Integrity Matters
By Rev. Elizabeth Rowley,
Spiritual Director
March 1, 2019
I heard it said once that without integrity nothing works.
The dictionary defines integrity in a couple of ways. The first is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. The second is the state of being whole or undivided. The definition most relevant to this article is the latter.
Shaping your life into one of integrity develops your character. When what you say and what you do are in perfect alignment, you have congruence. The rewards of living a life of integrity, to name but a few, include increased confidence, trust, clarity, and affinity for yourself, those around you, and the world.
When you tell the truth about something, you form your words to match your experience. When you have integrity, you create your experience to match your words. You do what you said you would do when you said you would do it, and when you don’t, you clean it up and make new promises.
A person can’t be a little out of integrity. You’re either in integrity or out of integrity. Consider a boat with a hole in it in the ocean. The boat is filling up with water and slowly sinking. Whether that hole is small or large doesn’t matter. It is out of integrity.
Imagine a bicycle wheel with a missing spoke. The missing spoke creates a wobble which could lead to loss of balance and cause an accident. The bicycle wheel is out of true or out of integrity.
You can repair the hole in the boat, and correct the bicycle wheel, bringing them back into a state of wholeness or integrity. In the same manner, you can restore integrity to your life, returning to your natural state of wholeness.
If you’re someone who tends always to be late to your appointments, lunch dates, and meetings and then pretend as if nothing happened, there’s a hole in your boat.
To clean it up is to acknowledge your tardiness and create a new promise. No excuses are necessary. You can acknowledge your lateness and apologize for undervaluing the other person’s time. Let them know it won’t happen again. Then come up with a plan for yourself to stay in integrity in the future. Stick with that plan. Integrity restored.
If you pay your bills late, owe the IRS money with no plan to pay them back, or your bank account is overdrawn, you’ve got a broken spoke and are wobbling your way through life. Clean it up by acknowledging your tardiness in payments and make a new promise that works for both parties. Plan to fulfill on that promise and stick with your plan. Integrity restored.
Make a list of all areas that you are out of integrity and begin to restore it today by working your way down the list.
This is taking back the power of your word which allows you to create a life that you truly love.
And so it is.
