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What do you value?

Are there things for which you would be willing to suffer humiliation, rejection, and financial loss? These are your deep core values, your non-negotiables. It’s important that you know what they are.

A person without non-negotiables is a person without passion.

But it’s also important to know your negotiables.

A person without negotiables is hard-headed, self-important, obstinate. But such people can be tolerated if they apply their non-negotiables only to themselves.

A person who believes their non-negotiables should apply to everyone else is an oppressor. Give them a weapon and they are a terrorist.

When Oscar Wilde was in prison, he wrote,

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

I’ve always liked Oscar Wilde.

Allow me to list my assertions:

1. Suffering is the price of passion.
2. You cannot claim you are passionate about something if you would not be willing to endure hardship for it.
3. Not every belief is worth suffering for.
4. The opinions and beliefs for which you would not suffer are your “negotiable” opinions and beliefs.
5. It is reasonable, and even good, to be willing to suffer for your beliefs.
6. It is not reasonable, nor is it good, to expect others to suffer for your beliefs.

Do you want to hear the funny part? Although I truly believe what I said today, it is not a belief about which I am passionate.

It is negotiable. A

Food for thought on a Monday morning.

Roy H. Williams