Don't Ignore Your Little Voice.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about your moral compass.

Marketers must keep, maintain, and protect their principles and values at all costs. Selling your principles and values for money or ignoring your moral compass for fame is the worst form of debauchery and is the first step in losing your soul. Somewhere way down deep in your inner being, you have a little voice that shows you clearly defined borderlines of what is most assuredly right and what is unquestionably wrong. These borderlines are yours to keep. No one else can define them for you, although they may try. No one else can make you do what you believe is right—not the police, not your mother, and definitely not a politician. Only YOU can keep yourself doing what you know is right and avoid doing what you know is wrong, even when these measures of right and wrong are in conflict with the principles and values of other people. These are yours to protect and to observe.

Do not be tempted to sell out! I have been offered tremendous amounts of money to help companies sell products and services that are in direct conflict with my principles and values. It has been said that everyone has a price, and if there's enough money involved, everything is eventually for sale. It is true that the money I would have been given would have likely propelled my career and would have provided a more comfortable life for my family, but I also would have had to live with myself forever after. The truth is, every benefit has a cost, and the price of selling my soul is something I cannot afford. What about you?

No matter how much you've flirted with danger or how close you've gotten to the fire, your little voice can still be heard above the din. Listen. When all is still and quiet, just listen. When you lie down in the bed you've made, your little voice will tell you if you've crossed your line of right and wrong. You can roll over to ignore the voice or rationalize the many good things you've done in the day to offset your discolored choices, but that little voice is yours. It is hardcoded into you, and if you are in conflict with what you are wired to believe, there is no rest until you are in alignment with your principles and values.

The good news is that you are never too far away to hear your moral voice and set yourself straight again. As today's fortune says, "Your ideals are well within your reach." Will you listen?