Episode #58: What is Integrity?

Welcome to Allowed. I’m your host, Caneel Joyce. So we are now in the year 2021, a year that a lot of us thought was going to look different than 2020, perhaps in some really specific ways. I think we’re already surprised by what’s happened. I have been reached out to by many, many of you. And I’m so happy to hear that the last couple of episodes where we’ve covered how to set goals for yourself that are high in consciousness, and really, really aligned with you and who you are in your zone of genius, I’m glad that that’s been something that you’ve really taken on. I know that many of you have set visions for yourself and clear intentions. One of the ones I’m most excited about hearing about is the intention to be open to whatever happens, the intention to go with life instead of fighting life. And there’s a way that we can do that in a very, very creative way.

I bring this up because today’s episode is about integrity. And integrity is a word that is actually the commonly chosen corporate value, corporate values statement that you see pasted on the wall. Integrity is one that, every company pretty much would like to be high integrity. Individuals also tend to highly, highly value this word integrity, but what exactly does it mean? How do you know when you have integrity? Why does that even matter? How can you move into integrity when you discover you’re out of integrity. And really, especially, how can we make this such an intuitive and real-time process, that we can literally feel in our own bodies when we are in integrity, when we’re out of integrity and what is the path toward moving closer to integrity?

So thank you so much for taking the time today to listen to this show or to watch the show, if you’re watching on YouTube or on our website, caneel.com. I’d love to invite you to join us in our mission to spread this work of conscious leadership and to really involve others in our community to find out about this show and to give themselves the gift of greater aliveness and wholeness. So we’ve asked only a couple of times before, and this year, it’s very, very clear that it’s super important that we spread the word about this show, that the stories of impact that this has had on many of your lives has been really quite profound and moving. I would love if you’d please hit subscribe right now, that way you’ll find out as soon as we’ve released the next series of episodes that are all related to this topic of integrity and how to get into it, you’ll find out right away. So please go and hit subscribe if you have not yet done so.

Also, if you’d take the time to leave us a rating, or even better yet, a review, just a sentence or two about the impact that this has had on your life. Some way that you feel when you listen to the show or a concept that was particularly interesting to you, we would appreciate it so much. It really does help others find this show, and that can be a real big gift.

Finally, please do recommend the show to your friends that you believe would be interested. I know that’s how many, many of you have found out about it. And it’s been cool over this last couple of weeks during the holidays, hearing about how you’re beginning to have these conversations with people who’ve been in your life for a very long time, but with whom you weren’t necessarily talking about your own growth and what you’re learning about life and the stories that you tell yourself and the power that you have to really make such big changes. So that’s been very inspiring to hear your stories. And so I’d love to encourage you if you haven’t done so yet, to engage with your friends and share the show with them and bring them into this dialogue with you.

This year, I’m super excited, I have also set some goals. My team and I have gathered together, and we feel so aligned and on fire about what our mission in this world is. And it really is around moving toward wholeness, supporting you in identifying all of those parts of yourself that still haven’t yet been fully loved or integrated. And we know that each one of those pieces, whether you yet know it or not, is lovable and valuable and crucial to what we are all trying to do here on the planet Earth together while we are alive.

So that mission is really, really clear, and from that out came a lot of plans and goals. And I like to consider all of them a hypothesis, a hypothesis for what is going to feel in integrity for us in the future. And we’re going to get creative and we’re going to move toward those, and right now that feels very, very high integrity. One of the things that we do at Kickass Enterprises and how we really, really make sure that our goals are serving our mission, is we’re constantly checking in on, are these plans and goals and dreams, are these still goals that are in integrity for us?

So what does that mean? In simple terms, integrity means that what you say you will do, you do. It’s as simple as that. You could think of it as a form of honesty, but there’s also something about integrity that’s about wholeness and integration. Integrity means we’re not leaving something out. It means that we are not unnecessarily dividing things into arbitrary categories. We’re actually uniting through integrity. And there’s a strength to that.

When we’re in integrity, we literally feel this strength in our bodies. Energetically, we are able to receive power and energy from source, from the earth, literally the ground below us. And our energy flows freely through our bodies. We feel alive, which is such a great thing to know, because so often we ask ourselves, in life we ask ourselves questions like, is this the right path for me? Is that the right path? What’s the right path? And we think of it as this big decision that’s somewhere out there, far away in the future. But always the next step is the one that’s next right in front of us. And so we can get an inherent sense of, am I on the right path, by just asking our bodies the question, am I in integrity?

So I’m in integrity when I am only saying yes when I mean yes. So what I will say I do, I do, right? I only say yes, I agreed to that, when I genuinely have a whole body yes to that agreement. So being in a whole body yes around your agreements is really key. Now, sometimes we sign up for something, even a goal with ourselves or with our teams or companies, and actually at the beginning, we do have a whole body yes. But as we learn and experiment and actually get involved in taking action in our lives, we discover, hmm, actually this hypothesis, this idea of what we thought was the goal no longer is in integrity for me. I feel I no longer have a whole body yes. So the second I know I don’t have a whole body yes for something I’ve already agreed to, I have now successfully recognized that I am falling out of, or I’m about to fall out of integrity. And from there, my job is to renegotiate that agreement. What this does is it cleans up life.

Now take a look at, flip through your pages of your planner or your to-do list, or even your list of goals, and just take a quick scan. You can do this mentally as well. What are some things that you’ve been telling yourself for quite some time? This is on my to-do list. I’m going to get around to this. I should do it. I need to do it. Are you in integrity with those agreements you have for yourself? Did you even have a whole body yes to begin with, might be a good question. But even if you did, are you now in integrity, or do you have a lot of unkept, so far unfulfilled promises? You’ll know the answer to this question in the easiest way, if you actually feel into it with your body.

So here’s how I do it. And if you’re watching this on the video, you might get a little bit more of a clue about this. I do encourage you to go to allowedpodcasts.com and check out the notes for this episode, and you’ll get a link to our video there. But when I’m in integrity in my body, I feel it in my whole entire center line. Integrity in my body comes in the form of, there’s a certain strength and uprightness. My spine is straight. My head feels level. Without me trying to do anything, it feels accessible, like I know where home is for my body. I know where my spine wants to be. And it lands in that very centered place where my weight is actually being supported by the ground beneath me.

So there’s an ease to it. There’s an ease to that upright, straight posture. And that ease comes from, I am now receiving. It’s so cool. I am now receiving the support of the ground below me, that is holding me up, and I don’t need to effort all of this. I don’t need to be the only one here on my own, supporting my body, supporting my head, holding it all up and together. When I get into that mode, I, in my body, fall out of integrity. And I get tense and I lose that sense of ease and flow where my energy is flowing naturally, and it’s easier, right? It’s that alignment of the spine, the sense of my weight is resting into the floor, but also it’s my rib cage. My rib cage is now activated. The muscles around my rib cage, in Pilates they talk about integrity a lot, and that in Pilates means it’s that integrity around the rib cage. Things are in the position that is the one that is supportive and natural for your internal organs.

So I’m creating this nice, strong, but open container for my heart and my guts and my lungs, my breath, all of those amazing organs that give me my life, those are being supported by my ribs. They’re also being supported by my pelvic floor. So I have a sense of almost like a basket that’s carrying all of my internal organs and holding all of my life force together, but it’s not tense or tight. Why? It doesn’t need to be. I’m not buying into some lie that there’s an accident about to happen all the time. I’m actually at ease, and it feels like there’s an openness in my pelvis. I feel open, and that’s really, really key for creativity and creative action and moving toward our goals, because our creative force really does come from that sexual energy that’s just the creative impulse. It’s the creative impulse that comes from being alive.

So can you see the neat thing about how this is all connected? I am alive when I allow life to flow through me. I am alive when I flow with life. I’m alive when I don’t resist what is. So I’m allowing. Integrity is a form of allowing. I allow myself to actually be in integrity with what I say yes and no to. I don’t have resistance. I don’t fake it, right? It’s real. It’s real. So integrity can really be felt in your body quite easily.

An example of what it feels like to be out of integrity, often it comes in the form of a little bit of a rising up in my solar plexus area, and the top of my stomach and my gut. I might feel a tension in my shoulders and I contract and get ready to protect myself. I might feel a pulling up in my pelvic floor. I might feel some tension or tightness in my legs. I try to grip onto the Earth and on some subconscious level, I’m making up some story that the world is against me, right? I’ve fallen out of trust with life. And once I’m out of trust with life, I mean, everything becomes a battle. So that’s a good sign. That’s a clue, that little bit of tension, that tightness, that lifting, that holding onto my breath, that I’ve fallen out of that place of ease and flow, and I’m no longer in integrity with myself. So it’s very much a moment to moment experience of integrity. And it is so life-giving and healthy.

Integrity matters tremendously also in our relationships with time. So my plans for the future, the way that I experience and hold and understand my past. It matters in our relationship with other kinds of energy like money. So am I actually flowing my energy toward those things which are life-giving for me and others, or am I holding back that kind of investment? Am I putting my life, that particular form of life force energy, that one of money, am I putting that towards causes or belongings that actually zap and suck my energy? Am I putting my time, am I investing my time? Am I investing in those relationships that give me my life force and energy? And I’ll feel when I am, because there’s an ease and a flow to it. And there’s a natural integrity that’s not hard to keep, because it’s what is actually wanting to happen, there’s a natural resonance to it.

This may all sound really hippy-dippy and woo-woo. Fine, point taken, and integrity, to bring it back to the corporate values, is one of the number one most important things in creating stable, sustainable relationships and in being a creator. So when I’m taking integrity, I am taking 100% responsibility for my life and my circumstances, my actions, and my impact, my impact, my intended and my unintended impact.

I’m out of integrity if I claim that anything whatsoever did it and I have no responsibility here. So 100% responsibility just means the pieces that I actually could control, I did. I took creative effort to control those things, to be in charge of only that which I can be in charge of, nothing more, nothing less. So this integrity concept is one I’m going to be doing a series of podcast episodes around, we’ll be giving you some practical tools and frameworks for how you can repair broken relationships, broken agreements, unkept agreements, unfelt feelings. I’ll give you some tools and resources for that. And I’ll also give you some tips about how to have conversations with others and with yourself around how to renegotiate agreements and to get back into integrity.

Integrity really is the through line that goes through all of the conscious leadership work that we talk about on this show. It’s one of the main goals. And I think, this connection between body, mind, spirit, and source and earth, however you conceive of that, that really, I think, illustrates how critical and why that is such a central concept. So this is my interpretation of it. I’ve learned a ton about being in integrity through the struggles I’ve had with my back pain. I’ve talked about those on previous episodes. I’ve talked about whole body yes in episode 39. So again, we’ll link back to that in the show notes.

And if you’d like to, I’d love if you would please remind yourself, to listen to those upcoming episodes on how to actually practically get into integrity in different areas in your life. So just hit subscribe right now if you have not yet subscribed. It’s also really, really helpful in helping us in becoming a part of our mission, to bring wholeness to leaders of all stripes and kind. And again, you are a leader the second that you choose you want to become the leader of your own self and your own life. And I presume that’s why you’re here.

So please do subscribe, leave us a rating, or even better a review, a few words about how this show has touched you, or what’s mattered to you would make a big, big difference. And recommend us to friends, I know many of you have done that. So many of you have reached out and said, “I’m so glad that I got my friends listening to the show. Now we all can have conversations about it.” People said they’ve had their spouses listened to it, their parents. I know that’s been a big life-changing force in my life, too. Just having that team of champions there who’s speaking my language.

So bravo to you. Congrats on making it another year. Here we are together. This is going to be a good one. I’m so excited to be in partnership with you and to share with you with the new things coming up down the pike. You can learn more about that at caneel.com/yes, and I will see you next week. Bye-bye.