Integrity On Your Terms

 Greetings, my friends, and welcome to episode three of season three of A Season of Me Stories. This is the episode I'm calling integrity on your terms. I am excited to be back here talking once again about one of those things that keeps popping up in day to day conversations that I'm having. And we've talked about this before. It is my belief that when you start to notice something repetitive in your world, repetitive in your conversations, in your experiences, that's a nudge. To dig a little deeper, look into that, be reminded about what you believe about that thing. And for me, over the past month, in my conversations, in my coaching conversations, we have just encountered several opportunities to ask the question, what can you do to stay in your own integrity in this situation? And I've always said that integrity is one of my highest values.
 
And so as we start to talk about this, I first of all, just want to encourage you. Have you ever sat down and made a list of the values that are super important to you as a person? I highly encourage you to do it, because once you do that, you start to notice the places where those things come up and where you want to maybe delve a little deeper or invest a little research or a little study or something in. And for me, that's always integrity has been one of those. And as I've been having coaching conversations over the past month, particularly with people who are trying to discern the answer on a decision, some fairly major life decisions, or are discerning about how to have a hard conversation, I found myself repeatedly saying, where's your integrity in this? What do you need to do to stand in your own integrity? And I think it's really important to kind of focus a little bit on that word in your own integrity. Part of having integrity is understanding what you value, what you stand for, what's important to you. And so that kind of then points back to the title that I said, integrity on your terms. Integrity is one of those values that we have to define for ourselves. And so I started out with just like, what's the dictionary definition? What happens if you google define integrity? And integrity came up with two separate definitions that I think are kind of interesting because the first one is that integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
 
And I think that sounds like integrity to all of us. And the second one is that it's a state of being whole, solid, undivided, right? So we use integrity when we talk about the integrity of a structure, like the integrity of a building. Can it withstand the environment that it's in? Can it stay solid? And I think both of those definitions actually work when we talk about what integrity is for us. But when you talk about something as kind of open ended, to a certain extent as moral principles. Then you start to talk about what do you define as your moral principles? What are moral principles to you? As I was kind of thinking about all this, I was also thinking about a workshop that I just had. I called it time on your terms. And I was talking with the people who came to this workshop about how you can't really waste time unless you choose to waste time. And kind of what I meant by that is, it's not a matter of what you're doing with your time, but it's a matter of what you intend to do with your time.
 
So this whole thing came up with my daughter and I one day when she came home from something, and, you know, I wasted a bunch of time today. I spent too much time on Netflix, and I didn't get what I wanted to do done. And she said to me, Well, mom, if you needed some downtime, if you needed some rest, it's not wasted time. She's like, don't beat yourself up about wasted time just because you rested. And I found myself thinking about that because I hadn't actually rested, because the whole time that I was distracting myself with Netflix, I wasn't fully present and enjoying the rest. I was thinking about the things that I had wanted to get accomplished. And so it's true that watching Netflix wasn't a waste of time. It wouldn't have been a waste of time if I had intended to do that, but it was a waste of time because I hadn't.
 
And I therefore hadn't gotten the rest that I might have gotten out of using that time. And so that sort of tied back to me, to this idea of integrity, right? Making integrity about our choices. And if you think that whole workshop sounds interesting, I will be running it again later in August. So make sure that you are connected to me on my newsletter or on my social media. So you hear about when we're going to redo that workshop. But anyway, all of that made me go back to my bookshelf. We've talked about this before that if I am dealing with something, I often buy a book to address this topic. And I have a book called Integrity, and I knew I had purchased it years ago, went and I dug it out.
 
And this is a book by Dr. Henry Cloud. Some of you may know him as The Boundaries Guy, published back in 2006, and it's called Integrity the Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality. And this book really focuses on business, but there are six sort of principles that I think fit our conversation about what integrity means, what integrity means to me. And then I think what's really important is what integrity means to you in your relationship with yourself. And so the six characteristics and again, this is coming from a business perspective, people who had integrity were able to successfully gain the trust of the people they were leading and capture their full hearts and followings. That's a solid definition of connecting with your people, gaining trust. And I would argue you also need to have trust in yourself when you're having integrity, right? So when you need to make a decision or you need to have a hard conversation, starting with the place of already having established sort of trust and connection with the people around you having a team in place, whether it's your friends, your family, your coworkers.
 
Knowing that you have some people around you that support you in your decisions and understand your heart is an important first step. The second point that he brings out is to see all the realities that are right in front of them. We all have blind spots. Sometimes those blind spots are about ourselves, sometimes they are historic. Being aware and being honest with ourselves about what those are and kind of seeking advice and making sure we're being realistic about the things we are asking not only of others, but also of ourselves, right? And so I go back to some of the conversations that we've had about setting goals. And when you're beating yourself up, is it for something that you realistically could have done better? Or did you really need to just admit that this wasn't the right time for that or you asked yourself for more than you had to offer? The third point he talks about is that people with integrity work in a way that produces outcomes. And again, I go back to for our purposes, for this Season of you, that we are talking about being clear on what the outcomes that you want are and then doing the things that will point to those outcomes are how you have integrity and how you have integrity with yourself. Like I said before, committing to a season of Me is about saying for this little gap of time, the priority for me is going to be this thing.
 
Whether it is writing your book or getting healthier or whatever it is you are choosing to launch or put out into the world. Deciding that it can be a priority for a certain time is dealing with integrity. The fourth point that he said is dealing with people obstacles, failures, losses, being, again, realistic and honest about them. And I go back to some of these conversations that I've been having in coaching and asking the clients that are facing some of these hard decisions, what does it look like for you to stand in integrity on the other side of this conversation? Right? And part of that is being honest about the thoughts that are coming to you about these people, about the motivations that they have and deciding how best to approach sort of the negative, the influences in the situation that may or may not be to your benefit and deciding what does it look like for you on the other side to stand in your own integrity once that decision has been made, once that conversation has been had, what does it look like for you to feel like you are standing in integrity? The fifth one is focusing on growth and again, growth for yourself and growth for the people around you. Does this decision that you're making or does this choice you need to pursue lead everyone to a better place? And does it lead you to a better place? Does it leave you closer to that thing that you believe you are called to do? And if it does, then how do you have any option but to pursue it but to act on it? And that kind of like leads up to the last point, which is that leaders with integrity transcend their own interests and give themselves to a larger purpose. And so part of what I want to focus on in that is in this Season of Me, if you are feeling called to something and you are not acting on that call, then you're missing out on all the benefits for yourself. But you also are denying the people that you are called to interact with, the people that you are called to serve the opportunity to have that experience. And so to stand in integrity in a Season of Me is to trust yourself, to know what the next right thing is, to have the courage to kind of step out in that definition.
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​And then also, just to be clear on what that definition is, in this current climate that we live in, sometimes it's a little bit hard to tell what are the principles that matter to you, what are the values that matter to you, how are you being called into the world? And where are you going to make the biggest difference? And sometimes the places that you hear you need to go aren't easy. Sometimes you will disappoint some people because you're choosing a path that's different than they might have envisioned for you. Sometimes you are having to confront things that one person looks at and says is the reality and you look at it differently. But unless you can articulate that, you risk your own integrity in the process. Right? So kind of as we look forward to this next stress. As you are trying to decide what a season of me looks like for you, the very first thing you need to do is decide what your values are, what matters most to you, for what you are going to put out in the world. What is integrity on your terms? And then start to look at the times that you question that, like the times that you are wondering if a decision, if an action actually is right for you, thinking about what you have set as a bar for yourself in your own values before you take action, but also questioning sometimes where that hesitancy comes from, right? Is your hesitancy coming from a rule or a norm that you want to uphold? Is it people pleasing voices coming into the back of your head that says you're supposed to keep everybody happy, which honestly, you can't do and stay in integrity? Is it some of those overthinking voices coming into your head that are asking more you to consider more than you actually need to to make the decisions? What does it look like to be clear about what integrity means to you on your terms? And I encourage you to spend a little time with this because if you do, it will help you make those decisions. It'll help you have those hard conversations, because once you know what you stand for, it is much easier to keep yourself intact.
 
When the things that come at you that make it hard to feel whole, to feel like you are in your integrity, knowing how you want to respond to them and sort of being prepared for that is a great place to start now. It's not always going to be things that you can control. I don't want to minimize the challenges that some of you face in this world. We all have different levels of privilege and different levels of flexibility to make some of these choices. Sometimes the things that are happening to us and around us are out of our control. So I don't want to imply that you will always have the outcomes you want, but you can always choose to stand in your own integrity, which is going back to integrity on your terms. What's that mean for you? And have you really thought about what you value in this world? And as you look at a season of you and as you think about that calling that's been placed on your heart, what does it look like to stand in integrity regarding that next right step for you? As always, I look forward to connecting you and hearing like, what has this conversation brought up in you? What are you looking forward to as you evaluate for yourself? What are your core values and what does it mean? What is on your terms? I look forward to talking to you.
 
Next week, we will go back to our interview series with meeting another person who has launched a business out in the world. I'm excited to introduce you to her. Bye.