Have You Breached Your Personal Integrity?

Giving your word to something is SACRED. Your word is who you are. When you make promises you cannot keep, you are plagued by guilt. We all are.

If things aren't working out in your life and everything seems to be going wrong then it’s not weird karma or voodoo – it’s because you've breached your personal integrity. What this means is you have broken agreements with yourself or others and have lots of incompletion in your life. By sorting out all those broken agreements , cleaning them up and getting incomplete things complete, you will restore your power again.

Why Integrity is the Source of ALL Your Power

Integrity is not good or bad OR right or wrong. However, when you have integrity – you have POWER. When you say something will happen, and it does, your word has power.

Promises and declarations have no power on a foundation of little or no integrity. The height of madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result – making declarations and not having them happen has you lose faith in your ability to produce results.

So take a step back and ask yourself…

Where are you out of integrity? What is OFF? Are you up to date on your taxes, homework, work? Are you in communication? Where are you out of communication? Where are you hiding something? Where are you showing up late, where do you tell yourself ‘it doesn't matter’?

Start to be aware of when you make agreements and commitments with yourself and others. And STOP making promises you cannot certainly keep WITHOUT saying extra conditional words like:

‘I believe, I am told that, based on the following assumptions, to the best of my knowledge, as I understand it, provided I can achieve xyz, provided xxx happens, I can guarantee yyy, etc.’

This will allow you to stay in control, stay true to your word, and keep your power.

Already breached your integrity?

Don’t beat yourself up – you can reclaim your power. Here’s how to clean up your mess…

With yourself

The mastery of life includes integrity. Integrity is the process of cleaning up the mess you made. We made a whole bunch of agreements and didn't keep them. I said I wanted to be a chemist and never kept that agreement.

I only made that agreement with myself, but I am very important in my life. So I have to get my agreement that it is alright to let that original agreement go. Once I do that, the agreement ceases to exist. I start to look at the things that I agreed that I wanted to be, do and have, and find out that it’s alright not to be, do and have those now, and the agreements go.

With others

I've also made some agreements with other people and I will have to handle those agreements. I’ll have to say to whoever I made the agreement, “Look, I made an agreement with you and what I’d like to do now is not to keep that agreement. I’d like to know what you need in order to be willing to accept that.”

In your lives there will be people that you have an inherent agreement to communicate with that you haven’t communicated with. You've withheld your communication. You can go back and clean up that mess by taking responsibility and communicating with those people.

It may be hard, but it can be simple

If you've left some problems unsolved in your life – and a problem unsolved in your life is one that keeps coming up – you can handle it by expanding your purposes to include solving it. All of a sudden, what was a problem ceases to be a problem. It becomes a part of the solution.

For the most part, simply acknowledging to the person that you made an agreement with that you didn't keep your agreement with them, or that you did something to them, would be enough to clean it up. Essentially, what you do it for is to expand your purposes – which are to make your life work – to include making their life work.

YOUR ACTION PLAN to reclaim your power

Think right now – what agreements have you broken?

Choose one and expand your purpose to include solving that problem.

Get in communication with yourself or the other person involved, using the language in this post. For example, “We agreed xxx, yyy is what happened. I understand that what happened is not what we agreed. To restore my integrity with you I propose the following…”

Of course, be honest here too and don’t commit to anything you can’t do. Set out a realistic solution.

And prepare to feel absolutely incredible afterwards!

There are few things more liberating.

Share your story once you've taken action. I’d love to hear it!

Are You A Giver Or A Taker In Your Relationships?

Some people live life being just on the take – looking at what they can get out of every situation. They’re also not interested in doing something unless they get something in return.

In some way none of us will do anything unless we get something out of it but true joy in life comes from giving without a guarantee of receiving anything in return. Like unconditional love.

If you find yourself being conditional in the gifts you give people i.e. I gave you x, you owe me y then your gift was not given unconditionally.

From taker to dictator

I think self-centered people often wind up taking the Dictator role in relationships. Especially if they’re paired with a giver. This is where `who gets what and how much` is always determined by the taker, the other partner gets whatever the taker decides they’ll get. And that’s that.

This inevitably leads to unhappiness for the taker’s partner. And a failing relationship.

You can’t take and win

This fascinating study ‘Reciprocity is Not Give and Take’ illustrates a powerful reason why takers kill relationships. With a series of experiments, a team at the University of Chicago found that when it comes to social relationships, including intimate relationships, when one side gives, the other side can give equally and both parties feel satisfied.

But when one side takes, and then in return the other side takes the same or receives something of equal value, then the dictator (sorry I mean the taker) is the only happy one left. The other party who was initially taken from is still not happy. It’s just human nature.

So to sum this up, the only relationship that can work and flourish is two givers. But watch out, there are still ways being a giver can be bad for you.

Be a giver, not a record-keeping matcher

Make sure you’re a giver, and not a matcher – someone who remembers every little thing they gave and expects the equal amount in return, or they’re just not happy. This Psychology Today article explains the matcher nicely.

Very often such matchers don’t even express all the things they feel the other party owes them and they become martyrs – always giving, giving, giving and feeling sad and frustrated because the world just isn't giving back. See my earlier post on martyrs here. Don’t become one!

Givers can be taken advantage of

In any relationship the giver is the happiest and also potentially the unhappiest.

Just make sure you’re with another giver, not a taker or a matcher. And the best way to be is always strive to give unconditionally, expecting nothing in return. Except perhaps that warm feeling of giving to someone you love.

Give from the heart because you want to. I think you’ll agree that’s true love and the foundation of something beautiful.

How to know you’re receiving unconditional love

And at the same time respect yourself, don’t be taken disadvantage of and make sure you’re receiving unconditional love too. Not in a tit-for-tat way. But just be aware of it.

When you’re conscious of this you’ll know if your partner is playing the role of a taker and dictator. And you can communicate it to them if they are, because they’re probably unaware of it.

When your partner gives love and is happy, regardless, you know it’s no strings attached giving. And when you mess up, make poor choices, get in your partner’s way, take a wrong turn or sabotage your own happiness and you’re partner’s not disappointed or irritated. And stays right with you, without judging or punishing. That’s another sign you’re not with a taker.

So, are you a taker or a giver in your relationships?

Share your thoughts!

Are You Choosing Your Life Or just Surviving?

One of my clients was so traumatized by something brutal which happened in her life. She dealt with it by swallowing everything down, including alcohol, drugs and just numbing herself.

Many would say she 'chose' her path of destruction

In life this word 'choice' always gets tossed about. Perhaps too much. How we always have a choice in everything we do. How everything we do is our choice.

I believe that on one level but I am beginning to think that true choice is something which becomes available when you’re on the higher echelons of Maslow's hierarchy of needs;

You need to be able to think straight to truly 'choose'

Otherwise we’re just reacting and stumbling along. The thing about being in survival is you go back to basics and consequently have no true 'choice' because you’re just existing to survive. You can't think properly and operate robotically.

Suddenly all you feel you can focus on is getting the basic needs of physiology and safety; sleep, food, sex, homeostasis, safety of body, safety of employment.

All those old stuck emotions keep you held down, unable to rise above survival mode or think beyond it. When you don’t face those emotions and work to release them permanently you’re just stuck struggling to deal with them day by day, while also trying to operate a normal life and survive.

Everything beyond that is way out of your reach, and beyond your choice to have in your life.

Without releasing all those old stuck emotions, you can't choose a different path consciously. You can't just 'switch' off anger, deadness, and coping mechanisms to just be full of happiness or possibility.

Your unconscious mind is driving you blindly

Although you may consciously recognize that you’re on a self-destructive, unfulfilling path away from real healing, you don’t have the choice to get off it without taking the difficult step first to release all the crap that’s holding you there.

So your unconscious mind is robotically taking over and trying to get you through the day. And without any understanding of a real strategy for release and long term healing, your unconscious mind is pushing you to deal with the pain and stuck emotions the only way it knows how – with short term escape tactics.

For my client this was drugs and alcohol among other things.

How to release and escape the cycle

But my client has now been doing this incredible catharsis release process we designed and what is now there is pure sadness and compassion – for herself, others and her family.

She now has a choice!

A choice to take a different path and heal herself. To move beyond this kind of destructive survival mode and cycle, and towards happiness and possibility once more.

And she got there by taking that first bold step and facing those old stuck emotions head on, following our carefully developed release process.

Are you stuck in a similar place?

I’d love to help.

Sick of Suffering for Others? Stop Being a Martyr!

How can you give so much but feel so empty and angry?

Because if you’re a martyr, you’re selfish and you’re not giving freely.

You tell others you are, but you’re not. And because of this you’re suffering in silence… and causing it all yourself.

The motivation of a martyr is to sacrifice themselves for someone else or for a cause – in their relationship, family, friends, work, a cause, or any area of life.

They give give give to feel like a good person. And they tell others they give freely.

But that is a lie

They don’t give freely. They expect something in return and when they don’t get this thing in return they feel empty, tired and angry.

And they don’t let out the anger – because they’re “giving freely” and shouldn’t expect anything in return, right? – So of course it comes out as passive aggression.

Does any of this sound uncomfortably familiar? I see it so often. And if you’re a little bit of a martyr (or maybe a lot) I’ve got some good news for you. You can turn the whole pattern round and let go of the disappointed expectations, anger, tiredness and passive aggression for good. Starting TODAY.

Time to Take Your Power Back

Here’s the key to getting over being a martyr. Remember YOU chose that behaviour. YOU chose to ‘give’. YOU chose to sacrifice yourself. YOU chose it. No one else.

And you forgot that you chose it and now you’re upset when you get nothing in return.

The moment you realise that you chose to sacrifice yourself for someone else, or for a cause, or for your work then you can also choose to stop doing it and take your power back. And you can do it NOW.

Firstly, you have to accept that some beliefs you’ve been living with for years – perhaps your whole life – are just plain wrong. And that can be tough. For example;

Suffering is Not Always Rewarded

Start analyzing exactly what you think to gain every time you sacrifice yourself for someone else. Do you hope to gain respect, a feeling of value, nobility? Or a return favour?

Or does a sneaky feeling of unidentifiable guilt lie behind it? Or undeservedness? Are you trying to prove yourself a good person to yourself, or your parents, or your concept of God?

Remember, all the happiness and richness you can get out of life will not come from someone else, it will come from YOU. By going out and getting it.

Suffering does not lead to joy. If you’re in doubt of this, just think back to when you were young. How easy does a child find it to be happy – without suffering for others. Imagine a child sacrificing everything they want to other children just in the hope the other kids will pay them back and make them happy somehow one day. It’s ridiculous!

Martyrs Are Actually Extremely Selfish

When someone gives a compliment spontaneously and sincerely they’re doing a lovely thing for the other person. When they give a compliment just because they’re fishing for one themselves, well that’s just unpleasant, needy and selfish. Don’t you think?

It’s the same with any sacrifice where you secretly expect something in return. When you give something to someone purely 100% to help them in that moment it’s a lovely gesture for both parties. But when you want something in return, well, you should make sure you say that clearly, because;

Mind-Readers Don’t Exist!

No one can read your mind, and no one knows of these secret deals you’re setting up with them when you sacrifice yourself for them. No one knows of these unfulfilled obligations building up over time the more you “give give give.”

And if they did know that everything you were “giving” came with a debt, they probably wouldn’t accept your sacrifice!

Your Action Plan – Quit Martyrdom and Become Selfless Once More

Firstly, examining your beliefs. And be brutally honest with yourself.

And start setting boundaries and enforcing them with a steel hand;

When you want to say ‘No’… SAY ‘NO’

Don’t be afraid to change the way you act, and the way others will see you. When you start saying ‘No’ others will respect you more, trust me. And when your passive aggression towards them disappears, they’ll love it as much as you do.

And of course, take responsibility for everything in your life. You caused it all. When you accept this, it’s a wonderfully empowering feeling.

Tell me what you think about Martyrs. Are YOU secretly one?

Do share, I want to hear it!