Personal Integrity
Welcome to the nineth tool in the mindset toolkit…
What is it?
Having integrity is fundamentally about being reliable, consistent, and trustworthy.
So, this tool, despite being classed as a tool, is really just a behavioural choice which when consistently made give you a quality that you can choose to define yourself by. Once incorporated in to your habits, this trait becomes a tool in that you can leverage to effect change too.
The personal aspect of the personal integrity tool is the fact that the only perception of your integrity that matters is your own. You do not need to look to others to validate your integrity, this comes without even trying. Once you truly trust yourself the battle is already won.
So how can we sum this up?
Do what you say you are going to do.
Always.
You may think; sounds great, well easier said than done!
And you would be right, it does sound great and yes, it is easier said than done. What I can say though is that the cultivation of personal integrity forms foundations for the greatest achievements in life.
To achieve something, you must first be able to visualise that achievement becoming real. To achieve your vision, you must trust in your ability to achieve it – you must have personal integrity.
The ability to trust yourself
to make manifest the vision of your mind’s eye.
So now we know what personal integrity is about, lets dive in to some i
insights for how we can cultivate this mindset.
How does it work?
Having personal integrity is all about consistently taking action in alignment with your own value system. Every action provides you with evidence to back up that you have personal integrity and the more consistent you are, the more evidence you have, so the more you will trust that you have personal integrity.
It is a positive feedback loop that starts with your awareness of a single action that demonstrates integrity and snowballs from there.
The stronger your belief in your own integrity, and the more unconstrained you will feel in creating your vision of success; the less anxious you will be in the moment of action, and the higher the probability will be that you do not think and simply act – herein lies the doorway to authentic living.
With the above in mind, I will now share some insights around of you can cultivate a bank of evidence to back up your personal integrity…
Everything Matters
Your subconscious mind is always listening…
When we choose to think about something or make a decision, we use our conscious mind to do the thinking. As I shared in the disciplined habits tool, the average human makes around 35,000 decisions a day – we cannot possibly consciously think about all the decisions!
This is where the subconscious mind comes in.
Our subconscious mind does us a favour by taking care of running the system by keeping our heart beating and remembering to breathe while also constantly making thousands of small decisions for us that influence our behaviour.
The thing with the subconscious mind though is that it cannot tell the difference between direct human experience channelled through the conscious mind and thoughts the conscious mind has. It is all simply activity within the conscious mind and gets recorded by the ever-listening unconscious mind.
Our deep seeded beliefs about ourselves and the world while can be analysed consciously, are rooted deep in the knowledge bank of our unconscious mind. This means that to truly believe something, we must consistently provide evidence to our unconscious mind to reenforce the solidity and prominence of the thing in our schemata for understanding the world.
Everything matters, from the smallest decision we make to the grandest visions we imagine. The subconscious mind is always listening and trying to validate its understanding of the world and the definition we create of who we are.
Small Wins
Start small, win big…
Now we know that everything matters, you know that even the smallest scrap of evidence to validate your personal integrity can lead to the snow ball effect.
- You said you would turn up at a certain time, do it.
- You said you would get out of bed at a certain time, do it.
- You said you would get back to someone about something, do it.
- You set a boundary with your child, enforce it, consistently.
- You decided you would brush your teeth as soon as you would wake up, do it.
- The list goes on…
A win is a win no matter how small it is. The key to building or achieving anything is to start small and build momentum.
If you feel like the goal is un achievable, the problem is not you, it is the goal.
Set the bar low enough to get some wins under your belt, then raise the bar steadily to give you appropriate challenge while still enabling you to get some wins.
Steady away…
Trust the process.
Don’t Over Commit
Do not commit to what you cannot do or control…
Throughout the mindset tool kit, I have emphasised the point of being clear with yourself about what you can and cannot control.
Ultimately, all you can ever really control are the choices you make, how you choose to feel and the behaviour that happens as a result – even this takes practice!
So be careful and be kind.
You are setting yourself up for a fall if you commit to something outside of your control and then reprimand yourself for not archiving it.
Be kind by either being realistic when you are setting your own expectations, or when you are judging your performance in pursuit of your goal.
Building trust takes much longer than losing it. So heed this warning seriously and be careful what you sign yourself up to.
Be Honest and Transparent
What it says on the tin…
“Trustworthiness comes not from certainty,
but from openness about uncertainty.
Such is the power of honesty.”
– Ramsey Bond
Personal integrity is all about trusting yourself, and honesty sits right at the heart of this.
Being honest about what you can and cannot do; being honest with yourself about what your really want to do; being honest with yourself about the reasons why you may not have done something you said you were going to.
Being transparent with yourself about the why is the most important step to allow you to make better decisions and commitments over time.
It is not about being right every time, it is about always being honest with yourself so you can learn and grow.
See the honesty above all else tool for more insights which will help you in your quest to cultivate personal integrity.
Out of Sight
When nobody is looking, do your choices change? …
Personal integrity is about you holding yourself to account and cultivating an updated personal definition of who you are. Your definition of you.
The only opinion that matters of your definition of you is your own.
When people get this wrong and seek validation from external sources, this can lead to people making different behavioural choices when they are around other people.
This would be an act of seeking other people to perceive and validate us for having integrity rather than prioritising and seeking our own confirmation that we have personal integrity.
Once we have personal integrity, other people becoming aware will come naturally. If however, we are perceived as having integrity by others, this does not mean we also have personal integrity.
The choices you make when nobody else is looking make all the difference.
Having personal integrity gives us the power to become our own leader. Being perceived as having integrity lets enables us to inspire and lead other people, but only if we can first effectively lead ourselves.
Be Kind to yourself
Don’t close the door to the bank…
Humans are the only animal that can die twice!
A bit of an extreme example, but if a zebra makes a mistake, it gets eaten by a lion. The End.
If humans make a mistake, we have a tendency to replay the event again and again in our minds and keep reliving the pain and suffering.
The way to short circuit this is through acceptance and kindness.
When attempting to build our bank of evidence to affirm our personal integrity, this will not always go smoothly and we will make mistakes. This is inevitable and natural.
When this happens, be kind to yourself and learn the lessons so you can dusty yourself off and try again.
Don’t close the door to the bank and write off your investments so far. Use the investment to enjoy the benefits of compound interest and keep topping up your stash a little at a time.
Benefits and Practical Applications
Personal integrity is a behavioural choice which can build to be a habit and then elevate to become a value that you define yourself by.
Personal integrity is the foundation of self-trust, self-respect, self-esteem and self-worth.
Once you have cultivated this for yourself, you can then extend this love out in to the world to affect authentic change.
Personal integrity is a real separator in life. Yes, we all need to live socially and collaborate with other humans, but once you have personal integrity you will no longer needs external validation to build your confidence. You will have all the power you need right in your hands.
To live the live you want to live,
You must first have the faith in yourself to manifest that vision,
You then must trust in your ability to achieve it.
Having confidence that you will do what you say,
Personal integrity becomes your ladder to the future.
Enjoy, for now.