Integrity & Impeccability –
Doing versus Being
I had a great conversation with my sister the other day around integrity. She has a couple of integrity issues and questions up with other people in her life. Integrity is important to her and she does not want someone’s lack of integrity to reflect on hers.
I had sent her one of my favorite books on integrity – Integrity by Dr. Henry Cloud – a couple of months ago. She is still working her way through it and I think this was also part of what prompted the conversation. Henry Cloud talks a lot about character when he talks about integrity. He defines character as: the ability to meet the demand of reality. It’s not the talk, it’s the walk. How you live reveals your integrity.
6 Aspects of Character
- The ability to connect authentically (which leads to trust)
- The ability to be oriented toward the truth which leads to finding and operating in reality)
- The ability to work in a way that gets results and finishes well (which leads to reaching goals, profits, or the mission)
- The ability to embrace, engage, and deal with the negative (which leads to ending problems, resolving them, or transforming them)
- The ability to be oriented toward growth (which leads to increase)
- The ability to be transcendent (which leads to enlargement of the bigger picture and oneself)
Last night, I was in a conversation with a good friend and the topics of integrity and impeccability also came up. One thing I realized is that most people associate integrity and impeccability with a self-image or an ego ideal – we have our ideas about how to live with integrity and impeccability and these ideas are related to how we see ourselves or how we wish to be seen by others.
Integrity comes from the Latin root integr which refers to “entire” or “whole.”
From the perspective of true nature or soul or wholeness, having integrity would mean being whole, not divided. Integrity would not involve trying to live up to a self-image, ego ideal or expectation. Integrity would be the natural expression of the “whole” person. integrity and impeccability would be natural expressions of “whole” person’s life – no doing needed. The walk and the talk would be integrated.
Integrity & Impeccability
Related Posts
Links of Interest
[ad#post468]