Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Hello and welcome to Imagine the Possibilities. My name is Skip Pogue. I want to talk about integrity, honesty. I think we have to start in the dark, so to speak, to have true integrity. I think it's. We have to realize the things that we do when nobody's watching are really, really important. Take for example, you go check out at a store, you've got 10 items and a bottle of water, and you put the 10 items on the conveyor belt and the person rings all the 10 items up and you've got the bottle of water sitting on that shelf where the debit card machine is. And they don't pay attention and you don't either, so it doesn't get rang up. So you walk out to your car, you got your bottle of water, set it back in the buggy and off you go, get to the car, and you put your grocery sack in the passenger seat, let's say, and you grab the bottle of water. At that instant you realize that you didn't pay for that bottle of water. But to verify it, you check your receipt and sure enough, there's 10 items, not 11. There's no bottle of water there. What do you do? Do you go back in and pay for the bottle of water and say, hey, I had this sitting on the shelf and you forgot to ring it up. I just want to make sure you ring it up and pay for it. Or do you just get in your car, drop it in the little cup holder and drive off? Because that decision speaks volumes for your integrity. What do you do? You're driving down a country Road, it's 10 o'clock at night, you've been out working or visiting friends or whatever. Come to a four way stop. Do you just. You can see there's no headlights coming, you can tell there's nobody around. What do you do you blow through the top, the stop sign or do you slow down, ease through the stop sign? Or do you come to a complete stop? Those things define your true integrity. You may be honest most of the time, you may have integrity most of the time, but it's the little thing that we do that really shows us. Nobody may ever know about the bottle of water. Nobody ever know about you blowing through the stop signs. Nobody will ever know that except you. And that's what defines us to us. Do we have integrity? Oh, we do these things at work and you know, everybody believes us to be 100% honest, that we have a huge amount of integrity. But do we really? If we don't do the little things, you think about that a little bit. And you can find maybe hundreds of examples in your lifetime where you didn't do the right thing. Now, integrity can be fixed. You know, it's a matter of doing the right thing. Big or small, doesn't matter. I've heard people brag about people, oh, so and so, you know, I know this person that they returned something, a big item to Amazon and somehow Amazon messed up and they double credited this item. They had a complaint and they wound up double crediting the item. And it was almost $2,000. So they wind up with an extra two grand. Now, this person that told me this story was bragging about it. Now, it wasn't them, it was somebody that they knew, but they were bragging about. This person, you know, basically wound up and it was a year later when they told me. So they got away with it. Amazon never recalled the funds. They wound up having $4,000 instead of $2,000 deposited back in their bank account. And they were content and happy about it. They didn't see a reason to tell Amazon. There's thousands of those stories. I mean, you think about it, you know, I stop at stop signs. I drive the speed limit. Now, do I ever fail? Yeah, I fail sometimes. I've caught myself looking around, there's nobody coming. I come up to stop sign, I always look. I got a digital speedometer. So I always look. And if the digital speedometer shows zero, I must be stopped, right? So it shows zero. But I know I'm still moving. So I just rolled through the stop sign. Now, I failed to demonstrate integrity. Nobody was around. Nobody knows it. Nobody but me. That's the important person in all this. If you're going to be a man or a woman of integrity, you have to have it all the time. You have to demonstrate it when nobody's watching. And that's the important piece of it. And until we get to that point where we do that, we may be fine and we know we made the mistake. Now the question is, when I rolled that stop sign, was it intentional? Unintentional? You and I both know, based on the facts that I've told you, I intentionally did that. So it's on me. We need to. One thing we've got to do, and I see so many people not doing it, is if we do something, if we do something, we own it. We have to be responsible for it and we own that responsibility. And are we being true to ourselves? Are we doing the right thing? Even worse is if, like this person that I know that bragged about The Amazon thing, they may have told. I may not be the only person they told about it. I was shocked, really was. But they told it and it was a mutual friend of mine. And I was shocked they would do that. And I was more shocked that they would obviously brag about it to this person, knowing full well that at some point this person was going to tell somebody else. Just human nature or something like that. Oh, guess what? So and so did. They ripped off Amazon for two grand and Amazon never caught the error. So they just kept buying stuff from Amazon with Amazon's money. Now, will there be a day of reckoning? I think there will be. Not here on this earth, but I think there will be a day of reckoning. But there may never be for them. And it doesn't bother them, evidently. I couldn't have done that. I have done the thing with water. I walked out of a grocery store one day, literally. I had a bottle of water sitting in the package tray, I guess what you call it, I don't know, on a cart. I always say buggy, but on a cart. And I had quite a bit of groceries. So I just pushed them out, put them in the car. And as I was putting the buggy over in one of those holding areas, I noticed the bottle of water sitting there and I realized I hadn't paid for it. So I walked back in the store, got back in line, came up to the counter, and the girl that rang me up said, is there a problem? And I said, yeah, I didn't pay for this water. It's a dollar bottle water. She looked at me like I'd grown a third eye because I walked all the way back in the store to pay for the water. What's that say about where we're at as a group of people today? When somebody thinks you're nuts, you know, gives you an odd look because you're trying to maintain your integrity at the level it needs to be. What's that mean to everybody? I mean, that's the part I don't understand. If we're not honest with ourselves, where does that leave us at the end of the day? And it's not just rolling the stop sign or ripping off Amazon or not paying for a bottle of water. It goes deeper than that. If we tell people we'll do something now, we may have the best intent in the world, but we wind up not doing it. And the worst part of it is, oh, we're supposed to be over and help. So and so at 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock comes and goes, 11, 12, so and so gives up, they're not coming. When you question about, oh, I wasn't feeling good, and I just didn't know, you know, well, if you weren't feeling good, why didn't you call me, you know, instead of just doing that? Because both those relate to integrity in one way or another. So I think when we talk about integrity and honesty, there they're kind of hand in hand. Everything we do, everything we say, if. If we are not person of our word, if we tell somebody something and we're not a hundred percent honest with them and we have no intent of doing whatever it is we said we were going to do, then we need to tell them, hey, I can't do that. Sorry, doesn't fit my schedule. Maybe next time, you know, we'll see. But at least be honest. Too much of this stuff goes on and we need to figure it out. But it's a personal issue when you think about it. You know, how many times now Everybody knows I'm 77 years old, going on 78, be 78 in 364 more days or 63 more days, whatever it is. Anyway, how many times in my lifetime have I done something that fails to demonstrate that I'm a person of integrity? I would say a lot. There was a period of time I was young and everything else, and I probably didn't walk in the store, somebody. I gave somebody a $10 bill and they gave me change for 20. Hey, I made 10 bucks on that and got a meal. You know, Then as I grew up and got matured, I guess is way to say it, But I also got. I got God. But even God didn't chastise me all the time over. Because he told me about it. My dad told me about it. My dad was a man of integrity, really was. And I realized that I wanted to be that way, because even when he told me or God told me, it didn't register with me. I was kind of like the person that scammed Amazon for two grand. You know, I got a free Coke, I got a free meal, I got whatever. And then all of a sudden I started thinking about it and what's that tell other people that I associate with? You know, what if I sit down and I told you we just met and we were talking about our backgrounds and everything, and you were trying to understand me, and I was trying to understand you. And so just out of the blue, I started telling you, you know what, the other day, you know what happened to me? I went in the grocery store and I bought a bunch of groceries and I forgot to pay for the bottle of water. I get out the car and realize that, and I just put a bottle of water in the cup holder in the car and drove off as a bottle of water. What's that tell you about me? If you're thinking maybe we're thinking about getting in business together or doing something together financially, and now I've told you that, are you going to trust me 100%? Nah, probably not. Maybe 99%, maybe 98%. You will, but there's going to be that little bit of gap in there between total and complete trust and trust. So it affects all kinds of relationships. You know, if you'll do that, what else will you do? Where's the limit? Where do you reach your limit? Is it a dollar bottle of water or is it $100 bill, or is it $1,000? Or like the person I told you about, is it $2,000 that you scammed off Amazon? That's a, that's a big deal. You know, the $2,000 in reality, since you knew it and didn't call it to Amazon detention, that could probably. There's probably a crime committed there that could be big trouble. But I just believe that we've got to if we want to demonstrate integrity. To who? If we're working. I'm retired, but when I was working, I was a team lead, I was a manager, I was a director. If I wanted to demonstrate to my people that I had integrity and when I told them something, I stood behind it, then I needed to. I needed to. Whatever I told them I was going to do or whatever happened, I needed to own it, I needed to stand behind it, and I needed to make sure that it happened the way I said it would happen. Maybe they were looking for advancement. And I went through and told them, here's the steps you need to take, and when you take those steps, we'll talk again because you'll be well prepared to move forward in your career. So I tell them that they go out, do all the step and everything, and then they come to me one day and they say, hey, Skip, I did all those things you said, can we talk about that some more now? And I just, I'm like, yeah, but I don't have time right now. Maybe in a day or two. And a day or two comes and goes and we don't talk. A week goes, goes away. A month, couple months. And finally they're like, you know, this is. That guy lied to me. He Told me to do all these things, and I did. And now he's not. He's not a person of integrity. He's not keeping his word. He's not being honest with me. So it affects all kinds of relationship. So just think about it. That's all I'm saying. It's always been the little things I've got.
[00:13:05] I think I want to do this, and I haven't decided, but I've got a real example of how little thing, a really little thing, $2.79 little thing, went on for over 12 weeks at a hotel I was staying at. And at the end of the thing, I explained to the manager of the hotel about little. It was the little thing that you missed that caused me to say what I said. But that's a. That's a story for another day. But anyway, it is little things. You know, it's like the old adage about support. You know, you call.
[00:13:40] You've got a product and it breaks, and you call somebody and they will fix your problem, but at the same time, they don't treat you well. People will forget about it. They will forget the words that person used, but they won't forget how they made them feel. And that's important that we think about those kind of things. You can say stuff and even the right thing said in the wrong way make somebody feel bad, then you didn't help them. So just. That's just something else to kind of think about. But going back to the integrity, try to be 100% honest. Try to look at things you've done and do, and we're talking about moving forward. You can apologize.
[00:14:23] You can own something you did and apologize for it to the person or persons. Or you could go back and say, hey, when I was 14 years old, you know, I stole this, or I walked out of the store with this bottle of water or can of Coke or whatever and say you want to pay for it. And they're probably going to laugh at you and say, nah, just forget about it. Okay? But that's the place it needs to start. So just do the little things. Stop at the stop sign, drive the speed limit. I can tell you right now, you'll never do it 100% of the time. I drove. I drive the speed limit 99% of the time. And the reason I say that is last year or year before, we made a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the interstate system we took. If you drove 70 miles an hour, you were going to get run over. So I exceeded the speed limit, probably at times by 15 miles an hour. But cars were still passing me and I used that as justification for doing it. Cars are still passing me. Hey, I'm not going as fast as some of these people are. But when I think about it, you know, I would have probably driven the speed limit. The difference in time it makes over a 3 or 400 mile journey is really trivial because how many stop for bathroom breaks and get get food and fill car up gas and do all those things? You lose all that time anyway. But anyway, just think about integrity and the things that we can do to demonstrate to all those people around us, be they friends, family, coworkers, or whoever, that we are a person of integrity, that we are a person of honesty. And we are doing our very, very best to demonstrate that to everybody. So I guess that's your. That's the thing you need to do is just think about it. So anyway, let me close this thing out and tell you that I most definitely appreciate the time that you spend listening to these podcasts. It's heartfelt, it's humbling, and I appreciate every minute that you spend doing that. If you are not listening to it on imagineepossibilities Life, head over to that website and let me know how I'm doing. Let me know if there's something that you'd like me to talk about or something you need clarification on or whatever it is, and I'll be glad to do it. And I'll leave you with this. Remember that your future belongs to you. Stay humble, be kind, love deeply, laugh off. I hope that you have a super day and I pray that God blesses you in a super way. Thanks again. God bless.
