We hear the word integrity flying around the social circles,
but what the hell does it mean?
The standard definition
is to adhere to moral or ethical standards
which creates a soundness of character.
Another definition is a state of being whole and undivided.
Now really these two definitions go hand-in-hand.
Because if you're living in perfect alignment
with your own conscience,
obviously you are whole and undivided.
Integrity
Morality is about principles, fundamental truths or propositions
that serve as the foundation
for a system of belief, behavior or a chain of reasoning.
Morals or principles concerned with the rightness or wrongness,
goodness, or badness of behavior.
The problem is that this is a serious gray area.
For example, some people strongly believe
it's right to punish a criminal
who carried out a great enough offense, by killing him.
Others believe this is morally wrong.
Some people believe honesty is always right,
other people believe it's right except for when it will hurt someone.
This begs the question:
"is right or wrong something that's defined by the individual themselves,
or by a society at large?
To know what is right or wrong,
you would have to first know who is right about what is right and wrong.
Even though we have some consensus in the world,
people do not fully agree
about what is right and what is wrong.
And morals keep changing over time.
Conscience as opposed to morals, is an inner feeling or voice
which is subjectively viewed
as acting as a guide to the rightness and wrongness
of one's own behavior.
This means conscience is subjective too.
But it is concerned with the self, instead of others.
In other words,
it's more concerned with what's right or wrong for you specifically,
versus right or wrong in general.
There's an intuitive field of conscience whereas morality is guided by reason.
You can think of conscience like a guiding light.
That light is obscured and bent by morals.
Morals are rather like a filter that conscience is fed through.
To understand more about conscience and morals,
I suggest you watch my youtube video titled:
Morality vs. Conscience
So you can understand what a lack of integrity is,
I'm gonna give you some examples;
Some examples of lack of integrity are:
- Saying that you're gonna do something,
and then not doing it or doing the opposite thing.
Telling a lie when the truth is the complete opposite.
- Leading someone to believe that they can trust you
and then betraying them.
- Hiding things about yourself and keeping secrets about yourself
so that the aspect of you that other people see
is not the real you.
- Being two-faced.
- Self-sacrificing instead of adhering to your true wants and needs.
- Changing your stories and opinions in order to bend to public opinion,
instead of staying steadfast in them.
It's not until someone puts pressure on our own authenticity,
that we decide to cave in
and change our stance, so others see us as a good person.
All of these things if you'll notice,
have one thing in common.
It's that it means two aspects of you are in opposition.
You're not in alignment,
you're not in a state of wholeness.
One side of you is saying: "this is the truth"
and the other is telling a lie.
One side of you is saying:
"this is what I really want",
the other side is bending to public opinion.
It's that state of division that sets integrity apart.
It's that state of division
that defines lack of integrity.
When we say that we want someone to gain integrity,
what that really means is that right here in this moment,
we are judging them,
that they are not doing
what we think is right to do in that moment.
Now this gets especially intense
if we watch the division happen within somebody.
So for example, if we know that the truth is one thing,
and yet they do the opposite thing,
we will look at that person and say:
There's a lack of integrity there".
There's split between one aspect of them and the other.
A split between what they know is right,
and what they're doing.
For this reason a lack of integrity
should really be defined as the quality
of not adhering to the principles
communicated by your own conscience.
Not living in the state of wholeness,
in and of yourself.
For example, if your own conscience communicates to you
that honesty is right for you,
but in that moment you tell a lie,
you are demonstrating a lack of integrity,
because right there in that moment
there's a split between one aspect of you
and your own conscience.
When two parts of you are split like that,
your emotional guidance system will tell you that it's split
by making you feel bad.
It's almost like going in one direction,
when your navigation system inside your body is saying:
"Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, wrong way, turn around"
and freaking out.
There's gonna be tension in your body,
because you're getting conflicting information.
We tend to see a lack of integrity
when we encounter some kind of crisis
or external stress.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
We only see how strong a house is,
when it weather's out a storm.
Now, what do I mean by this, as it applies to human life?
It's only when the truth is going to get us in trouble,
that we tell a lie.
It isn't until we suffer financially,
that we steal.
It isn't until we're tortured, that we betray someone's trust.
In order to feel better,
we in society do anything we can do
to get out from underneath the pressure.
Even if that means splitting ourselves.
This is what people mean when they say:
"Just put somebody in a negative space or in a crisis,
and then you see their true colors."
Soundness within yourself,
in between all of these different aspects of yourself,
is not something that anybody can take away from you.
It's only something that you can give away.
In fact, people can kill you
and you can still have it intact.
Therefore the reason that lack of integrity is so damaging to you,
is that lack of integrity is a form of self betrayal.
It's a guarantee that what you need the most in a crisis,
which is to remain strong and intact, will not happen.
But the good news is,
integrity can be built no matter how degraded
your integrity has been in the past.
And here are some suggestions about how to go about doing that:
step 1.
You've got to spend some time seriously considering
rightness versus wrongness,
in general as a concept,
but rightness versus wrongness in every scenario
that you find yourself in,
but you need to explore it like a philosopher would.
Suspend your concepts
of all that Society has told you about right or wrong,
and really look deeply.
Can you prove that something you think is wrong, might be right?
Can you prove that something you think might be right, might be wrong?
Don't act until you are sure
that your subjective concept about what's right or wrong
is as objective as possible.
To help you with this,
it's good sometimes to involve other people's opinions.
Especially if their opinions contradict your own.
However, your only reason to do this
is to gain more awareness,
so that you can gain even more clarity
about your own idea
about what right versus wrong for you in this scenario actually is.
There is a reason that ethics is an entire branch of philosophy.
It's because it's much more complicated,
than meets the eye.
Step 2.
Put effort into integration.
We need to stop seeing ourselves
and our personality as one thing.
Because a person is actually a collection
of different personalities.
This is what we mean when we say that someone has many sides.
Now, this is true for every adult I've ever shaken hands with.
If they've got an aspect of them that plays sports
and acts a certain way when they play sports
and another aspect of them that acts completely different
when they're at home around their children,
that's a split within the personality.
In other words, being split into different parts
is actually a collective human condition.
We fragment ourselves in order to cope with the external world.
We preserve ourselves by compromising ourselves,
until the day that being compromised
becomes a detriment to our well-being.
We have one side of us that wants to keep the peace,
and another side that wants to win no matter the cost.
We often fall into a lack of integrity
when two aspects of us or more, do not agree.
We need to become aware of these different parts of us,
and instead of siding with one of them
or another one of them and thus completely
disregarding the needs of the other self,
we need to become aware of each of their needs
and each of their desires
and with our awareness,
which is removed from any of these identifications,
we need to assist these parts of us
to come to an agreement
where both of their needs are met.
In other words,
our prerogative with these parts of ourselves
needs to be unification.
3. Fulfill your promises and keep your words.
This is one of the very easiest ways
to recognize lack of integrity
and to correct a lack of integrity.
If you notice that you're saying something and doing something else,
it's obvious, that's a lack of integrity
and a split within yourself.
So if you make a promise keep it,
and live according to your word.
4. Before you make a commitment,
you need to stop and really ask yourself:
"Can I 100% fulfill this commitment?"
If not, you are setting yourself up
to look like you have no integrity whatsoever.
But to do this you have to be willing to upset people.
So those of you who hate conflict,
I hate to break it to you,
you're at risk for a lack of integrity.
Because in a space of integrity
where you say one thing and do that thing,
you have to be able to follow through on your word.
Don't make a promise
or make a commitment,
unless you can keep it.
5. Pay attention for that feeling of internal discord,
when one aspect of you disagrees with another aspect of you.
Or when one aspect of you
has split off in a different direction, than another aspect of you.
This feeling of discord will tell you
when you're out of alignment with your own conscience.
This means you could very well be
in the act of doing or saying something that not all of you agrees with.
That feeling is telling you:
"Wait, wait, wait, pay attention. This is not quite right."
This is your golden opportunity to build integrity,
instead of press on with your current course of action.
Step 6.
Get completely honest and authentic with yourself
and then communicate that authenticity to other people.
Now for those of us that are not living in a state of authenticity,
because it's too scary to be honest with ourselves about ourselves,
or with other people about ourselves,
we slip into denial.
Denial is a complete enemy of integrity.
The inner truth is something that you're denying
because you're afraid to admit to it or you're ashamed of it.
But don't worry,
it will come out anyway in passive-aggressive ways
that will cause people to say you have no integrity.
It's even better
for you to know your authenticity
and even if it upsets people,
express it directly,
rather than to obviously look like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Step 7. Don't act impulsively.
When we are in a heightened state of reactivity,
and we're about to react in an impulsive way,
what has happened is that one of the parts of us
has hijacked our entire identity
and it's that part of us that is taking action
regardless of the impact on any other part of us.
So when people get into this heightened state of reactivity, they say:
"fine then just go screw yourself. We're gonna break up."
Then what happens?
Another part of them goes: "wwwwww wait wait!"
So we just unilaterally made a decision,
one aspect of us did,
to the detriment of other aspects of us.
We're split.
This is a lack of integrity as well.
We all tend to have a specific way
that we act in threatening situations.
And we can use this to our advantage,
because it's the way that we act in threatening situations
that usually exposes
our particular breed of lack of integrity.
Perhaps you believe honesty is right,
but when you're threatened you lie.
Perhaps you believe taking responsibility is right,
but when you're threatened you justify yourself and play the victim,
making other people "the bad guy" for everything that happened.
You need to find alignment between all aspects of yourself
and have all of them agree upon what is right,
before taking action.
8. When you feel like you have acted
out of alignment with your own conscience,
you need to admit it to yourself,
and then if you feel called to,
admit it to other people.
Especially the people who were hurt
as a result of that lack of alignment within you.
Just remember, a true apology
should never come with a justification about why you did it.
9. Work on becoming comfortable with the sensation of fear.
Integrity requires bravery.
I don't know how many of you watched the movie Braveheart,
but in the end, you know,
he's getting drawn and quartered and he still keeps his integrity
and doesn't give in, that's why he gets killed.
But all of us watched that and everybody loves that character.
Why?
Because he dies with his integrity intact.
Now what is this movie telling us and even the title of the movie?
That integrity takes incredible bravery.
Now, bravery is not about lacking fear.
In fact bravery can't exist unless there is fear.
It's doing something
with the fear you feel.
In other words, it's about being willing to be afraid
and act in a accordance with your own personal estimation
of what is right, anyway.
Acting in accordance with your own bravery, is difficult.
But I can promise you,
it is not more difficult
than living your life without integrity.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com