THE ONLY PEOPLE WITH INTEGRITY ISSUES ARE THOSE WHO TAKE AN INTEREST IN THEIR OWN INTEGRITY
The only people with integrity issues are those who take an interest in their own integrity. People who don’t take an interest in their integrity which is 100% derived from not getting the impact of them not honoring their word actually don’t have integrity issues in the areas of life where someone else who gets the impact would.
Integrity is not about keeping your word but about honoring your word. If you’re up to huge things in life you will not always be able to keep your word but you can always honor your word. The moment you are not able to keep your word, you let the other person know about it and get the impact and then make any new commitments going forward. Of course that’s not an excuse to look for ways out. It’s when you truly can’t keep your word. The flip side is going the distance like world peace is on the line to keep your agreements meaning that sometimes you will have to be insanely unreasonable to fulfill the promise to yourself or others. Nobody HAS integrity like it’s some trait either. Someone who goes around trying to tell people all the integrity have is most likely coming from a moral space or a space of looking good. That diminishes the power of integrity.
Integrity has four impacts:
1) It creates an environment of elevated performance. When integrity is lacking in the space it’s like trying to play football with a huge giant hole in the middle of the field. Doesn’t mean you won’t be effective it will just take more effort to produce the same result. You will have results in life in spite of your lack of integrity not because of it. High performers who have shit integrity often get this confused. It’s also exhausting because you have to keep giving extra effort to score a touchdown with a huge giant hole in the middle of the field. In reality this shows up as control, manipulation, attachment, excuses, and ploughing through life. The impact is more stress, less health, less aliveness, and worse results in reality even if those results are already great.
2) It creates an impaired experience of being whole and complete.
3) It diminishes your level of being able to trust oneself.
4) It diminishes the power of your word.
Integrity has nothing to do with morality. When it degrades into a morality conversation like it is good to have integrity — it loses it’s power and it degrades into some belief system or concept about integrity.
I’m going to use a very simple example and be extreme to make a point:
Scenario: You tell someone you will arrive at your meeting at 4pm. You get into a car accident and can’t make it.
Someone who doesn’t get the impact of being out of integrity would do something like:
a) Not show up to the meeting
b) Maybe a few days later say something like “hey I got into a car accident”.
Now nobody would even question this and this would be a very reasonable thing to happen in the case of the accident.
Someone who gets the impact of being out of integrity and interested in getting their own power back would restore it as quickly as possible:
a) “Hey, I am calling you from the road. Waiting for the police to come. Got into an accident. I promised I would be at your meeting at 4pm. I will not be there at 4. The impact of me not keeping my word is now what we have to talk about gets delayed, there is an impact to your schedule for the day, and things get put off. Is there any other impact on you with me not being there?”
Then that person may say something like:
1) When would you like to reschedule for?
2) I don’t know when I can reschedule for but I will get back to you with 3. times that work for me within 48 hours from now.
Overtime, the difference between these two ways of operating in life is staggering.
