Integrity

Who looks to you for truth? In my line of work, people depend on me to be honest with them about my abilities to help them achieve goals, and in the confidence they have in me to maintain their privacy at all costs. As a result, it should be no secret that I have to carefully ensure that all I maintain a high level of integrity in all areas of my life in order to be consistent in this particular one.

However for some, living an honest life isn’t a priority. People come from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life where honesty may not have been prized over the day to day needs to survive and cope. Others are influenced by their parents and primary care givers to manipulate and deceive as a means to get what they want in life. And while we have all had moments where we did not display the highest level of integrity, we should strive to make it a goal to live authentically in every way. Yet when people succumb to mistruth, it is usually in word or action, and here’s how they do it:

In Word: One of the most obvious ways we can display integrity is by choosing to speak the truth in our words. Telling the truth means more than telling not telling an all-out lie. It can also mean refusing to withhold things in an effort to protect someone else’s feelings or your own interests. In our culture we have embraced the idea that what people don’t now “won’t hurt them,” or similarly that it’s ok to tell a lie if it is undergirded in the desire to offer a “sugar coated”  version of the truth. However, a funny thing happen when we lie: usually we have to continue lying in order to keep covering up the previous lie. Eventually, this can snow ball to a place that is out of our control and does damage that we cannot easily repair.

In Action: When people think of lying, they often immediately think of something someone said, or didn’t say. While it is true that an abundance of mistruth occurs as a result of false words that are spoken, there’s more than one way to tell a lie. Some of the ways we can lie with our actions include doing things that give off the impression that we have or haven’t done something we’ve otherwise communicated. For example, we can lie in action when we record false time accounts with our employers, we can lie by action when we borrow money or loans that we have no intentions of repaying, and a little closer to the heart, we can lie in action when we lead people to believe that we care more for them than we do because it serves our interests in some way. Lying in action is one of the most detrimental forms of dishonesty because once people come to terms with the amount of effort we’ve had to put into leading a double life, they are can be truly crushed by the truth of our lie.

One of the things people crave most in life is security: the feeling that they are physically and emotionally safe. People want to feel safe in their homes, in their relationships, in their business dealings with other people. However, it is nearly impossible to feel safe when it’s difficult to discern what is true what is not. Security-building truth is undergirded by consistency and stability in action and word. If you want to be a woman that people trust and respect, start by being a woman that is honest.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Before you go, share with me some of the displays of integrity, or lack thereof that have had the greatest impact on your life in the comment box below. To keep the conversation going, or to set up a coaching session email me at Lolita@NavigatingTheHeart.com