Is Your Lack of Integrity Causing You to Crash and Burn? – Episode 449

You can have the greatest plan, the most sincere intentions, the most brilliant idea, but if you don’t have the glue to bring it together and make it stick, it just won’t fly. What is that glue? It’s called integrity, which is the ability to be your word, to do what you say you are going to do. It’s the integration of your words and actions.

With integrity, your words can move mountains, without it, your words have no power. In this episode Ted talks about what is arguably the most important principle you can master: sticking to your word.

 

 

 

 

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I liked building model airplanes when I was a kid. Back then, you would use modeling cement which came in a tube. One day though, I discovered I didn’t have enough modeling cement to build my plane. I asked my mom if she could buy me some. She said sure, we’ll go tomorrow to the hobby store and get some.

But I was very impatient. I was looking forward to building my plane and I simply couldn’t wait until tomorrow. I wanted to build the plane today. So I rustled through the cabinets, and I found some of that white Elmer’s Glue, and that’s how I built my plane.

I would hang my planes from the ceiling of my bedroom, so when the glue was clear and dry I picked up the plane by one of the wings, and got up on a stepstool to hang it up but the wing broke off from the rest of the plane and it came crashing to the ground. All of the pieces that I glued with the Elmers glue fell off and some broke into little pieces. Man, was I upset. All the parts were coming off because you don’t use white glue to build a model airplane. You use modelling cement.

The problem was that my little plane had no integrity. It had all the parts, except the part that mattered most of all: the right kind of glue to keep it together.

You can have the greatest plan, you can have the sincerest intentions, the most brilliant idea, but if you don’t have the right glue to bring it together and keep it together, it just won’t fly. Or worse, after it gets airborne, it will come crashing to the ground. What is that glue? It’s called integrity.

Integrity is the ability to be your word, to do what you say you are going to do. It is a state of being whole and undivided. In other words, what you say and what you do are in alignment. It is the integration of your words and your actions. With integrity, your words can move mountains. Without it, the words coming out of your mouth have little or no power. You know how they say talk is cheap? The fact is that people cheapen talk and when your talk is cheap, few will buy it.

In my hypnotherapy practice, people come to me because they are unable to accomplish their goals and they can’t figure out why. Upon further inquiry we often find out that they can’t trust themselves. They can’t count on themselves to do what they say they are going to do. They’ll tell themselves that they are going to start this or that or do this or that, but they don’t do it so consequently their words and actions are not bound together, so things fall apart. We all suffer from lack of integrity at times, but the question is: is it a value that you strive for? If it is, you’ll have more integrity, if it’s not, you will have less. It’s that simple.

Can you keep your agreement to be somewhere at a time that you agreed to? If you can’t, it sends the message loud and clear: this person cannot be counted on to do what they are going to do.

Do you honor your financial agreements by paying your bills on time? If you don’t guess what happens? Your credit score announces to the world: you can’t count on this person to pay back money that they borrow as agreed.

Can you keep the agreement you made to abide by the rules of the road when driving your car? If you can’t, you get a ticket or worse get thrown in jail!

It all boils down to this: Do you do what you say you are going to do? If you do it once, probably no one will notice. Do it five times, people start to respect you. Do it one hundred times and you become dependable. Do it every single time and guess what happens?

Your word now has power. When you speak, people listen. If you say it’s going to rain, people start buying umbrellas, and if you say it will flood, they start buying boats. Need funds? A handshake will get you millions. Now, you show up in the world as a rock, unshakable in your ability to gather people and resources, to move and inspire people to action. Just say the word and people will fight for you and die for you because they know that you make things happen, because every time you said it was going to happen, it did, sure as the day follows night.

But your ability to have this kind of integrity doesn’t start with showing up on time and paying your bills or keeping promises to people. Nope. Those are just the outward signs.

The power of integrity and the force that it wields start with keeping your word to yourself. This is where all accomplishment starts. This is where all manifestation happens. This is where you get the lift under your wings that takes you to higher levels of success and accomplishment.

Of course, it’s easier to keep your word with someone else than it is to keep your word to yourself. Because if you don’t keep your promises to yourself, who’s going to know? Who’s going to hold you accountable?

I know what I’m talking about. I used to be flaky. Like it didn’t matter if I kept my word or not. I spent a lot of time making excuses as to why I wasn’t moving forward. The truth is that I was unable to move myself to action. I didn’t trust myself when I told myself that I was going to do something. In my mind I would hear the words “BS, you know it ain’t gonna happen.”

I put a lot at stake when I started my hypnotherapy practice. I took out a big loan to go to hypnotherapy school. I knew I could learn the material, but what I was afraid of was not doing anything with it. So, the hardest thing I had to learn to become a successful hypnotherapist was to do what I said I would do even if I didn’t want to. I didn’t have anybody else leaning on me to do it, I had no boss other than myself, but the prospect of hypnotherapy training as just another thing that I tried but didn’t follow through was more than I could bear. I was forced to cultivate a higher degree of integrity with myself.

Integrity means integration of your own thoughts, words and deeds. It means you are whole, that all the parts are working together in unison and that your promises to yourself are not scattered to and fro by circumstance, but instead, are constructed to maintain altitude and attitude in the face of breakdowns, obstacles, and the winds of change.

You can begin to develop a degree of trust in yourself that knows neither fear nor doubt. The good news is that integrity is a muscle you can exercise.

Do you want to tighten up your integrity? Want to start using a stronger glue? Here are some things to take on:

· Start waking up at the hour you say you will, every day except one day. Do it come hell, high water, or late-night parties.

· Be where you said you were going to be on time. All the time.

· Set an easy goal with a deadline. Accomplish it. Set a harder goal. Accomplish it. Set an audacious goal. Accomplish it.

· Start taking 3 daily actions that you will do every day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Regardless of whether you want to or not or whether it’s convenient or not.

· When you commit, do so with the full responsibility of choice that you will show up 100%. If you can’t, don’t.

It takes practice. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. You do what you say you are going to do. Your speech and actions cemented together and taking wing on the power of your word: that’s integrity.

I was not taught this as a kid. I learned the importance of integrity as an adult, and it made all the difference in the world. If you have the uncomfortable feeling that your talk is cheap and you want to make it more valuable, I invite you to contact me for a complimentary consultation to see if hypnotherapy and high-performance coaching can lift you to a higher level of performance. You can do that by going to TedMoreno.com/contact.

Here’s a quote for you:

“The wind might cause a kite to rise, but what keeps it up there is the fact that somebody on the ground has a steady hand. You must hold steady to your values – your integrity. It’s your anchor. You let go of that. . . well, it isn’t long before your kite comes crashing down.”

~Mark Victor Hansen.

 

Thanks for reading!

Ted