Don't let anything lesser compete with what is rational and truly good. Things like popularity, honor, money, or pleasure — none of these should be allowed to fight against your better judgment. Once these things start to appeal to you, even briefly, they take over. They twist your thinking and pull you off course. So choose what is best without compromise, and hold to it. People say the "best" thing is what's most profitable. If they mean profitable to you as a thinking person, then stick with that. But if they just mean profitable to you as any animal would understand it, reject that idea. Guard yourself carefully against anything that looks appealing on the surface. You need to see things as they really are.
For it is not lawful, that anything that is of another and inferior kind and nature, be it what it will, as either popular applause, or honour, or riches, or pleasures; should be suffered to confront and contest as it were, with that which is rational, and operatively good. For all these things, if once though but for a while, they begin to please, they presently prevail, and pervert a man's mind, or turn a man from the right way. Do thou therefore I say absolutely and freely make choice of that which is best, and stick unto it. Now, that they say is best, which is most profitable. If they mean profitable to man as he is a rational man, stand thou to it, and maintain it; but if they mean profitable, as he is a creature, only reject it; and from this thy tenet and conclusion keep off carefully all plausible shows and colours of external appearance, that thou mayest be able to discern things rightly.