Authentic Integrity

When you combine authenticity and integrity, you get Authentic Integrity, and it’s the first Pillar of a radiant life. I like to think of authenticity as what is real and integrity as what is true. With the combination of these two powerful terms, the way you live your life can be both true to your innermost Self, as well as grounded in behaviors, actions, thoughts, and words that ring honestly and fill you with clarity.

AUTHENTICITY: Authenticity is who you truly are at your most basic, essential Self before all the heaps of expectations, obligations, pressures, stresses, and messages about who you need to be to feel ok in the world were heaped on your shoulders. The real, pure, un-influenced YOU. It is the innermost part of you that believes in your inherent value, appreciates your unique quirks, and rolls with the beat of your own spectacular drum without abandoning that truth for anyone or anything. It’s OK if you’re thinking to yourself “I have no idea who I authentically am.” Most people don’t. We live in a culture that supports self-abandonment in order to conform to mass cultural ideals, so it’s normal to lose touch with your essential Self. This work is about discovering that precious core YOU bit by bit as you shrug off the insidious should and supposed to’s you have been conditioned to believe and return to the authenticity of who you truly are.

I like to use nesting dolls as a visual when I teach about authenticity. You know, the wooden dolls that crack open to disclose a smaller doll within, and a smaller one within, all the way down to the final wooden doll at the core. Nesting dolls represent the way we mask ourselves up throughout life with protective layers, false personas, and shields that prevent our innermost Self from being seen. When you inquire about why you feel the need to hide yourself away, you begin to learn about the beliefs and narratives you may be carrying related to the worth and value of your true Self (or lack thereof). By stripping away the layers that obscure who you truly are, you come into closer contact with your essential Self and start to foster love, acceptance, appreciation, and admiration for the person you are at your core. In Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), true Self includes the following 8 C-words: Curiosity, Compassion, Connectedness, Clarity, Creativity, Confidence, Courage, and Calmness. Those qualities are all present when we are authentically ourselves.

INTEGRITY: We tend to think of Integrity as doing the right thing or aligning with true North or being honest. These are all part of living an integrity-filled life, but there’s more to it. I appreciate the analogy of an airplane Martha Beck writes about in her book “The Way of Integrity” (amazing book, by the way. I highly recommend that everyone read it!). Beck discusses the importance of an airplane being in good integrity before it takes flight with the lives of hundreds of precious souls inside. This means that the entire airplane is in good working order, operating as it should be, with every minuscule part doing its job and working in harmony with all other parts of the plane for wholeness and unity in the system. When good working integrity is achieved on an airplane, it is most likely to successfully blast through the air and land safely at its destination. Granted, human integrity looks more like honest relationships, meaningful work, and genuine values than engines, pipelines, and propellers, but on a basic level it’s the same.

Imagine you are gliding 30,000 feet above Earth, squished in your uncomfortable airplane seat, when you simultaneously feel and hear a bang. The pilot’s voice carries across the intercom saying that one of the airplane’s jet engines has just gone kaput. Does the airplane take a drastic nosedive toward its imminent demise? Not necessarily, which is lucky for you and your in-flight neighbors. The other jet engine(s) can struggle along for a short while to keep the plane flying (though at decreased speed and power) until your skillful pilot can bring her down safely.

The same thing happens with us; however, we don’t often hear/feel a bang to notify us that one of our systems has gone down. Instead, we often ride along with compromised integrity for a lot longer than we should. Most often, the loss of integrity is a subtle experience of self-abandonment, socialization, or mis-attunement that moves us directly apart from a radiant life. It shows up for most of us not dramatically as a loud explosion, but more like saying yes when we really want to say no. Or accepting a job we can’t stand because of its high salary. Or meeting a friend for lunch (again) when we decidedly do not enjoy said friend’s company.

When I define integrity as what is true, I mean that it is the consistent living of our lives in congruity with the full battery of the truth encoded within our numerous inner systems (ie: values, interests, desires, driving purpose, etc.).

Aligned Relationships

We all know the feeling of being in a relationship that fits like a glove and leaves you walking away feeling like “Wow, that was great. I should spend time with that person more often. I really enjoyed that.” I’m sure you can also recall a time when you felt the opposite and walked away feeling drained, resentful, irritated, or even downright angry. The difference between two such relational experiences comes down to alignment.

Aligned relationships are as important as the alignment of the vertebrae in your spine. They fit, flow, and jive with who you are at your truest level of Self without demands, conditions, or impositions on your true Self that ask you to be anyone other than who you are. Alignment doesn’t mean that you never experience conflict within these relationships, nor does it mean that you are exactly the same as one another. It means that you can honor and appreciate each other’s differences without imposing yourself onto the other person. It means that when conflict arises, you attend to it respectfully and lovingly to foster a healthy repair. Aligned relationships allow you to feel witnessed and supported for who you truly are without requiring that you shape shift for another person’s comfort or pleasure.

As Glennon Doyle said, the healthiest (most aligned) relationships are those in which you feel both held and free.

If you are reading this and taking note that you have some profoundly mis-aligned relationships in your life, fear not! You are in a perfect position to either communicate your desire for the relationship to regain alignment by bringing honest communication into the dynamic, or you are free to leave the relationship to find others that can align better.

It is true that relationship dynamics can shift and change through time, so a relationship that was once aligned may mis-align as you both grow and change. Sometimes with mutual commitment and investment toward meaningful growth, mis-aligned relationships can regain their alignment with thoughtful effort on the part of both people. When you find yourself in a dynamic with a mis-aligned person who is either unwilling or unable to change (or unwilling/unable to see the need for change) you may be presented with the possibility that you would feel healthier and more free without that relationship. In such circumstances, it can be complex and emotional to close the door on a relationship, but it can also open space for new aligned people to come into your life. After all, if your life is already filled to the brim, how can there be room for anyone new to join?

Abundant Creativity

If your first thought is, “Creativity, no way. I can’t even draw a stick figure”, I’ve got news for you. Every single person has creative potential flowing through their veins and encoded in their DNA. As far back as scientists can trace ancestry, evidence has been found of people making stuff with mud, bones, sticks, or handprints on cave walls. If your ancestors could be creative, you can too.

Creativity is essential because it allows for expressive energy to move through your system, and it can look many different ways. People often think of the fine arts as the only creative method, but they are mistaken. Creativity can include anything from gardening to planning trip itineraries. Fine art, writing, dance, and music are only some of the infinite options for creative expression.

I like to think of creativity as the flow of energy through your body that leaves you feeling productive, inspired, soothed, and/or clear minded. It’s probably one of the the things you enjoy doing most, and carve out special time for as often as you can.

Need some ideas for creative pursuits you may want to try? Here are a few more options to add to your creative toolbox:

Gardening
Cooking
Designing an algorithm or creating a website
Fashion and make-up
Organizing your home or closet, or re-arranging your furnature
Singing or humming
Immersing yourself in nature
Arranging flowers
Movement: Dance, stretching, or any rhythmic or creative movement you can imagine
Writing: Journaling, creating lists, writing poems, stream of consciousness writing, written processing, bullet journaling
Art: Drawing, painting, collage, sewing, photography, and many others
Planning a vacation itinerary
Imaginative play or daydreaming

How to integrate the Three Pillars into your life

It all starts with intention. When you think about bringing Authentic Integrity, Aligned Relationships, and Abundant Creativity into your life, do you notice a sense of excitement? Nervousness? Inspiration? Allow yourself to explore these Three Pillars as invitations that will take you deeper into yourself. Your life is an ever-evolving and expanding process you are in, and you can shift your intentions at any time to better match-up with the YOU you most want to be.

Start small and simply notice. Can you sense when you are behaving inauthentically? Do you realize which relationships are out of alignment? Do you feel inspired to move, create, or play? When you allow baby steps to be a sufficient starting place, you let yourself just begin. Wherever you are, with whatever you have, just start. Once the ball gets rolling you will find it easier to automatically live in congruence with these Three Pillars standing strong and tall in your life. Until then, it’s just about practice and awareness.

Have thoughts? Share them! This is a community, after all.

The comment section at the bottom of this page is your space. Please share your experiences, anecdotes, challenges, and opinions. You can also discover comments from others who are learning to live radiantly. Aligned community is crucial, so let’s join together here. I can’t wait to hear from you.

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