How to Live with Integrity

"Integrity: The entire, unimpaired state of any thing, particularly of the mind; moral soundness or purity; incorruptness; uprightness; honesty." - Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language 

Living with integrity is something that we have all probably heard at one point in life or another. My company, for instance, puts a very strong emphasis on integrity being the cornerstone of everything that we do in our business dealings. What has always interested me is that those who profess integrity the most are the ones who know the least about it. Let me explain.

Integrity for its own sake is vague and leaves you directionless. Unfortunately, there are many businesses and people who preach integrity but take it no further. It would be the equivalent to someone telling you to, "Tell the truth." If that is your only order, you are left with a plethora of statements that you can make. More than likely, none of them help you or the other person get what you are looking for. However, if a parent catches you with your hand in the cookie jar and asks if you ate any. The command to tell the truth carries much more weight because it is applied to something specific. 

The fact of the matter is, in our society morals are seen as relative. Unless you judge everyone by the same standard, integrity does not mean that much. The legal system is the closest human beings have come to having the same standard for everyone. But most of the time, people referring to integrity are using it in the context of something that is not covered by the legal system.

Don't the me wrong, I believe integrity is a wonderful thing. But if it is not applied to any particular thing, it remains ambiguous and highly unhelpful. Let's look at a few things to which you can apply this mindset of integrity that will actually help you live your life better.

1. Your Mind

I chose the definition above because it included integrity particularly being applied to your mind. You are the one who monitors and chooses what goes into your mind. I am a firm believer that what you put in your head affects your performance and that how you see yourself affects your output. That is why it is so incredibly important for you to keep your mind pure and "unimpaired."

Can you prevent all negativity from coming into your mind? No. Can you significantly reduce its effects? Yes. How? We need to spend our time wisely. Keep the junk out of your head and fill it with positive thoughts. As I have mentioned several times previously, your mind is an incredibly powerful tool. The way that you mentally see a particular situation will determine how you respond and how you solve problems. Your mind will also take that situation once it is complete, and store the information from that issue to remind you of next time something similar arises. With a tool like that, why wouldn't you want to take care of it constantly? Living with integrity in the mind is all about keeping it clean and functioning optimally. It is about not letting things enter your mind that could harm it or you.

2. Your Speech

Speaking and rhetoric have always fascinated me. I love watching a speaker draw an audience into content and method of delivery. The art of rhetoric is one that has been used throughout history as a tool both to motivate and manipulate crowds ranging from 2 to 2,000,000. But when we discuss the integrity of your speech, we are not necessarily talking about how you give a speech. We are talking about how you speak in every day life.

Everyone lets words slip out of their mouth that they regret. We've all had that moment where we wish that we could literally suck the words that just came out back up into our mouths. This is probably not news to you; but life doesn't work that way. Maintaining the integrity of your speech is not letting anything corrupt proceed out of your mouth. Too many people believe that certain words accentuate the point that they are trying to get across. But using language like that is just plain lazy and it has no place in the mind or speech of a professional.

3. How you Treat Others

This is, quite possibly, the most prominent area of life in which integrity is vital. Even though there are lots of people who look at morality in ways unlike any other, how we treat other people is a fairly set standard. The definition at the beginning does a wonderful job of expressing this with the word, "Honesty." When others are treated honestly or fairly, they are more responsive to you and you are made into a better person for treating them in the right way.

For example, we spend lots of time listening to and spreading gossip about other people. But that's pretty unfair to them to judge without them being their to make a defense. Gossip is hardly treating someone honestly. Another example is in business dealings. Treat someone you're in business with as if you're trying to make a deal that is actually mutually beneficial. If you take that same approach with your family, you will be a higher quality contribution to them as well. When you treat people fairly, even if they do not respond with integrity, you are doing the right thing and becoming better as a result.

In winding things down, integrity is a great concept when applied correctly. I hope this post has given you some practical tips for how to better incorporate integrity into your life. Let's all spend some extra time finding ways to live with integrity. We will make a better world tomorrow that is full of better professionals. That's my goal in these writings in the first place. Building a better tomorrow by building better people.

-Andrew