integrity and truth

Integrity is a commitment to personal excellence. Using your unique talents to improve your life, and the lives of others.. It means doing everything with an absolute commitment to excellence and success. If you can live your life with this level of passion and excellence, you will be a success.

The Webster's New World Dictionary defines "integrity" as "the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness. . ." and "the quality of being of sound moral principal; uprightness, honest and sincerity."

Honesty

The thing that is most frightening to me about a lie is the intense need of the liar to convince others of their truthfulness. Lies seem to take on a life of their own and soon the lie becomes so real to the person uttering it that they ultimately seem to forget its falseness. The ego is what needs, so desperately, to be believed -- and for others to be wrong. Living with integrity means letting go of the need to prove your "rightness" to the detriment of others -- and to understand, as Priscilla Hauser says, that there are "many ways of right".

A truthful person does not have a need to prove their own veracity at any cost. Honesty imparts peace. To live with integrity, we must understand that other people will make mistakes. If you try to punish, yourself or others, you take your eye off what is important. It is not our place to punish or bring retribution. We cannot control the actions of others, but we can control our own actions, and reactions.

Integrity demands that you not only be truthful with others, it demands that you be truthful with yourself. We often lie to ourselves for our own peace of mind. We don't live up to our commitments to ourselves (I'm going to start that diet tomorrow, I'm going to save $10.00 a month. . .) or look at ourselves with clarity. It may be easier, in the short term, to not face an unpleasant truth, but the truth catches up with us.

Living with integrity does *not* require perfection. Everyone is going to come up short of their goals from time to time. You will get angry, you will not meet your commitments, you will avoid. Integrity does not mean not making mistakes, it means responding to those mistakes in a positive way.

Reacting

We cannot control what others do or say, but we can control our reaction to those situations. Ultimately in your life you will face someone who has lied about you. You have to understand that some people will make up their mind about you, and do not want to truth to cloud their judgment. Your responsibility is not to change their mind. It is to continue to live your life with truth and integrity.

People who lie, or create turmoil because they love the drama it brings into their lives, usually don't want to hear the truth. Situations are rarely black and white. Unfortunately, people often make up their minds about a situation based upon what they've been told third or forth-hand.

In Your Heart's Desire: Instructions for Creating the Life You Really Want, author Sonia Choquette writes, ". . .I also noticed a tendency on the part of certain people to fan the flames of negativity, gossiping like clucking chickens over what they had heard as if it were true, enjoying the ensuing upset and drama it stirred up. These were usually people who had no real sense of life and love, so they created images to tear down that sense in others.

Be on guard for this. Don't let gossip be the basis of your reality. Any time you hear someone say "I heard. . ." take it as your cue to walk away."

This is a difficult concept because we all want to be loved and accepted. It hurts to know that there are people out there that don't think well of you. Don't be tempted to broadcast your "side of the story" to people who are not involved. That is easy to do because you want *someone* to believe you. Embarking on such a campaign will rarely accomplish anything positive for you. It merely spreads the gossip that is harming you and involves more people into the problem.

I love the adage that says "never defend yourself, your enemies won't believe you and your friends don't need to hear it." Your focus needs to be on your life and what you are doing, not on what others say or think. If they are talking about you it is because they are not on the right track with their lives, and that has nothing to do with you. You can't control that. What you can control is your reaction. You can be angry and strike out, or you can ignore it, keep your eye on what you are trying to accomplish, and then when the opportunity presents itself to talk to the people actually involved - take it. Discuss the situation with them, be ready to hear, and understand that you may never make them see the situation as you see it.

Trust

You have two choices, you can trust no one and assume that people are liars or out only for themselves or out to cheat you -- or you can risk trusting others with the knowledge that sometimes you will be wrong. I choose the later. I have been wrong, but my instinct is developing all the time.

Lack of trust is a lot of work. You must put up big walls and guard them all the time. You must distrust others until they prove themselves worthy of trust -- and then you still need to watch them! Trusting is much easier. You assume that everyone is trustworthy until their actions prove them otherwise. That is not to say that you do not protect yourself, or listen to your instinct about others. If you live your life with integrity, you assume and expect that others will do the same.

People, and life, tends to live up to your expectations of them. So try expecting the best -- from both.

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