I read an article in Wired this morning about the Boy Scouts of America. First, it made me reminisce about my own personal scouting experiences, but then I started to reflect that one of the biggest things I got from scouting was the importance of living a principled centered life. No, don’t get me wrong, I was never the best behaved child in my family … I made mistakes and wandered from the path my parents had outlined for me.
What happened later in life is that I saw my mistakes and started to correct for them. This led me back to the Scout Law [A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent] and living to bring those principles into my life and making myself a better person. I learned next about ‘Beginning with the End in Mind’ from Dr. Stephen Covey; and I learned, through time, that Christ and HIS teachings focused on a principle centered life. It really made me think and expand my thinking about how I lived and what I wanted in my life.
I thought about the people that I respected the most and those that I looked up to. I thought about my own life and realized that Thomas Jefferson was right, “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock”.
The best life is one that is built upon a framework of principles.
iron wil
