According to several studies, we have over 6,000 thoughts every day.
Eighty percent of them are negative, and 95% of them are repetitive.
Let that sink in. Ninety-five percent of the thoughts you will have today are thoughts you had yesterday, and the vast majority will be negative.
It sheds new light on the expression “How you handle any day is how you handle every day.” Or this other one: “How you do anything is how you do everything.”
I can’t think of a better proof that we are creatures of habit, and that good habits matter. As Will Durant wrote when discussing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The ethical leader will be aware of her propensity to have negative thoughts over and over again. She will be aware of this tendency in others. She will work to replace those thoughts with more positive ones, in herself and in others. More importantly, she will not tolerate a single instance of bad behavior, knowing that actions follow thoughts, and are thus likely to be repeated the next day if unaddressed.
This post was originally published on The Ethical Leader and is reprinted here with permission.
Writing as “The Ethical Leader,” Yan Tougas draws on 15 years of experience as a compliance & ethics officer at a Fortune 500 company, sharing insights, wisdom and lessons learned. This post originally appeared on “The Ethical Leader” and is reprinted here with permission. Views expressed are that of the author. Visit him at YanTougas.com, connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
Yan Tougas, Global Ethics & Compliance Officer, Raytheon Technologies Corporation
Yan Tougas oversees Raytheon’s global ethics programs, supporting a network of nearly 300 Ethics & Compliance Officers, managing the company’s Ombuds program, and ensuring that best practices are adopted across Raytheon’s business units. Ethical culture and leadership is the focus of all activities under his responsibility.
Yan joined Raytheon in 2000 and held positions of increasing responsibility at several of its business units. He took his current position at the Corporate Office in 2012.
Yan holds a LL.B from the University of Sherbrooke School of Law (Quebec) and a LL.M. from University of Connecticut School of Law. He sits on the Board of the Ethics & Compliance Initiative and on the Advisory Board of the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Yan currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and three children. 
