To tell this story, I will need to go back some time. It was a Saturday morning and I was working in the garage when my six year old daughter, Bailey, walked in and asked if she could tell me what she had learned in school the previous day. When your child offers up that sort of info, you stop and listen. “Please tell me”, I replied. She puffed herself up and declared, quite forcefully, “You just say no to drugs!” I thought about that for a second or two, sort of happy to know that this info had been supplied to her, but then this anxiety began to creep into my thoughts. Was this her belief or was if just a mantra said without a basis? Was she just saying it, or did it really represent her belief? Did she actually have faith in that statement when it came to her future decisions? As she stood there waiting for her pat on the back or maybe even a high five, I knew I had to challenge her belief. I had to give her a foundation to build that belief on, one solid enough that it would stand up to the test that would inevitably come one day. I started the conversation, “Why do you just say no?” “Because they are stupid and only stupid people would do them”, came her reply. And there was the challenge, “What if one day your best friend, who is just as smart as you, asks you to do drugs?” She looked at me and nearly broke my will. As alligator tears streamed down her face, and without another word, she ran out of the garage. I knew my daughter and I knew she would come back. A few agonizing minutes later, she was back, now almost defiant. “Why would she do that if she was smart?” she asked, and that opened the door for a very meaningful discussion as to why even smart people, even your best friends, might one day do drugs.

A belief is what others tell you to do, but it’s faith in that belief that allows you to apply to your own life. I heard those words in church this morning and was immediately taken back to that day in the garage with my daughter. Those words affirmed something I had always believed. Unless you have a foundation, beliefs are all too often things we say but often struggle to follow. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, “Just do the right thing”, “Leave judgement to others”. We have all heard these and we tell them to our children, okay grandchildren in my case, in the hopes they will make them good people. The truth is that the statement will not guarantee results unless they believe them and that will only happen when they are connected to our core beliefs as to who we really want to be. Take “Just do the right thing”, why would I do the right thing, when I see people around me do the wrong thing and not only get away with it but sometimes even be rewarded. How do I follow that mantra when I see people in leadership roles, roles of power, do the wrong thing. The answer lies in that same conversation I had with my daughter, I do the right thing because it is in alignment with my internal core beliefs, I have faith in that statement, and that in the long run, the best chance for a rewarding life lies in the act of doing the right thing in the first place. Please don’t take that to mean I never slip up, but if I don’t do the right thing, at my core I know it. My understanding of and my faith in the statement helps me make the right decision. Without that, the statement is just that, a statement.

Just say no to drugs, to speeding, to theft, etc. even when others might not, but say no because you have faith in the belief based on your core values. As for my daughter, I will believe that the conversation we had so long ago gave her the strength to handle those tests I always feared she would face.