What's Your Favorite Word?
You may be like students I taught as they would say, "Why does it matter what my favorite word is?" Well, I believe that having a positive, favorite word can have a positive impact on one's life. On the first day of our Character Development and Leadership course, students as a group struggled with this question.
Today's technology allows people to communicate at a greater rate than anytime in history. To a large degree one can wonder, how truly meaningful is the bulk of our communication? I believe we need to have good words in us. Words of great power and meaning. Words that touch our emotions and words we can feel when we say them aloud. Words of positive character traits like attitude, preparation, perseverance, honesty, integrity, respect, composure etc.
My favorite word is integrity. It's not my favorite word because I'm good at it– it's a challenge for me. Integrity, to me, means that we state which values are important to us, then we live that way. It's hard to do. Ed Thomas was the greatest man of integrity I have ever known. By living his life with integrity, he showed us all what true toughness really means. Ed Thomas's mantra was, "Do what's right." He chose to live that way every day. He's the toughest guy I ever knew because he never wavered in this belief.