On integrity

So, I've been seeing a life coach this year. It's been amazing, and I've learned that you can excact real change in your life. I find it really rewarding, although often gruelling. The weeks past by so fast! I think my greatest personal challenge is to turn up to the page more often and to stay there for longer. Discipline.

Along the way I had to outline what my main values are as a person. Integrity stood out, and it was important for me to flesh out what integrity means to me:

It was easy for me to cite integrity as my most valued value. I've long joked that I have to live up to my name and me a true man. I respect integrity in others, and my friend Natasha Yacoub is a person I think of when I think of integrity. What she wants for the world she enacts in her life. She in passionate about human rights and is not afraid to make great personal sacrifice for her passion. So, this is a starting point for me. Thinking globally and acting locally, and cultivating what I want for the world around me.

But I think that living in integrity operates on several levels. It begins with my relationship with myself, and then with those that I love, and then to those I work with and come across in my daily life, and then onto the world in general. It is about upholding my visions for myself. It starts with being honest with myself and those around me, and making consistent choices that are in line with achieving my visions.

Do I think that I live in integrity?
Well, I think that for me it comes and it goes. The times that I drop out of my integrity are when I judge people harshly. The times when I make bad choices for myself - choices that expend energy rather than harness it, like choosing to eat unhealthy food, or to get drunk or to waste away my time when there are other things I'd rather be doing. There are times when I let it all get on top of me, and I'm harsh on myself. There are times when I listen to the judgements of others and I give them precedence over my own judgements. These are the times that I ruin the moment and therefore the day. I'm not living for the now when I do that, and it dramatically affects my energy.

What is living in integrity for me?
Living in integrity is about doing what I want for me and not through obligation. It is about making strong choices, and about being brave enough to stand up to my own fears and preconceptions about myself. It is listening to myself, to my body and to my instincts. It is about setting myself achievable goals that are in line with my passion and allotting time and energy to them every day.

How will living in integrity manifest in my life?
It will make for a healthy, strong and brave me. A me who honours his commitments to himself and then to those around him. It will give me an enduring sense of truth, that I might not know all about the world around me, but that I know myself, and that I can always turn to myself for the answers.