With growth on the Hive blockchain and a bigger weight of our voting, there comes the temptation of upvoting ourselves. And I must say that I have given up to this temptation and sprinkled some upvotes here and there on some of the posts and even comments. And few days ago I was reminded that it is not quite an ethic practice to do so by getting some negative upvotes neutralizing the payouts. And I must say that I agree with that and will shift that to curating others content. I got lazy and wanted to squeeze more out of my engagements and I was reminded that it is not fair to the other participants to the Hive economy.

![hive_upvotes.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/behiver/23wqkGpLrZS5DQ6esJH2GkzzbyJgbGPLv9nSmU1JoWKv5bZru4eCqL4zhFDGAuHbfSJKv.jpg)

## Fair and balanced participation
We are all taken by life, we get to have less time to spend it on thing that we enjoy and which also provide some earnings and when getting some time we tend to make the most of it. But that doesn't mean to maximize everything as it is not all about earnings, but mostly about engagement and growing together. Instead of isolating ourselves, participating to the Hive ecosystem and encouraging others by varying the upvotes will get a healthier medium where more users will want to join. Sometimes we forget about the power of organic growth and it is good that we are reminded about it.

## Retrospective
Thinking about it, I don't even know why I did it... I became lazy, bored or simply had too less time to spend in the crypto space and wanted to make the most of it. But this proves why we should have rules and why we should participate fairly to the Hive economy. We have a common interest here and we need to nurture the health of this ecosystem, in order to ensure fair rewards distribution.

## Lesson learned
I could have kept silent about my experience on this, but I thought well that's a lesson that I've learned and maybe others could learn from it as well. Instead of going yourself through same bad feeling when received negative votes, it is way better to prevent that. Some could say or think it will never happen to them, but if you don't play the game correctly, someone will slap you sooner or later. So hopefully you'll read about my experience and you'll keep on the righteous path.

https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://img.inleo.io/DQmeeQDzphw3rYpUSHLpdpgcvURAXfyYk2mbSzryf9hptaK/hive_divider.png

And this is another example that when blogging on the Hive blockchain being sincere truly provides value, even if the experience itself wasn't positive for me. But learning from it is what counts in the end and that's why I've decided to share it as well. Improving ourselves, evolving in thinking and practice is the way to move up and influence others in a positive way. Because in the end there is only one way that will make you sleep like a baby: the righteous way.

### The content we write and the engagement we do is who we are. And we can always do better if we accept the feedback and put the effort into it.

Posted Using [InLeo Alpha](https://inleo.io/@behiver/keeping-away-from-the-temptation-of-upvoting-yourself-on-the-hive-blockchain)