Developing Personal Integrity

 

Personal integrity is the quality of being honest with yourself and others, and living a life that is aligned with your moral principles. Developing personal integrity requires examining your beliefs and value system, and taking conscious steps to behave in ways that are consistent with your personal moral code. Here are some ways to develop personal integrity.

•  Identify aspects of your behavior that require change. Reflect on your interactions with others in the workplace, at home and in social situations to determine specific areas in need of improvement. For example, if you are late for work every day and feel guilty about creating excuses for this behavior, this may be an opportunity to develop greater personal integrity. 

• Determine your reasons for not behaving with greater personal integrity. For example, you may be pushing unpleasant work tasks on to other employees instead of being honest with your boss about your inability to do the tasks. You may be afraid to admit to yourself or to your boss that you do not possess the right skills or that the job is not the right fit for you.  

• Face the obstacles that cause you to lie or violate your moral code. This might involve finding a more suitable job, facing your fears about how others may perceive you and/or seeking out counseling to address emotional challenges and insecurities.  

• Practice truthfulness. Consider all of the relationships at home and work that will benefit from greater truthfulness. For example, if managing a team of employees, be honest and direct with each individual about your expectations and employee performance. Avoid backbiting or gossiping. Refrain from causing harm. Part of developing personal integrity is gauging when and how to deliver the truth. Be careful not to confuse truthfulness with anger-driven and brutally honest confrontation.

• Make a list of tasks and behaviors in which you will become more trustworthy. The list might range from basic tasks, such as taking out the trash as promised to repaying large sums of money in a timely manner.  

• Respect the property of others. Consider any complaints you may have received in the past about using another person's belongings, parking in someone else's parking spot or littering on another person's property. Make a concerted effort to respect other people's belongings.  

• Listen to and respect the opinions and decisions of others. Part of possessing personal integrity is acknowledging the human rights of others. Respecting diverse thoughts and decisions is a sign of open-mindedness and integrity.  

• Help others in need. If you are in a position to contribute to the development of others or help them to do something they cannot accomplish on their own, make an effort to assist.  

• Assess your progress. Developing personal integrity is a trial and error process that requires persistent effort. Ask yourself on a daily or weekly basis if you are making progress.  

• Enlist the help of others. Coaches, colleagues, relatives and friends who know you well and have your best interest at heart can assist your progress by providing objective feedback on a daily basis about the personal changes you are making.   

Expand your knowledge and enlighten your mind with the tools you need to excel in your life! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years’ experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Book a free session at www.denisedema.com today.

FB Follow http://www.facebook.com/businessandlifecoach
Subscribe To My Blog http://www.businessandlifecoach.net
Subscribe To This Blog http://www.justaskdenise.com
Twitter Follow http://twitter.com/DeniseDema
LinkedIn Connect http://www.linkedin.com/in/denisedema

Think About This............

The Art of Conscious Living.....

The benefits of self-awareness lend itself into every aspect of your life. The more you are aware of yourself and others around you, the more choices are available to you that allow you to make better decisions on a daily basis. When you are consciously living, you are present in each moment and experience all that is before you.
 

It is easy to fall into habitual patterns that take you out of the moment. You often will do and see things that are already part of your internal process and lose the ability to be objective. Because life’s conditioning starts very early, your reactions and thoughts become preprogrammed and you tend to be more reactive to daily happenings than proactive toward what serves your life better.

To see things more clearly, take a moment and divide in yourself the mechanical from the conscious; see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong the mechanical is - mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires and actions.  

Change can only be addressed when you become aware and realize how programed your life really is. Continuing in this manor is either because you are not aware of choosing conscious living or because you are afraid to live consciously due to the changes that might happen in your life if you did.

Once you identify your automatic behaviors and responses that are triggered without your will, you can leave the ones intact that serve you and work on the behaviors that are unhealthy so you can break free from the auto pilot mode you have been living with for years.
 

It is important to take the first step to change your mechanical behaviors which have created your daily circumstances and learn to live consciously by making choices that better serve your life. You have the power to change and today can be the start.

Get the tools you need to excel in your life by working with Denise Dema, a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years’ experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Denise’s passion for personal development is at the core of her business and life philosophy and is committed to helping others achieve their full potential in order to live richer, more fulfilling lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com  to get started in reaching your goals today! On-site, phone and e-mail coaching available.


http://www.facebook.com/businessandlifecoach
http://www.businessandlifecoach.net

http://twitter.com/DeniseDema

http://www.justaskdenise.com

Recognizing Subtle Addictions

When we think of the word addiction we usually think of the obvious ones like food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, TV, spending, work, sex, etc., but many people are not aware of the more subtle addictions. These addictions are often so covert and pervasive that they are invisible to us. Yet these subtle addictions may have a negative impact on us, sabotaging our professional and/or personal relationships as well as our lives on a daily basis. Many people are aware of the fact that addictions are used to avoid pain, and in a way to medicate our feelings in order to function in a manner that is within our comfort level. The reason we do this is because it is easier to make the pain go away than it is to deal with the negative feelings or issues at hand. This is not the way your life was intended to be! You can learn to live a more fulfilling life, naturally, through behavior modification.

You might want to honestly look inside and see what some of your covert addictions are. Are you addicted to blaming others for your unhappy feelings? Are you addicted to a relationship that has run its course but you are still in it? Do you use anger or tears, attempting to make others responsible for you? Are you addicted to illness as a way to avoid personal responsibility for yourself? Are you more focused on trying to control the way others feel about you than you are in taking care of your own feelings? How much of your time is spent daydreaming about what you want to say to others or how you wish life was instead of actually being accountable for yourself? How often do you explain and defend yourself rather than being open to learning? How often do you get angry or withdraw to avoid dealing with your present circumstances? Are you doing things that are habitual with your body and or emotions that are not allowing you to be healthy? Is your thinking addictive? Do you have repetitive thought patterns?

To understand if you have an addiction, you need to pay attention to your thought processes which create your behavioral patterns on a daily basis, in order to see if they are motivated by emotions in spite of adverse consequences. When logic is replaced with anger (with or without justification), the result is the loss of one’s well being. Any behavior that is outside of being accountable for your actions, taking care of yourself, and being open to learning about yourself and others, is addictive in nature. All addictive behaviors are attempts to control and suppress rather than learn, governing all that we do. If you are always defending, explaining, resisting, and withdrawing from decisions and situations, then all of your actions are attempts of getting approval and/or avoiding pain. Take a look at whether you react or respond to others. When we respond we are taking responsibility for our situations instead of reacting with emotional repetitive thought patterns that do not serve us.

In order to HEAL you have to FEEL and become aware of your addictions, which is the beginning of learning to release them from your life. Embrace your life the way it was meant to be and deal with your addictions no matter how pervasive they have been. You can achieve your full potential and live a healthy, loving life, without fear when you are able to release all that has been negatively controlling your life and the lives of others that are in it. Changing your thoughts - changes your life. To quote one of my favorite authors, James Allen, “Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it”.

Denise Dema is a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. To learn more about the author and her practice please visit http://www.denisedema.com/ or call 561 212 5550.