To Better Understand Integrity, Study the Impact of Its Absence
We all know it is essential to live with integrity, to be our true and whole selves. Paradoxically, integrity is most glaringly visible in its absence.
Therefore, in order to understand the importance of integrity, it’s necessary to speak about the weighty consequences of integrity lapses. These lapses come in many forms, each of which has a different deleterious effect on our lives.
To help identify the full spectrum of possible lapses, we will categorize them in this article by the entity with whom we fail to be honest or fulfill obligations. This entity may be an abstract authority figure, a person we know, or even ourselves.
The goal is to minimize the scars we inflict on our integrity and view them as reminders of the actions that damaged our honest, forthright, trustworthy, and dependable selves.
Integrity with Authority Figures
We must consider how failing to have integrity with authority figures will impact our lives. We’ll keep this one short and sweet because the ramifications are obvious.
If we fail to fulfill our obligations with our employer, we will find ourselves unemployed. If we treat our landlord or mortgage holder the same way, we will be evicted. If we disobey the law and the police who enforce it, we will be incarcerated.
These examples illustrate this point: When you lack integrity with authority figures, your independence takes a big hit—no job, no house or apartment, and possibly no freedom!
Integrity with Others
What happens when we fail to be honest or fulfill our obligations with friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers? Understandably, our actions will result in us being considered dishonest and untrustworthy.
If we are not consistently truthful, people will question what we say. If we are not sufficiently forthright, they will wonder what we are not saying. Either way, lacking honesty is a sure way to alienate those around us.
Meanwhile, failing to keep our agreements with others will mark us as undependable. We will lose opportunities to grow and advance because people will avoid asking us to take on various responsibilities. People will doubt our commitment and our ability to produce positive results. Given our lack of integrity, who can blame them?
Integrity with Ourselves
Maintaining integrity with ourselves is omnipresent. Therefore, it is easy to overlook and, arguably, most important to guard. When we fail to live up to the promises we make to ourselves, we experience failures time and again, thereby creating a feeling of mistrust toward our ability to act. We start to believe that we cannot do what we want, substantially limiting the possibilities in our lives.
This mistrust leads to an inability to assess our potential accurately. Like all integrity lapses, self-assessment lapses come in all shapes and sizes.
We might fail to notice that our clothes are inappropriate for a fancy party, or we might fail to admit that we are too intoxicated to drive safely after attending it. Both are examples of failing to be honest, but the consequences are dramatically different. Wearing the wrong outfit to an event is unlikely to create many ripples, but lying to ourselves about our ability to drive a car safely after drinking will have disastrous effects.
To the extent that we accurately self-assess, we create obligations that fit our abilities and goals. Such obligations include eating and exercising the way we want, completing the job and college applications that we promise ourselves we will complete, getting our holiday cards in the mail before the holidays end, scheduling dental exams for our children, and a million other things both big and small. It is when we decide that we “have” to do these things that they become agreements tied up with our integrity.
At the moment that a task becomes an obligation, therefore, failing to follow through on it takes a moral toll. As the lapses compound, we find we are unable to get anything done—we do not get in shape and stay healthy, we do not get into college or get a new job, no holiday cards go out, and our children never make it to the dentist. In such a state, we find ourselves continually drowning in chaos of our own making.
Guard your integrity. Be truthful, forthright, and keep your agreements. Lastly, if you do suffer a lapse, which we all invariably experience, do what is necessary to make it right.