Everyday we are pushed to overcome a challenge whether it be within ourselves and others. Out of my short 19 years on this earth I have encountered some issues I didn’t think I would have had to encounter until I am an “adult”. All of those issues in someway tied in to whether or not I should be loyal to myself or loyal to the people I cared about. Almost of not always I chose them and their sanity over me and mine which isn’t healthy nor fair but it was my decision. As an child it may seem more difficult to chose yourself over others or maybe that’s more closely related to adults. Have you experienced anything like this? As you read this blog I want you to think about where it seems more difficult to chose yourself and if you’ve experienced any of these issues.
To start off the blog here are some definitions from cmfleadership.com that will correlate with what is going to be said
- Loyalty is a quality of being loyal, faithfulness to commitments or obligations, faithful adherence to a person or cause. When we consider being loyal, we are choosing to maintain our faithfulness to our commitments or obligations. This is usually a good trait and something that we teach our children and grandchildren as a noble way of behaving. This is an "instrumental value," meaning it is how we want to treat others and want to be treated.
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- Integrity is adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character, of being whole, entire, or undiminished, a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition. Likewise, having integrity in yourself, your organization, your ethics is also a positive trait. Integrity can be either an instrumental value, or a "terminal value," meaning how we want the end state to be...whole, complete, sound, etc.
Extra
People are made to choose between being loyal(usually to a person or them,group,etc), and integrity( usually to the organization).
Whenever you are loyal to yourself you honor your own feelings. You also take time to know yourself.
Young and clueless
As a child I was taught to be selfless but careful and watch people because not everyone is your friend, for the most part I listened but my need to please people and love for others close to me took hold. Over the years I sacrificed my own happiness for people who would never do the same or even risk giving anything to help me. The most caring and careless thing I did out of love and loyalty was allow a young man to take every aspect of my mentality and trash it. I allowed him to talk about me, lie to me, and manipulate me to the point where he could tell people if he ever got upset with me that I was the problem. It took five years of the same desperate stuff for me to say this is enough. Why did it take so long? I valued loyalty over my own worth despite his negative efforts. The last straw was when he finally chose me as something he wanted and in the end it was just another lie because his soon to be girlfriend was waiting for him at homecoming....and he was with me. The whole ordeal made me feel even more worthless than before and dirty for the longest time. Now not everyone has those same experiences or deals with things that intensely, but after doing some interviewing I realize other people have felt the same thing just in another scenario.
Interviews
Loyalty is a very important value to some people and can be what makes or breaks a relationship. In the two interviews I did both people shared that value and experienced a situation where they had to either choose themselves or the other person. One chose themselves and the other became tolerant of the other persons actions. Both people in my interview are 15 years apart.
Why do we make these decisions? Why do we strive to please people who don’t feel the same towards us?
In my second interview with the younger participant she stated “ out of my loyalty and me feeling sympathetic for the person, I stayed and put up with the situation.” She ultimately stayed so that other person wasn’t alone and did t want to hurt their feelings. Are feelings really worth all that trouble? The simple answer,no. We’re all afraid of change and what might happen in the long run, but we deserve more than a handful of pain because someone else can’t treat us right.
The other participant explained earlier on in our interview that if we do not have peace within ourselves then you will not be successful because you do not have an set goals and aren’t sure with what you want in life just yet. As someone who is young I feel as if that factor alone is what clouds someone my ages brain we simply do not know ourselves yet and haven’t set barriers.
They have had to choose between themselves and others and said depending on the situation you should choose yourself first. As a coach they’ve chose another person over themselves though which proves everyone can have a weak point in terms of loyalty to ones self. Instead of leaving for a job with better pay he chose a program he was loyal to and valued.
Conclusion
When it comes to loyalty it can be very difficult to determine whether or not to sacrifice your own to others or to yourself but ultimately you should use both and analyze each situation. As my coach said before put yourself in a position to be successful and sometimes you have to go backwards to move further forwards. I urge you to stop standing back and looking forward as it is some kind of day dream, but to look at each situation and think which one is worth my time and what can I do to change this? What are you willing to do to be at peace? Every step you take is up to you, just treat lightly especially if you’re inexperienced.
Works cited
Anderson, Kenneth. “Loyalty to Yourself vs Loyalty to Others”
Fuzie, Ed.D Chris. “When Loyalty vs. Integrity...” Cmfleadership, Cmfleadership, Feb. 2017, www.cmfleadership.com/post/2017/02/02/when-loyalty-vs-integrity.
Guzman, Audrey. “ Loyalty to Yourself vs Loyalty to Others”
Pryce , Amaya. “What It Means to Be Loyal to Yourself and Why We All Need to Do It.” Tiny Buddha, Oct. 2019, tinybuddha.com/blog/what-it-means-to-be-loyal-to-yourself-and-why-we-all-need-to-do-it/.
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