How to Sustain Your Personal Integrity
Integrity is how we behave when no one is watching. Will we cut corners, or will we live by our values? There are compounding consequences to our self image each time we compromise our beliefs.
They say that it can take as little as two weeks to make or break a habit. It’s important to always remember that it takes a lot less time than that to annihilate a lifetime of built-up integrity. When you strive to live according to a belief system, your actions and choices are directed by this understanding every day. You won’t just go out and hit someone with your car if you value human life. Also, you probably wouldn’t decide to quit your job because you just didn’t want to work that day.
These examples might seem farfetched. Who would do a thing like that? In all likelihood, you would probably be surprised. At the times when our integrity and personal standards are put to the test, we shouldn’t choose to throw it all away. There are a series of steps leading up to leaving our principles behind. It’s necessary to keep ourselves in check in order to keep that from happening.
You’ve probably noticed from the characters in movies, that when the villain is finally captured, he almost always looks just like an average person. The Bad Guy usually tells the police that he’s really a good person, and of course, he never intended to steal a few billion dollars from his company and the public at large.
Manning our principles is one of those twenty-four hour career opportunities – one chance to succeed, and many chances to fail. Our principals are not coming under fire all the time, but only when we least expect it. Something will happen, at some point, and it could be a pivotal point in our lives. It’s like seeing the man in front of you drop his wallet as he attempts to put it in his pocket. Do you pick it up and give it back – or keep it, thinking he should have been more careful?
The defining moments are the little ones. Each little decision changes us somehow. At work, our boss may ask us to let something slide for the “greater good.” We may wrestle with the decision, but in the end, most people will usually decide to go along, just to keep the job.
With each compromising decision, a little more of our integrity is chipped away. It becomes easier to give in each time. What we don’t realize is that we no longer look at ourselves in the mirror – so to speak, and for the same reason, we seldom go against the status quo for fear of being labelled as a hypocrite. In such situations, our principles deteriorate and become almost completely fluid.
If you’ve felt that way, it means you still mourn the changes that have brought you to such a dismal point. Regaining your integrity won’t be easy, especially around those for whom you compromised your ideals. However, with the help of truly understanding and trustworthy people, your self-image can be restored – and you can take control, begin again and rebuild your life.
Alan Gillies is the CEO of Learning 2 Live, a comprehensive online Lifestyles resource which delves deeply into business and pleasure, covering a wide variety of Lifestyle subjects such as Relationships, Health, Wellbeing, Career, Travel & Coaching, and many more. Alan has considerable personal experience throughout a number of business fields including Coaching and Mentoring, Change Management and Neuro Linguistic Programming.
