Ending Things With Integrity

*Click the image above to watch a brief video about this post.

One of the biggest bleeds of energy is not ending things with integrity.

The word integrity can get people hung up. Let me explain:

In·teg·ri·ty
The state of being whole or undivided.
The condition of being unified, unimpaired, or sound in construction.
Internal consistency or lack of corruption.

The etymology of the word “integrity” comes from the idea of being “intact.” During times of endings and beginnings, seasons of transition and change, or when a desire for increased clarity and direction is needed, integrity is everything.

To live in a state of integrity will give you access to energy, aliveness, and magnetism in your life that is undeniable.

If you’re a perfectionist, that’s not what I am talking about.

There is a difference between the neuroses of perfectionism and living in a state of integrity or wholeness.

Fifteen years ago I studied with a world renowned master teacher in ontology—the study of being. He had a curriculum designed for my evolution and growth. Before we started working together he said, “you can do this curriculum the way I design it and I guarantee results or you can do this curriculum the way you design it and I do not guarantee results.”

Imagine, doing life the way I designed it, hah! He was perceptive and swiftly assessed my growth edge. He was asking if I intended on engaging with his work with the integrity he required or if I was more interested in doing it “my way”.

I wanted to learn from him. I had gotten as far as I could get with the tools, tricks, and techniques I already had access to.

During the year that I studied under this master teacher I took on a rigorous practice of integrity, in every area of my life. Not perfectionism. Integrity. I got wildly curious about where I would allow my integrity to wobble and where I had great mastery of it.

Bringing awareness to my relationship with integrity may have been one of the greatest contributions to my evolution. It changed everything.

These days my integrity is challenged when I am in a big leap and on my growth edge… you’ll often hear me refer to these experiences as the “skinny branches”. When I am in a season of expansion my integrity gets compromised not because I am a bad person, not because I compromise my ethics or my morality but because I am stretching and new ways of being are required of me.

When my integrity starts to go out it can look like voicemails that are unresponded to, medical bills that go unpaid, or expired license plates. Areas of my life that aren’t already on autopilot start to become frayed.

If you are stretching, growing, and expanding AND things that once felt easeful for you are now taking you beyond your comfort zone, you are establishing a new way of being, and when that occurs, increased awareness of integrity is being called forward.

Some of the ways I reliably see people compromise their integrity occur at times of transition—they leave a job or a marriage resentful, they leave a business transaction unresolved, they justify unpaid bills, they silently keep score in relationships and then withhold or withdraw, they state one thing and do another. Human beings compromise their integrity all the time.

Do any of those ways of being feel familiar to you?

If not, I don’t believe you.

As human beings, we have a propensity to resort to self protection, survival, and fear in subtle ways, all the time. And when we are in fear or “overwhelm” the first thing to go missing is our integrity.

Remember, this is not a moral dilemma. When your integrity goes out you are not a bad human being. You’re just surviving. The moment you realize you’re in a survival pattern is the moment to get curious. You establish self awareness and can choose what happens next.

Times of transition are really potent opportunities to bring your awareness to integrity. The way you end things and the way you begin things has an ongoing energetic impact on your life.

Many years ago I was in a volatile relationship with a man I lived with. The relationship ended very dramatically. We were both hurt, resentful, and bitter. After many years of looking for my next great love affair it occurred to me that I was never going to get the relationship I most deeply desired without reestablishing integrity in my own being, and that required doing the work to heal the old hurt and forgiving myself and him for the pain we caused one another.

I reestablished integrity in the area of relational intimacy in my life and shortly thereafter I met my husband. Now, I am not saying if you haven’t met the love of your life that it’s because there is an area of life that is out of integrity but if you haven’t done that work to check, that is the first place I’d start.

When something is not going the way you intended or desired it may be a good idea to check in on your integrity.

Integrity is a move toward wholeness. And when a state of wholeness is present, new possibilities emerge.

Have you ever led or worked with someone that carried around a bunch of baggage from their past employer or client relationship? They didn’t get complete before moving on and all that old baggage then congests their current experience. That’s how not to do endings well and how to create a lack of integrity in your life. We have all done it.

Imagine it is the end of the year. You are reflecting on the last twelve months and getting really honest about what’s left unresolved—mail unopened, voicemails unreturned, appointments avoided, and conversations neglected. There is an impact on your upcoming year if you carry that forward.

Whether it’s a new year, a new job, or a new relationship your future experience is intimately impacted by how you left things—resolved or unresolved, with integrity or without integrity.

You may not like to hear that.

You may start to feel overwhelmed by the volume of relationships, career transitions, promises, and other commitments you’ve made in your life that you’ve walked away from and hoped they’d just disappear without having the end things with integrity.

If you’re in overload based on the volume of things in your life that you’ve left undone and unresolved, that’s ok. Take a deep breath.

Together we can start to restore integrity and infuse energy and aliveness in your life. Restoring integrity is the quickest and most potent way to respond to fatigue and exhaustion. It can be an almost immediate infusion.

If you’re ready to do an inventory of the five primary areas of your life to determine where you’re bleeding energy and you’re ready to invest in your personal and professional development, schedule a Chemistry Call with me. I work with highly successful human beings that are deeply committed to living a life of integrity so that they can access the reservoir of energy that they really need to fuel the dreams, desires, goals, and ambitions that matter most to them.

I want to support you in getting honest about what it really takes to actualize what you really want in your life, relationships, and career.