Integrity – Do You Like What You See In The Mirror?

Personal Integrity and Your Mirror

Personal integrity is essential to FLY (Fully Loving Yourself).  Without personal integrity, your self-esteem, self-worth, and sense of well-being are nil.  Without personal integrity, your life is pretty empty.  Personal integrity attracts others that have personal integrity.  Personal integrity is one of the most important characteristics to me.  My own personal integrity and also the integrity of those people that I have in my heart and close to me.  Integrity is important for you to like what you see when you look in the mirror.

What is Personal Integrity?

Personal integrity is like a lake with streams that feed into it.  Trust, honestly, willingness to take responsibility and honor, all together, make up personal integrity in my personal definition.  The word “Integrity” comes from the Latin adjective integer (whole, complete).  In my personal integrity definition, integrity that is made up of trust, honestly, willingness to take responsibility for a person’s actions and honor make a person whole and complete.  I’d feel very empty inside if I didn’t use my own personal integrity as my internal compass to live and navigate my every day life.  To believe in myself, it is mandatory that my “come from place” is with personal integrity.

Personal Integrity Questions – What would YOU do?

• If you gave a $20 bill for a purchase and you were given too much change back, what would you do?  Give it back or keep it?
• If you have already made a promise to meet friend but your best friend invited you to lunch and a movie, would you break your promise?
• At work, you made a mistake but you could cover yourself and blame it on someone else.  Would you take responsibility and admit your mistake or blame it on a co-worker?
• There was a meeting that impacted the department you are responsible for yet you were not included to attend the meeting?  Would you speak up or let it go?

Personal Integrity In Real Life.

What does personal integrity look like in our everyday lives?  To me, personal integrity is part of my foundation and the support structure inside.  Think of a skyscraper being built, there are rock-solid steal beams that support the foundation and building of that skyscraper.  The stronger my foundation and steel beams, the more difficult it is for me to be knocked down.  When a person lives with honesty, is trust-worthy, honor and steps up to take responsibility for their own actions or mistakes, the result is personal integrity with the benefits of high self-esteem and the ability to FLY.

Another way to live with personal integrity is to use your voice.  You were given a voice for a reason – speak up for yourself and others. Speak your own truth.  If you disagree with someone or a situation, use your voice.  Be prepared, not everyone will like it, much less appreciate it when you use your voice.  You don’t live for others, you live what is best for you.  Reinforce your personal integrity and use your voice.

Personal integrity is increased by two things:  Making promises and keeping promises.  Those promises can be made to others such as meeting a deadline at work, meeting a friend for lunch, tell a child in your life that you will pick them up at a certain time, make a compromise with your partner on an issue between the two of you, or picking up the mail for a neighbor while they are away on vacation.  When you make promises to others, you keep them by following through with what you promised you would do.  Personal integrity is to do what you say and say what you do.  We also make promises, and sometimes, keep those promises….to ourselves.  For some of us, it is more important for us to keep our promises to others than the ones we make to ourselves.  Actually, it is important (more so) to keep the promises we make to ourselves so we trust and believe in ourselves.

What You See In Your Mirror – Personal Integrity or None?

Personal integrity is being honest and trust-worthy.  Be honest even when it is hard to do; actually, especially when it is hard to do.  Be responsible and own your actions and words.  Whether it is at work with your boss or co-workers, neighbors, friends, best friends or your family, be honest.  Even if they don’t know if you’ve been dishonest, the most important person does know when you’re dishonest – that person is YOU. Personal integrity is the source of self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect, acceptance of yourself and a requirement to FLY.  Even if no one else would ever know of an action or decision you make that would not be in alignment with your own personal integrity, it doesn’t matter because YOU know.  For a full, meaningful and happy life, tune your internal morale compass to live with personal integrity.  With personal integrity, when you look in the mirror, you will love what you see inside and out!