Exploring Integrity

Integrity is Not For Sissies

2010-01-26T13:41:00.000-08:00

If you were going to make a list of outstanding examples of people of integrity, who would you put on the list? My top people would be Gandhi, Lincoln, and Socrates. Many people would add Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus.

Besides being moral exemplars, what else do they have in common? They were all assassinated, executed, or forced to kill themselves.

The point of this grim post is that integrity is not for sissies. If you strive for integrity, some people will really not like it. Integrity is not a way to become popular.

On the other hand, other people of integrity will be strongly attracted to your integrity, so it's not a road to unpopularity either. All five of the moral exemplars above had lots of popular support. But they didn't win over everyone and didn't even try. They had enemies, and that is inevitable when you live with integrity. Some people won't like it.

One of the most ugly and repugnant things about politics is that politicians are trying to win over everyone and offend nobody. And that cannot be done with integrity.

When you feel a conflict between living with integrity and living a frictionless life, or when you are motivated by your own integrity to do something and someone finds it wrong or offensive, it's a good idea to remind yourself of this: You're not alone and you're in good company. Remember that.

Unsure Which Action Has The Most Integrity?

2008-08-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

When you don't know what to do to keep your integrity, simply ask yourself, "Well, what is true for me right now?" Your answer will lead you to the right decision.

This is an idea I got from Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his essay, Self-Reliance, he wrote:

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us enter into a state of war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth.

I have found that simply speaking the truth, at least to myself for the moment, can clarify my situation.

For example, let's say my wife asks me whether I want to go work out or not. I could just weigh the different possibilities and make a decision and say it, even if I am actually and truly undecided.

Another alternative to inventing a decision (just to decide something) is to speak the truth. I could ask myself, "What is true for me right now?"

And if I said it out loud, it might sound like this, "Well, I want to work out, but I'm hungry and I don't like working out when I'm hungry. But I think if we eat something, it'll be too late to go workout."

That's the whole truth. And after saying it, or just answering the question to myself, I often find a solution. If I'm talking to my wife, she'll sometimes see an obvious solution: "Why don't we have a quick snack now and then go work out?"

When you're at any integrity crossroads, no matter how small, you can un-jam yourself by asking, "What is true for me right now?" Try it.

The Two Commandments of George Carlin

2008-07-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

The video below is from a tribute to the late, great George Carlin. He takes Moses' ten commandments and condenses them down to two, which is funny, but he also ends up with two great commandments for exploring integrity. Check it out:

Be honest and faithful. For enjoying a good life, you can't find a better foundation than these two commandments.

Integrity and Cognitive Distortions

2008-07-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

Earlier I talked about the work of Lewis Andrews. He makes a really good case for the proposition that many (if not most) mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are caused by a lack of integrity. When people come to him for therapy with some complaint like guilt or anger issues, the first thing he looks for is unethical behavior. And when the client's integrity has been restored, the original "presenting problem" vanishes.

Andrews writes about studies that support his idea. But I have something to add to the discussion. Researchers in cognitive-behavioral therapy have discovered that people make certain kinds of errors in their thinking (known as cognitive distortions) such as overgeneralizing and personalizing.

And the researchers have found that when those habits of thinking are changed, mental health is often the result. The depression disappears. The panic attacks stop.

In other words, when the clients' thinking more closely matches reality, they gain mental health. And certainly we must consider this an aspect of integrity. To describe or explain reality accurately is an act of integrity. To describe or explain reality falsely is a breach of integrity, even if the explanation is only inside your head.

This would explain the remarkable results of any therapy that restores the client's integrity. Dishonesty with yourself (that is, cognitive distortions) causes depression and anxiety. Dishonesty with yourself causes problems dealing with relationships. It causes unnecessary anger and impulse control. And so on.

Honesty with yourself is an important first step in exploring integrity, and it's one important way increasing your integrity makes you happier.

How To Stop The Endless Arguments

2008-05-27T00:55:00.001-07:00

I've just had a monumental, earthshaking, tremendously liberating insight. But before I tell you about it, let me give you a little background. I'm married and about a year and a half ago I resolved, come hell or high water, to make our sex life work. It has never worked. (Well, the actual sex worked just great, but I've never been sexually aggressive and she has really missed that and encouraged me to come on to her and initiate sex, and for one reason or another, I've always managed to not do it well or right or at all.)

I've had insight after insight about this and learned a lot. And the more I've focused on it, the more difficult it has become. Except sometimes it has worked. And I never knew until tonight what was going on. Fear was the hidden failure-causer.

I learned awhile back that the best way to come on to her is not with some song and dance or being suave or whatever, but simply to connect. But then I learned that I can't connect without being honest and open. I could do all the "right things" but if it wasn't true for me at that moment, if I was pretending in the slightest or pushing myself to do something, or just trying to "do the right thing" instead of genuinely feeling it, she could tell and it turned her off.

And every time that happened, my inner panic rose to a new level of intensity. And as time has ticked on, I've panicked more and more, felt more and more intense, more determined, more desperate, and of course those underlying feelings made everything I did a complete turn-off to her. Which of course made me try even harder and with more desperation.

My insight tonight began with the thought, "I'm living in fear." My panic is mostly because I'm afraid we'll divorce if I don't get my shit together soon. But that's not my only fear. I'm afraid to be honest, I'm afraid of upsets, I'm afraid of my own anger, I'm afraid to be myself, I'm afraid of getting my feelings hurt, I'm afraid of time running out, I'm afraid to be aggressive, and I'm afraid of failure. Good God, man! I was living in fear!

Now, of course, for the most part my fear didn't consist of a pounding heart and shortness of breath. I responded to the smallest hint of fear by getting into action. I was, in a sense, running from my own fear. I would get into action in order to avoid feeling afraid.

I've been afraid of my own fear. And everything my wife has done in response to my desperate actions has only increased my fear. My panicky attempts to connect with her, even if I'm doing all the right things, don't feel right to her, and she turns away from them and rejects me. This has only served to increase my urgency about making it work, which only turned her off even more, which increased my intensity even more, etc.

All the while, she occasionally would intensely try to get it through my thick skull that we've been married all these years and I still can't get it together, and time is running out, and she can't take much more of this, and so on. Naturally, this increased my commitment to make something happen right away as soon as possible and that meant more fear-driven, intense action which only turned her off.

It's exhausting me just writing about it.

The thing I was most afraid of was divorce and failure. Our life as we know it would be over. Our dreams for the future would come to an ignominious end. It would be so sad. So tragic. This great love would dissolve. We would never be the same. We would live our lives out in misery. That's the fear that has hung over my head for a long time, causing me greater and greater panic as I felt time running out on us.

But then I thought, "What if we were doomed?" I mean what if we really were doomed? What if there was nothing I could do about it and we were moving inexorably toward divorce?

I was watching the DVD Band of Brothers and in the movie, one soldier was paralyzed by fear. His name was Blithe, and he was torturing himself with his own fear, unable to function, worried about his own sanity. One of his fellow soldiers, a man who had already proven himself fearless in battle, told Blithe the only reason he was afraid is that he thought he was going to live. Basically, he said, if you can come to grips with the fact that you're already dead, there is nothing to be afraid of.

So I was asking myself, "What if we really were truly doomed?" I didn't want to face it. I didn't want to think about it. But I made myself do it. I imagined what might happen. I tried to imagine the worst that could happen. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized it really wouldn't be that bad. It would be bad, but it wouldn't be that bad. We would survive. We would move on. And in the end, we'd both find some measure of happiness, I'm sure of it. It would all turn out all right in the end. And this was the worst that would happen if my fears were realized.

All of a sudden a great weight lifted from me. I felt free of the fear.

Now earlier tonight, my wife had told me with venom and malice in her voice that she'd had enough of me, didn't want to have anything to do with me, etc., and I had tried twice to reconcile us and it hadn't worked. It made her even more mad. I was trying to reconcile out of fear.

But after becoming free of the fear, I talked to her and the whole upsetting argument seemed to disappear. It just wasn't there any more. Fear was the key.

Relieving myself of the fear was the key I've been looking for.

Yes, connection is important. Yes, honesty is vital. But none of that can work if I'm living in fear. The fear constantly pushes us into a downward spiral. It's like a slow-motion panic attack.

I don't know if this insight will stick. I don't know if my fear will remain gone. But I'm not afraid of that either. I know what to do. I will face the worst and accept it fully. And in that freedom, I will be able to function so well the worst probably need not happen. But if it does, I'll be fine with it.

Nothing But The Truth

2008-05-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

I wonder if it would be possible to go an entire day only speaking the honest truth. I don't mean simply not lying. But for example, I might normally ask, "Would you like to watch a movie?" But to be completely honest, I would say, "I want to watch a movie. I would like it if you joined me."

Another example: Let's say someone says something not funny but it seems expected that I should laugh. Can I restrain myself from pretending it was funny?

Is it possible to truly be honest? Maybe I should try it as an exercise tomorrow. And maybe I should just keep that up for the rest of my life. No, that seems too hard to even think about. But maybe I should try it tomorrow.

(Ten minutes later...)

I just tried it and it was difficult. And it didn't really turn out well. It didn't turn out badly but I guess I was expecting some kind of magical positive result. Now that I think about it, that's probably unrealistic. Integrity doesn't guarantee anything except integrity.

In Self-Reliance, Emerson gives a practical suggestion. He talks about an ideal human who is honest and true to his deepest desires and does whatever "inly rejoices" him and then Emerson basically acknowledges that it would be very hard to be that honest. But, he says, you can begin by speaking the truth.

And the more I pay attention to how I act and what I say, the more subtle forms of dishonesty I uncover. And it occurred to me that if I just concentrated on that one aspect of integrity — the discipline to tell nothing but the truth — I might go a long way toward truly living with integrity. And it is a simple enough focus and a concrete enough task to pay attention to and know if I am succeeding or not.

So that's what I'm going to try. And I'll give you reports on my adventures. If you'd like to join me in this, let's start today. Write in and let me know what happens, either as an email or as a comment on this post. Good luck to both of us.

The Source of the Trouble

2008-05-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier tonight, my wife asked me if I want to have a drink with her. We've been fighting a lot lately and this seemed like a friendly invitation, so I took her up on it. And then later, although it was late, she said let's watch a movie, and I went along with it.

Now we are fighting again. And I was sitting here a few minutes ago thinking, "I should just stop drinking alcohol. Maybe I'll go for a week without it and see if we fight less. Or maybe I'll just make it a rule to stop watching movies."

And then it occurred to me that I was not honest at either of those junctures. I was trying to please her, bond with her, or bring us closer together. But one of these days I really must get it through my head that dishonesty never seems to help in the long run.

An honest response would have been, "No, I don't really want a drink. But I'll make you one if you like." An honest response would have been, "I think it's too late to start a movie. Let's do it tomorrow."

In other words, I think our troubles are not from drinking or watching movies, because sometimes those are perfectly fun things to do that don't cause any problems. But one thing that seems guaranteed to cause a problem one way or another is not being honest.

How Well Can You Read People?

2008-05-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

I can read faces very well. Most people have that opinion of themselves, but I've actually had it tested, and I score very high. It is a blessing, but believe it or not, it is also a curse. I was shy at a young age, and I realize now it was because I was good at reading emotions on people's faces, but not very good at knowing what to do (I was socially incompetent). This made me feel uncomfortable around people.

But nowadays I'm not shy. And I am even better at reading people than I used to be. Especially my wife. But here it has become a curse as well. She is prone to depression and anger, especially triggered by my lack of integrity. I can read her emotions very well, and I then used to simply respond to them.

For example, if I could see she felt angry at me for not helping us make enough progress on our business, I would get into action and try to make sure we made lots of progress so she would feel happier.

There is something seriously wrong with this approach and it has to do with integrity. To begin with, I am not 100 percent accurate at reading emotions. So my first mistake was to assume I was correct without verifying it. And there are two bad consequences to that mistake: When I was wrong I was responding to a mistaken emotion, and more importantly, she didn't know she had been understood.

I have learned that her negative emotions usually disappear when she feels heard. She has said what she needs to say and she knows I really got it. When she showed emotion and I responded to it without asking her about it, she didn't feel heard. In fact, she felt neglected, unloved, uncared about, and all of this even if I was spending all my time and effort responding to what I thought she needed.

So if you have a lot of confidence in your ability to read people, consider carefully what you do with your ability.

When you confirm your perceptions by asking, you give the other person a chance to correct you if you're wrong. That means you will have a better grasp of the truth, and that is an important element of integrity.

And when the person realizes you understand her, she feels heard and cared for, and that is a great kindness you can give to someone you love.

Not Something To Learn

2008-05-24T23:57:00.000-07:00

I learned something about integrity today. Namely, that integrity is not something to learn. As you may have noticed, I haven't written anything on this blog for some time now. Why? Because I had learned about integrity already. I got it. I understood it. I was living with integrity, and I moved on to learning about other subjects.

And what happened? My life slowly fell apart.

And in my desperation to hold things together and make progress and improve things, I did pretty much everything except explore integrity. I tried harder and harder and with more and more panic and intensity to do things to salvage my failing life. For example, I tried to be a better leader, learning about leadership. I have been reading books about leadership, listening to audiobooks on leadership, and trying hard to practice leadership and do things "right." I've been really trying hard to do things I think I should do and do them in the way I think I should do them. And it didn't work. And so I just tried harder.

My intentions were good. And I would, in fact, benefit from learning something about leadership. But integrity is primary. Integrity is a prerequisite for a life that works. Integrity is not one thing among many. It is the main thing. And as Stephen Covey said, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." That's cute and clever, but it's also dead-on.

The main thing is integrity. And you must keep it as the main thing. You don't just learn integrity and then go on with your life. It is less like something you learn and more like exercise. You have to keep your fitness. You have to keep working at it, keep maintaining it, keep putting out effort on it, keep up with it. You don't read a book on exercise and then move on to other subjects. No. You have to actually exercise. Regularly. For the rest of your life. And if you do that, you will be rewarded for your effort.

And probably, just like exercise, you have to keep trying to improve your integrity (rather than merely trying to maintain it). Working to improve it might just keep it in good condition.

Integrity is something you don't ever leave behind. It's not something you "move on" from. Exploring integrity is not a phase. It is a lifetime commitment. And if you make it so, you will be rewarded by it every day of your life.

What "Should" Has to Do With Integrity

2008-03-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Integrity sometimes entails doing what you should do rather than what you want to do. For example, you want to eat cheesecake, but you know you should eat your greens, so you have salad. Or you want to avoid filing your income tax statement, but you suck it up and do what you should rather than what you want.

But sometimes integrity entails doing what you really want to do rather than what you think you "should" do. For example, you think you should be polite to everyone, but now you have someone who keeps asking you out for a date and really bothering you, and the only way to stop this is to be honest, which is really what you wanted to do in the first place, but you feel you "shouldn't" hurt people's feelings.

Or maybe you really want to be a rock star, but you feel you should get a good education and a good career, so you're going to school to be an accountant, but you hate it. If you are single and nobody is counting on your for support, integrity would probably entail quitting school and playing music, or going to a music school.

There seems to be two aspects of integrity. One is doing the right thing. The other is freedom of self-expression.

Self-Centered Versus Self-Reliant

2008-03-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

In his book, Character Is Destiny, Russell Gough says the first place to start, once you have decided to improve your character, is to honestly evaluate your faults. Where are you weak? Where is your character faulty? What is your biggest weakness?

One of my faults is that I'm self-centered. I think about my own goals a lot and I don't think about anyone else's very much. Not even my wife's. And so in our 24 years together, my goals have thrived and hers have stood withering from neglect, because she is NOT self-centered. She has been very supportive of my goals. So WE have worked on my goals, and not only have I not supported her goals much, I have selfishly taken her support for mine.

And then it occurred to me, "But I'm not selfish." And I honestly am not. In circumstances calling for fairness, I am very fair (except, now that I think about it, the obvious unfairness of what I just told you about supporting each others' goals). In other ways, however, I am not only fair with her, I am generous.

But selfishness is different than self-centeredness.

In a way, I have deliberately cultivated a kind of self-centeredness. I decided a long time ago to pursue my interests, to follow my interests, and to refuse to read or pursue something merely because I felt I "should."

And in many ways, this policy has kept my interests alive. I always read what I'm interested in, so I have been a perpetual learner, enthusiastically reading because I'm not trying to make myself read something I'm not fascinated by. And I write about what I'm interested in writing about and really feel genuinely motivated to write about (rather than writing to please my audience or writing what I think would sell). This seems to me very much the sort of self-reliance Emerson wrote about.

I was thinking that I want to be less self-centered and more other-centered, but then I thought, "Wait a minute. This is going in the opposite direction as self-reliance." As I said in an earlier post, I have a tendency to try to manage others' impression of me, to be "other-centered" in the sense that rather than being self-reliant and making decisions based on what I think is right and good, I seem overly influenced by what others will think. And I want to stop that. I want to rely more on what I think.

And now here I am thinking I need to be LESS self-centered and more other-centered, but maybe it's just a problem with language here. Maybe we don't have enough linguistic distinctions because the two are definitely different. The other-centeredness I want to cultivate with my wife is a partner-oriented concern for her goals, for helping her achieve her goals because she's my wife and partner and friend.

The kind of other-centeredness I'm trying to get rid of is really another form of self-centeredness. In other words, I am busy trying to manage others' impressions of me, why? Because I want them to think I'm a good person. So I still say self-centeredness is a weakness that I want to curb, and self-reliance is a virtue I would like to strengthen.

The Emphatic Trifles of the World

2008-03-07T15:53:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, Self-Reliance, is this one:

"At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles."

Importune means "to disturb with urgent or insistent or repeated requests."

I love that phrase, "emphatic trifles." The importuning never seems to stop. You want to get on with your work, with the purpose of your life, but the world keeps interrupting you with its urgent but (as far as your own purposes are concerned) unimportant requests.

Emerson gives an answer to the problem. The whole passage goes like this:

"At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say, 'Come out unto us,' — Do not spoil thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting appearances but let in the light of thy law on their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act."

In other words, I am cooperating with the world when it importunes me. I collaborate. I give in to those repeated requests for my attention, and then I feel put upon by them.

There's something wrong there. A lie is being told. Either I should fully choose the interruption, or I should not allow it. But it is false (and therefore destined to produce unsolvable problems) if I willingly allow a friend, client, child, desire, or whatever to disturb me and then bemoan the fact that I'm not able to fulfill my own purposes.

Choose. And then stand by your choice. That is a way to keep your integrity when the world importunes you with emphatic trifles.

Another interesting phrase in that longer passage is, "let in the light of thy law on their confusion." Emerson is talking about your own law, the law of your being. As he says elsewhere in Self-Reliance, "High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others," and Emerson also points out that this is not simply "doing what feels good." Being a law unto yourself takes a lot of self-discipline. It is difficult to follow what your own conscience dictates.

He's talking about integrity. He's saying, be yourself and do what you really want, make the effort to "keep thy state," to be who you are, to keep your integrity, and your own shining self-reliance will help them clear their own minds and consciences. Your example of integrity will shed light for them on their own confusion.

This is ultimately the way to free yourself from the tyranny of the emphatic trifles of the world. Keep thy state. Do your thing, no matter how insistently the world knocks on your door and wants you to do somebody else's thing. Follow your own path and stay true to yourself. Let in the light of thy law on their confusion.

Allowing People To See Right Through You

2008-03-05T00:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I was reading an interview with Susan Campbell. She said something about "transparency" that I thought was interesting. The interview was about dating and being honestly yourself, even on a first date. She listed ten "truth skills" for people to practice and one of them was to "be transparent."

The interviewer asked her what she meant by that. Campbell's answer was pretty good:

When I express anger or hurt “in the interest of transparency,” this means I am doing so with the intent to reveal myself, not with the intent to change you or make you feel bad or wrong. As long as I am “relating,” instead of “controlling,” people will tend to trust me more because they can sense that I’m not running a hidden agenda. They feel safer around me.

I think people can sense your intention when you speak. So speaking truthfully with the intention of simply being transparent would probably be perceived differently than the same truth said with the intention to make the listener feel guilty (or whatever). It's the same truth. But with a different feel entirely.

I've got to try this.

I think this is what makes my wife so unusual when she talks to people. If she feels mixed emotions about something, for example, she doesn't try to decide which one she "really" feels or reject one of the feelings because it is unacceptable, or have some sort of internal struggle. She'll just be transparent. She'll say, "I feel this way, but I also feel that way." She says it just straight out, without adding anything extra. She says just the truth, but the whole truth, as if her only intention is for the other person to know exactly what's going on with her.

It is so unusual to be spoken to this way. It's kind of unnerving sometimes, but it also draws me closer to her, while at the same time increasing my respect for her. I've really got to try this. At the first opportunity I can, I want to be honest "in the interest of transparency."

An Honesty Game

2008-03-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

Last night my wife and I played a game called Getting Real. It was fun, and even though we know each other very well, we still learned something about each other. The game is made up of four stacks of cards, each card with a question you read aloud and then answer. Plus there is a stack of blank cards so you can have a deck of your own questions.

Susan Campbell, the woman who designed the game, is the author of several books that focus on honesty in relationships.

The decks of cards are in four categories. Here are the categories and a couple sample questions from each:

Get Acquainted

"What do your parents want you to be (or be like)?"

"What is your favorite way to spend a weekend?"

Get Personal

"What do you wish for? Do you have any fears regarding this?"

"What is one thing you have done that you now regret? If you knew then what you know now, what would you do differently?"

Get Down

"If you were to die today, what would you be leaving unfinished?"

"What is your most outstanding accomplishment?"

Get Present

"Go around the room and say one thing you notice about each person."

"Tell one person here something you are secretly curious about him/her."

The instruction book includes several suggested ways of playing games with these cards, but the real heart of the game is the way the questions help you reveal the truth about yourself.

It is an integrity-building game.

You reveal yourself to others, which builds closeness, and answering the questions can make you reveal yourself to yourself as well, which is always good for integrity. It's a good game, a useful tool, and I recommend it.

You Think YOU'VE Got Problems!

2008-03-04T01:03:00.000-08:00

Three Years Among the Comanches is an amazing book. I was just reading it tonight. The story is a first-hand account, published in 1859 by Nelson Lee, who was captured by the Comanches on his way from Texas to California.

The part I read tonight was how two of his companions died. Most of the people he was traveling with were killed on the spot, but four were taken prisoner (Lee and three other men). One day, all four of the prisoners were tied to poles, facing each other. Two prisoners were side by side, and Lee and another prisoner were tied up facing the first two, who were then slowly tortured for two hours.

It was too painful to watch their friends suffering like that, so Lee and the other prisoner-witness tried to look away, but the Comanches forced them to watch as one by one, warriors came up to the two tortured prisoners to slash them with an arrowhead or take a small piece of their scalp. They sliced deep enough to bleed but not enough to kill the prisoners. One warrior after another came up and sliced in a different place. The prisoners screamed, moaned, begged, and bled for two hours. Finally they were put out of their misery with a hatchet through the head.

As I was reading this horrible, graphic account by someone who witnessed it first-hand, I was struck by the pettiness of my own problems. I said out loud, "I think I have problems!" The comparison made me feel that my unhappiness at my own little problems was pathetic.

And it occurred to me that this perspective is true. It is not only true, but it is valuable, and it's part of living with integrity. Pessimism is a violation of your own integrity, and the perspective here — that things could almost always be a lot worse — is the honest truth and a powerful insight.

The truth is, your circumstances are only really bad in comparison to something better. And the truth is, you have a choice about what you compare your circumstances to. If you choose to always compare your circumstances to something more ideal, it will prevent you from being as happy as you could be or as satisfied with your life as you could be.

And think about this: Any unhappiness caused that way is directly attributable to your deliberate refusal to see an obvious truth: That things could be worse. For many people, now and in the past, it is a plain fact that things have been much MUCH worse.

If you ever want a reality-check, remember those tortured prisoners. Compared to circumstances like that, your problems are petty. In fact, compared to circumstances like that, your problems probably seem laughable.

It's also true that you would like better circumstance. But if you're going to tell the truth, tell the whole truth, and that includes the facts that puts your problems in perspective.

Pessimism is an Integrity Issue

2008-03-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

I was reading the Integrity Life Coach Blog, by Patricia Eslava Vessey, and she writes about how she quit smoking as an act of integrity, and in reading her description, it clarified something I've been thinking about.

I've often felt that somehow pessimism is related to a lack of integrity but haven't quite figured out how or why that might be the case. Vessey's article has a series of questions to help her readers free themselves from limiting habits, and her first question answered my question.

The first question she suggests you ask yourself is: "What self-limiting lies have you been telling yourself?"

That's it! That's how pessimism and integrity collide. Pessimism is driven by lies. By misperceptions. By jumping to conclusions. Pessimism is not based on truth. No one really knows enough to be a pessimist, as Norman Cousins put it.

And now that I think of it, I should have known this already because I've read quite a bit about cognitive therapy (a therapy that has proven itself in hundreds of studies to be very effective for curing people of depression, anger, and anxiety disorders, and is mostly concerned with mistaken cognitions, or thoughts).

One of the best-known cognitive therapists, David Burns, relies primarily on straightening out people's screwy thinking using his list of ten "cognitive distortions." These are ways of looking at the world or thinking about the world that are fundamentally false, such as overgeneralizing.

If you make enough of these kinds of mistakes in your thinking, you'll tend to suffer from depression or anxiety or anger. The faulty thinking makes you suffer unnecessarily. The suffering comes from the violation of your own integrity. In other words, you're not telling the truth, so you suffer.

Pessimism doesn't do you any good, and it doesn't do any good for anyone around you, either. In fact, it does harm. Unnecessary negative emotions negatively impact your health. Pessimism makes you less persistent (and therefore less successful) and it makes you less happy.

That means if you are pessimistic, you are harming yourself with your own lies. This is not the road to integrity.

What self-limiting lies have you been telling yourself? What's the truth? What are the real possibilities for you that you have denied? Freeing yourself from false, pessimistic thinking is an important element in exploring integrity.

Too Much Distraction Is Bad For Your Integrity

2008-03-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

This is a distracting world. There is so much good stuff vying for your attention, it would be astonishing to anyone even fifty years ago. There is so much good music to listen to, so many movies to watch, so many television programs, so many things that need to be done, so many great web sites and blogs, so many good books to read (or listen to on an audiobook), it's absolutely amazing. And all this temptation makes it difficult to turn everything off and sit in silence, but that's exactly what your personal integrity requires.

The silence can be done by taking a walk or going for a hike alone also, of course. This is simply time to think. Time to reflect. Time to feel. The more difficult decisions you have, or the more ethical dilemmas you're dealing with, the more time you'll probably need.

Whenever you feel "off your center," out of sorts, or out-integrity, the first and most important step you can take is spend some time without input. You are suffering from a solitude deficiency.

Spend time in solitude, in quiet, and let your mind do whatever it does. Just take the time. You don't need to try to think things through. You'll do it naturally. Just take the time. Spend an hour just sitting still in a quiet room or going for a walk where you will see nobody. Let your mind relax and drift, not trying to think of something, and not trying to avoid thinking of something.

You'll be closer to integrity when you're done. Do it as often as needed.

Think of solitude or distraction-free quiet time as a sort of "integrity vitamin." It is something necessary for wholeness. It is a fundamental of exploring integrity. Maybe THE fundamental. Spend time without input.

Integrity Works In Business

2008-03-02T17:03:00.000-08:00

One thing I heard today in a lecture on integrity is that without integrity, sometimes a business can succeed for awhile, but it always crashes. Without integrity, ultimately, things start to fail.

And today I was reading a personal statement by Don Burleson of Burleson Consulting. He was saying he goes out of his way to be sure that every person he hires and every way of doing business is imbued with integrity. He wrote:

I built my business on my personal integrity. More than 80% of my business is from repeat clients and referrals. Word gets around. If say that I will do something, it’s going to get done, and it’s a sad reflection on society that my success is due in large-part to the lack of integrity among my competition.

My parents died when I was a teenager, and even when I was as poor as a church mouse, I never, ever, paid a bill late. In college, my prized Nikon camera has made innumerable visits to the pawn shop so that I always paid my debts on-time, every time.

Even today, I do a credit check on all my new job applicants and I don’t look favorably upon late-payment of loans. Even parking tickets bother me. Today, my staff is over-represented with people who share my moral convictions, and I make no apologies for tossing-away applicants with any sign of moral turpitude.

This is another way of looking at the rewards of integrity. It seems in every way (except some aspects of the extreme short term), integrity works and non-integrity makes things go wrong. At least, that's the way to bet. It feels good too.

Giving Too Much Respect To Authorities

2008-03-02T13:33:00.000-08:00

There are lots of words in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, Self-Reliance, that most of us don't use any more, although they are still in the dictionary. Looking the words up has helped me gain new insights into integrity.

The other day I was in a conversation with a couple of people and I said something about being "mendicant and sycophantic," and one of them asked me what that meant, but someone distracted us before I could answer, which was good because I wasn't exactly sure. I was quoting Emerson from Self-Reliance, which I have read onto a tape and I was listening to it in my car on the way to work, which is why it was on my mind. That phrase has always caught my ear because it was meaningful but nobody in our modern time would know what the heck it meant.

Emerson wrote: "Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. "

Mendicant means begging or counting on charity to survive. Sycophantic means basically, a being a suck-up.

Emerson was saying that each of us is unique and if we would only be who we are, we could really be something. In fact, we really are something, but most people don't think much of themselves. But they think a lot of others (for instance, people who write books). So we read books by "important" people and give them too much reverence, and we ignore our own natural wisdom, talent, intelligence, integrity, strength, and kindness. We think certain others are great and we are just ordinary.

With his sentence, "Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic," Emerson is saying "we read the books written by others in a sort of begging or sucking-up kind of way," and we shouldn't.

There was an old story of a beggar who drank too much and passed out. As an experiment, the king's servants cleaned him up and put him in the king's bed, and when the beggar woke up, everyone treated him like a king.

Emerson said the story owes its popularity to the fact that each of us is like that beggar. We think we're a beggar when we're really a king.

Some People Push You Off Your Center More Than Others

2008-02-29T17:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I worked with a woman (my co-captain and one step higher on the hierarchy than me) who tends to control people with a disapproving look on her face. For someone like myself, who has a tendency to try to manage people's impression of me, she is difficult to be around. The look of disapproval on her face tends to motivate me to change that look on her face by doing what she wants.

She's not really my boss, so I really don't have to make her happy, but I do like to work in a pleasant, no-friction environment, and I guess I also have a button on disapproval, so anyway, she kind of puts me off my center, especially when she's in a bad mood, which is fairly often. I feel off-center because rather than doing what I think is right and good, my attention is outside myself. My attention is on her, trying to guess what she thinks is right and good.

I realized last night that I tend to blame her for my feeling of being off-center, but that's wrong. She does what she does, and then I do what I do, and I don't have to do what I've been doing. That's my choice. I could choose self-reliance. I could choose to act from my own judgment of things. I could choose integrity, even when she is doing what she's doing.

And it also occurred to me that people like her are really good for integrity-training. Being around her could be good training for me if — and this would be an important qualification — if I was aware of what was going on, and if I was exploring integrity. If those conditions were met, working with her could be very good training in self-reliance.

To Thine Own Self Be True and Happier You Will Be

2008-02-26T14:29:00.000-08:00

One the the most influential books I've ever read on integrity is Lewis Andrews' To Thine Own Self Be True. He is a psychologist and his main message is that many of our most common "psychological problems" have their roots in unethical behavior.

In other words, one valid and productive way to approach problems like anxiety, depression, guilt, and anger problems is to ask, "Where are you violating your own integrity?" And he has a good deal of evidence from scientific studies to back up this perspective.

I have found the perspective helpful. It has been productive to respond to emotional issues by exploring my own integrity.

For example, if I feel bored and restless, it's likely I am doing something I don't really feel is important because I feel I should (or someone has convinced me it's a good idea), but my heart isn't in it.

Elvis was doing that with his music and movies. His manager was coercing him to act in movies Elvis thought were stupid, and getting him to sing songs Elvis didn't like. And what was the result? Elvis suffered from a deep boredom and the empty feeling of just going through the motions. He didn't have a feeling of being alive.

It was an integrity issue. He was not being himself. He was doing what he was told. He was conforming. He was selling himself out.

Here's another example: If I feel guilty for not spending enough time with my wife, a good first response would be to look at my integrity. Where am I violating my own integrity? What do I think ought to be done? What's the right thing to do? How can I restore a sense of honor? Where am I lacking courage?

If I find some answers to those questions, I have found a good way to remove the guilt. Once I have put those answers into action, the guilt will probably disappear. I have restored my emotional health, then, by restoring my integrity.

Andrews' approach is worth exploring. I think you'll find it a productive question to ask when you have any chronic negative emotions: "How is my integrity doing?"

How To Get Girls

2008-02-25T22:55:00.000-08:00

While I was watching Groundhog Day recently, I couldn't help but noticing Phil (the weatherman) doing something most men do: Trying to be what he thought she wanted.

A man will guess — or a woman has told him — what she likes. And then he tries to be that way, pretends to like things he doesn't like, acts like a person he really isn't, and is dishonest with her (rather than just being who he is).

The whole enterprise is doomed to failure. Women can see right through men. They have evolved an integrity-detector second to none, and they can tell when a man is full of shit. Their offsprings' whole future — their genetic destiny — depends very crucially on their ability to see through pretense. And they can. Easily. They don't even have to try.

So all the books and seminars out there about how to pick up women and how to be super slick and what kind of pickup lines to use — that whole approach is destined for failure. It is a way to trick a woman into thinking you're something you're not. So it might work for a one-night stand with a woman who is looking for a one-night stand (or who has drank enough alcohol to temporarily interfere with her integrity-detector). But if you're a man looking for love, forget it. You're barking up the wrong tree.

If you want to get a woman, if you want to find love, and if you want to have a real relationship, forget about pickup lines or pretending to be Mr. Cool. Forget about trying to even guess what she likes or wants. Focus all your energy on exploring your own integrity. When you are a truly good man, when you are true to yourself, when you know what you want, and when you are honest with yourself and others, good women will be able to detect it and they'll be deeply attracted to it.

A Relationship Versus My Integrity

2008-02-25T16:37:00.000-08:00

What if you had to choose between an important relationship or your integrity? You wouldn't know ahead of time how it will turn out, but the risk is real: You might lose your relationship. What would you choose?

I've been thinking about this today and I'll tell you why in a minute. The first conclusion I came to is that whether or not your integrity will end the relationship is up to the other person, not you. It is their choice. You want to keep the relationship and keep your integrity. But because of who the other person is, that may not be possible. In other words, it's not your choice. Your only choice is whether your integrity is more important than the relationship.

The reason this has come up for me is my son just got his third DUI. And he called me to borrow the money for a lawyer. But I don't hear in his voice any desire to change. I'm not an alcoholic, so I don't know what it's like, but I would think my first reaction to a third DUI would be immediate and radical. I think I would join ten AA groups, check myself into a rehab clinic, and start reading all the books I could find on the subject of giving up alcohol. And, oh yes, I would immediately stop drinking for good.

Easy enough for me to say. But still, as far as I can tell, he has done nothing other than try to get money out of me.

He's a good kid. He's got a good heart. But drinking seems to be ruining his life. And he doesn't seem to want to stop drinking.

So what do I do? I care about him and I don't want him to go to jail for a long time. He just started a job with potential that he really likes.

On the other hand, if I give my son money for the lawyer, and he manages to avoid jail time and doesn't stop drinking, down the road he could drive drunk and kill someone, and although legally I wouldn't be held responsible, morally I would be partially responsible because I didn't let him deal with the harsh consequences of his drinking on his own.

I will be talking to him about this in about an hour. I know he would rather I just send him the money without talking about it, and help him weasel his way out of this criminal charge (the DUI). But I don't want to do that. It doesn't seem right.

So I'm going to speak to him as honestly as I can, and the possible consequences are: He could hang up on me and never want to speak to me again. Probably not. But it's possible. My parents are both alcoholics and I know there is an element in alcoholism that involves blaming something or someone besides yourself. So it's possible in an hour this could be the last conversation I ever have with my only child.

But if I'm going to keep my integrity, I have to be honest with him. And the honest truth is, I don't want to help him ruin his life. I won't. Even if that risks our relationship, which is (as of this writing), a good relationship. We can talk about anything. Except maybe alcohol, which I am about to find out.

As in most integrity-exploring situations, this one will require courage. And courage means something is more important than avoiding unpleasant feelings. In this case, I have decided my own integrity is more important than feelings of fear. Remembering that will give me courage.

The courage may not stop my heart from pounding, but it will keep me true in the face of it.

Robert Pirsig Writes About Integrity

2008-02-25T14:28:00.000-08:00

Two very good books on exploring integrity are Robert Pirsig's two books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, and Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. Both are about "quality," which is another word for integrity.

To have a good quality experience, you need to be in a condition of integrity, or at least be exploring your own integrity.

Both books are semi-true stories, and are philosophical in nature, but very interesting to read. Reading either book is a high-quality experience.

Pirsig's second book is my favorite: Lila. One of the gems I got from the book is integrity-type values (like truth and accuracy) are more important than social values (like conformity and polite behavior). If the two values are in conflict, integrity must override society.

There is a kind of hierarchy of values and ethically speaking, the higher values must trump the lower values. Pirsig's discussion about this really clarified for me why the 60's rebellion didn't really pan out — it didn't create an ideal world, and seemed to simply devolve into a drug-and-criminal-culture.

The reason it all went wrong is because there was no distinction between rebelling against society's rules by realizing integrity was more important, and rebelling against society's rules by indulging in biological values. There is a big difference.

If a scientist (or anyone) discovers a new phenomenon, like genetic evolution, even though much of society in Darwin's time was ordered by Christianity, and this finding undermined the tenets of Christianity, Pirsig's point is that truth or integrity must be more important than society's values. It can't be otherwise. If Christianity was going to suffer, so be it. If society would have to change and might not have as much order or control or success, so be it. Truth must be more important.

But rebellion against society's rules merely to indulge in drugs or promiscuity is not a high enough value to override the values of society, such as marriage and law. Rebellion for the sake of rebellion is not justifiable. Society is more important than biological values. And integrity is more important than society's values. That's the hierarchy.

This is exactly what Emerson wrote about in Self-Reliance. If you make something below more important than something higher, you lose something really important without gaining anything important enough to justify it.

One of the most important values for social order is conformity. This was big in the 1950's. In fact, conformity has been one of the most important values of society since societies were invented.

Now ask yourself: Which has more integrity, conforming to what others expect of you, or doing what you want to do and being who you are? If one has to trump the other, which one should do the trumping?

Okay. How about this one: Which has more integrity, conforming to what others expect of you, or getting a pretty young unmarried girl pregnant?

Seen this way, I think you can easily see that integrity is more important than conformity. But conformity is more important than indulging in biological drives without regard for the consequences.

This is but one of the many interesting discussions in Lila. Pirsig is a genius. And he explores integrity with integrity, making his books some of the most profound ever written.

Integrity Pendant

2008-02-24T23:43:00.000-08:00

To remind me of my commitment, I was looking for a pendant and found the perfect one. And it was really cheap. Two dollars and fifty cents! It's about the size of a nickel. The hole in the middle is so big, it never hangs up on the chain like other pendants tend to do. It's simple and clean. You can order one from Amazon.com here:

Integrity Infinity Circle Pendant

It is sterling silver plated and doesn't come with a chain. It looks the same on both sides. Click on the picture to see a larger image.