Character is built, destroyed, and changed through decisions

You get to choose what your character is. Your choices determine who you are. The choices you make determine your character, not the other way around. You can shape your character like a sculptor shapes clay. Your decisions from one moment to the next are what shape the trajectory of your character.

Character is cumulative and malleable. Character is built or destroyed through successive decisions. Every single thing you do matters. Your character is the summation of all the choices you have made in life to this point. Your character is the trend line of the quality of decisions you make in life. Good choices strengthen and improve your character. Character improvement takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of consistency. Poor choices weaken and degrade your character. Character degradation happens in an instant, is the easiest path, and takes only momentary weakness. Character is not something you can pick up when it is convenient and set down when it is not. Character takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy. While one good choice will not demonstrate good character, one terrible choice can demonstrate poor character. Even when you immediately repent, it takes time to demonstrate that you would not make the same poor choice if given another chance.

Whether you use this life to improve or degrade your character, and by how much, is up to you. Character is not something fixed from birth. No matter how your character is now, what it becomes is completely up to you. You can gain or remove anything you choose about what you do, why you do it, and how you feel about it. Who are you? Who do you want to be? What is the difference? No matter the size of the gap between who you are and who you want to be, it is just comprised of one thing: your own choices. As soon as you realize that your choices determine who you are, you can instantly shift who you are by making different decisions. You can design and adopt a completely different character by thinking about how you want to be and choosing according to how that person would.⁶