Self-Integrity

Integrity is so important. It’s living in a way that is consistent with your values, having morals and ethics, and doing what you said you were going to do,  But interestingly, integrity is usually presented in a way that has consequences that affect other people. You flake on your friend, well now your friend is upset. You cheat on your partner, now your relationship is in jeopardy. You succumb to an addiction or vice, and now others are affected by your actions or lack of action.

But let’s turn this conversation around and make it entirely about the self. What does it mean to have self-integrity?

To me this is having completely intrinsic accountability. This is waking up at 6am like you told yourself you would the previous night, but you didn’t tell anyone else. It’s knowing and abiding by your limits in different settings, even though no one else knows what your limit is. And be careful - What happens every time you violate that inner-accountability is you breach your integrity.

This has devastating effects. You stop trusting yourself, you stop believing in yourself, and therefore you stop prioritizing yourself. Every time it happens it weakens your relationship with that element in your life, and forces you to rationalize or adjust to live in a way that is more consistent with having less integrity.

But the other side of it, every time you do what you said you were going to do, you have control of yourself, you execute - You start trusting yourself more, you start believing in yourself more, and your start prioritizing yourself more.  Your choices are so important because they are the foundation of everything else, and you need to be extremely mindful when your choices interface with your integrity.