“Father, what is honor?”
“Honor, Son, is the gift that a man gives to himself.”
–from the 1995 movie “Rob Roy”

When you think of a person of integrity, what do you think of? Probably someone who is honest, who follows through on his or her commitments, who does what’s right even when it’s difficult, who walks his walk and talks his talk.

A simple way of thinking about integrity is congruence.

Integrity means that the various elements of your self are not disconnected or scattered about. What you believe is congruent with what you say. What you say is congruent with what you do.

What do you believe? What do you value? What is meaningful to you?

Why frugal?

My sister has a way of putting important things simply and clearly. She defines frugality as “spending your money on what you want, and not spending it on what you don’t want”. I think this applies not just to money, but to time and energy, as well.

How much money have you blown this year on things that you have hardly used, or that were in some other way a waste?

How much time and energy have you blown?

As you think of the year to come, consider how you would like to spend your money, your time, and your energy over the course of the coming year.

There are things that an individual can do to improve his or her well being. There are things that couples and families can do to improve their relationships. Are there things that a country can do to improve the overall well being of its citizens?

There are.

Though there is much work left to be done, research is beginning to sketch a picture of the elements that contribute to a nation’s overall well being. Ed Diener and Martin Seligman in Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well Being (Psychological Science in the Public Interest, July, 2004) have reviewed the research that seeks to measure the well being of societies. Looking at their findings can give each of us a direction to aim for in our efforts to improve the country where we live.