting to make that quick, easy, profitable choice. I’m not judging you. I’ve done it myself. If we’re honest, we all have.

The true cost

If you start to habitually do the wrong thing to benefit yourself, you may not be accounting for the rest of the price in the very long run:

• Rationalizing so much you lose track of the difference between right and wrong.
• Losing respect for yourself.
• Guilt.
• The bad reputation that follows you.
• The unexpected situation where the person you screwed over has power over you.
• The moment when you realize that you’ve become a role model for people you care about — and you’ve led them astray.
• The loss of opportunities to grow and learn.

Easy money doesn’t make up for any of that.

I am stubborn. I am persistent. I’m not a pushover, and I compete as hard as anybody. But I’ve had opportunities to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by being dishonest — and I’ve passed them up.

I have very few regrets.

I’m old now, and I have the respect of an awful lot of people I worked with. And in case you’re looking for the end of this story, it did end up paying off. The opportunities and experiences I have now would never have been been possible if I’d been selfish and unethical as a younger person.

It’s hard to pass up temptation. It’s hard to do the right thing.

Do it anyway.

Because, as I hope you never have to find out, the cost of not doing it is your soul.