Back to Article index To print this page, click on the Print icon in your browser.    Truth Decay (or "It's Okay. Everybody Does it!")   I'm often gifted with treasures that come across my desk from friends and colleagues. Sometimes they make me smile, sometimes they are thought provoking, often they strike some chord in me that is a fundamental truth. Recently I was gifted with a story of truth.   The story is about a boy who is taught repeatedly by his parents (and others in his life) lying and cheating are okay, after all, everybody does it! Everything from cheating on an income tax return, to bribing a theater manager for a seat, to cheating on tests in school. People all around him taught him how to get what he wanted one way or the other.   When the boy was caught cheating in school and sent home in disgrace his parents and family were shocked. "He didn't learn that at home," they said. "How could he shame his parents that way?"   I remember as a child hearing "do as I say, not as I do" more than once from my father. I used to laugh about it. Not any more. There is a fundamental truth here about the choices we make in our lives and the models we are for our children (and for other adults).   In the story about the boy caught cheating, all he'd done was live according to standards he'd been taught. So why were his parents surprised or even shamed? What did they really expect when they'd taught him everything he knew? What is so difficult to understand about a child behaving the same way as his parents? For them, his crime was not in the cheating. It was in getting caught.   What about in your own life? Is it okay to carry home office supplies from work? Even taking a paper clip is stealing. Is that okay for you? When a checker makes an error and gives you more change back than you're supposed to get, do you give it back to her or walk out of the store feeling like you won somehow? When you buy a soda from a machine and get two for the price of one do you let anybody know or walk away with the extra can?   It wasn't so long ago that I would have done every one of those things and to all of the merchants and individuals that were harmed by my actions, I apologize. Some shift happened for me a number a years ago to change my behavior. I'm not sure what it was exactly. I was involved with my not-yet husband. He has a daughter and I realized that I (and we) was a model for her. If it was okay for me to lie and steal in whatever large orsmall way, it was also okay for her. What I wanted for her was to grow up with a strong sense of what's right and wrong. Not in a judgemental kind of way, rather based on the golden rule: "Don't do to others what you don't want done to you."   I remember a specific incident when she was nine. I was creating an office for myself in the basement and bought two area rugs from the grocery super-store in our town. They were about sixty dollars each. When I got home and looked at the receipt I noticed I'd only been charged for one. In the "old days" I would have celebrated my victory and said nothing. This time, however, I drove back to the store and brought it to the attention of the customer service representative and paid her the amount due for the second rug. She looked at me like I had three heads.   We talked about it over dinner and in the mind of this nine-year-old I was sharing my life with, it didn't make sense that I'd gone back to pay for it. After much discussion about right and wrong and the golden rule, she finally got it. We even got to the place that it's stealing to taste grapes in the produce section of the store before buying them.   The saddest part of all this for me is that honesty is such a rare commodity. It's not the norm, it's the exception. It doesn't have to be, though. We all have within our power the ability to tell the truth, to not steal, to stop telling lies. What a difference it could make in this world if we all made the commitment to total honesty. What difference it could make for our children and our world of tomorrow!   What are you teaching your children? Do you subscribe to my father's school of "Do as I say, not as I do?" Do you model the kind of person you want your children to become? Are you, in fact, living your personal truth every day?   I got the following lesson in one of my coaching classes. It was so powerful for me and I can honestly say it changed my life and the way I live it. As you read it, think about your own life, your children, your family, the people you touch each day.   "Take care how you live your life. You may be the only bible somebody reads."   . . . What are you modeling?     © Copyright December, 1997. Laura Hess, MCC 702.252.3657