A socially enforced prison doesn’t exist without a mind willingly participating. Groups believing one way of life is good and the best possible option never effects anyone until they make their will part of the group and go with that particular flow. It is highly necessary as a human being, a social creature, to acknowledge that you can be friends and involved with people while still disagreeing with beliefs they hold true. This is one way jobs, schools, teams hold people back by the person feeling like they must adhere to the group consensus to be OK. But it holds them back from expressing themselves and knowing more. And its extremely normal.
You are only ever affected by others when you allow yourself to have a reaction. There is a complete control center in your mind, no action of you is without your will and energy. Behavior is bound by your decisions and movement.
Integrity means answering to yourself in complete honesty. There is not bringing in an outside opinion. All anyone in any group really cares about is how you present yourself. When you have integrity, a group will either lie to you or respect you. All the grandeur of social praise and respect is false evidence of the prowess that integrity brings a person. Be truthful to yourself and people will trust and respect you. Do not try to be truthful to others so that you can trust and respect yourself.
The highest form of praise will always be from the self. We, within us, hold all the happiness and confidence needed to shake the world and explode with bliss. At any point we are holding ourselves back if we do not feel this. As much as that may sound like the delusions of a drug addict on their mountain’s peak, it is true in the sense that we are allowed to feel as great as we can imagine and that no emotion comes from anywhere but the chemicals already in our own mind. Once that praise is given, then one can begin to behave at their highest of forms.
