“If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to kill you!” I growled through tightly clenched lips. I immediately regretted my words, but I couldn’t take them back. They should never have been uttered, but worse yet, I was standing in the middle of Praise & Worship service as I said them.
My manager was nagging me. I had dared to step out the house with ill-fitting clothes and my hair doing it’s own thing. She reminded me that we were in a city where nearly 18,000 women had seen me on stage—many of them from that church.
But what she didn’t know was that I was in a process of learning three things about myself that troubled me. While she was urging me to get my appearance in alignment with my brand, I was focusing on the character traits I had discovered that were undermining my integrity and had the power to destroy that same brand from the inside-out. We were over forty-five minutes late for service and more than I cared about “looking right,” I needed to “be right!”
The word integrity indicates that a person, or a thing, is uniformly consistent. In order for us to break a person, or thing, we simply have to find their inconsistencies. In other words, we have to discover and attack the places where their integrity breaks down.
My great-grandmother used to caution, “What’s done in the dark, will come out in the light.” Seeing the depth of my cracks left me feeling emotionally raw. I’m a Life Coach and only effective to the degree that I practice what I preach. So today, I want to share from my own personal growth journey, three things that I have discovered are challenging my integrity and could be impacting yours:
1. Wishy-washy Words: In too many areas of my life, I’ve been over-promising but under-delivering. Lying hasn’t been my intent, but my words and actions haven’t always aligned. Too frequently, I have been late, rescheduled appointments and missed deadlines—giving little, or no thought, to how I was impacting others’ lives. We must be people of our word. We must do what we say—plain and simple. Solution: Write promises down like appointments, prioritize them and act with urgency.
2. Terrible Timing: I’ve been on a treadmill of meetings, running to appointments or fighting deadlines. I’ve over-extended myself in fear of missing opportunities. As a result, I set a pace that I couldn’t physically, or emotionally maintain. Time is irreplaceable and only wisely invested time has the potential of yielding future rewards. Solution: Only make commitments in alignment with our most critical personal and business goals and after checking our schedules.
3. Superficial Spirit Care: We get daily bread. Yesterday’s physical and spiritual food will impact our overall health and condition—but it won’t sustain us endlessly. The daily discipline of self-care gives us what we need to make it. We must be consistent and intentional about strengthening our spirits and getting in tune. We lack integrity when we want the best for and from others, but don’t demand it of ourselves. Solution: Invest in our spirit-care through quiet time, reflection, prayer and reading.
Do Your Work: Fill in the cracks by developing a discipline in an area of your life you know needs to be strengthened. Schedule your free 20-minute laser coaching session to learn more about developing consistency.
Define Your Wealth: Affirm out loud, “I will listen to my life and live in integrity by being a good steward over all I have been given.”
Named the “North America’s Next Greatest Speaker” by eWomenNetwork, Felicia T. Scott is a Certified Empowerment Coach™ who empowers her clients to turn their Worth into Wealth as she partners with them to DISCOVER their WORTH, DO the WORK and DEFINE their WEALTH. Get more insight, download the FREE “8 Choices Winners Must Make” seminar MP3 on her website.