Are you a Chicken or a Pig?

 “Setting the example.”

 “If you’re gonna talk the talk, you better walk the walk.”

 You’ve heard them all!

If you’ve spent more than a day on this earth reading about or helping our wounded warriors, you’ve heard these phrases and words when it comes to the subject of integrity.  

Yeah, integrity!

 Integrity comes from the Latin word, integritas meaning the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished.

 Simply put when we do what we say we will do, we INTEGRATE our words with our actions. Consequently, when we commit to certain actions only to shy away from the hard truth, our integrity is reduced. From time to time, as I write this blog, I question my own authenticity and integrity.

I do this for 2 reasons:

1.  I want to ensure I set a good example

2.  There are a lot of pretenders out there that say they want to help warriors, but their actions say otherwise. I do not want to be in that camp!

 Empowering Questions

To accomplish this self-review, I start by asking myself questions (go figure, right?). I started asking myself, “What do I need to do ensure I consistently use the tools I coach with?”   I’m glad I did this little exercise as it helped me follow through on insights I have suggested to the readers here in the Warrior Nation. Having identified the problem I’d like to share with you the actions I am taking to maintain my integrity, but first…a little perspective.

When I started asking myself questions, the first answer that came to me was pretty simple. I realized one thing I should do is to take inventory with everything I write. So I started re-reading my blog from last year up to today.

Of particular note, last year I wrote a blog piece entitled Define The Moment. You can follow the link back, but to summarize
quickly, I suggested that anniversary dates, surrounding the death of someone close to us, need to be planned for and honored. This was my way of saying we can define the date, rather than letting it define us. I learned this personally, as I too have an anniversary date myself that I intend to define; May 28^th, my little brother’s birthday. Specifically, what I’ve learned is this event that we plan.... we need to be fully committed to rather than just being involved.

Commitment .vs Involvement

If you haven’t thought about it before, maybe this will help you understand the difference between these 2 words.  A few years back, one of my best friends shared some great wisdom with me that has stuck like glue.

Semper Fi, Major Dodd. It goes like this:

Major Dodd: “Do you know the difference between involvement and commitment, buddy?”

Me: (Shaking my head yes, before really thinking about it) “Uh huh!”

Major Dodd: “Well to be sure, here’s a quick analogy. This morning, I was eating breakfast. I was having eggs and bacon. Get it?”

Me: (Shaking my head no, as I strongly pondered his analogy) “Uh…no.”

Major Dodd: “Eggs and Bacon. Where do they come from?”

Me: “A chicken and a …pig?”

Major Dodd: “Exactly!”

Me: “What do animals have to do with the difference between involvement and commitment?”

Major Dodd: “Eggs and bacon”, he declared. “The chicken was involved. The pig was committed. So…. are you a chicken, or are you a pig?

Take Away

When planning to Define a Moment in our lives, we must be pigs. We can’t delegate this moment away. We can’t think of something special to do and then watch others do it. We must commit!

With this in mind, I am committing to define my brother’s birthday by joining a special motorcycle ride called Rolling Thunder.

I’m headed to Washington, DC this weekend doing something that the closest man I have to a brother got my doing over 9 years ago.  Like us on Facebook and catch our updates.

Thanks again, Major Dodd! Thanks again, my brother!

Warrior, out!