As a leader, how often do you check in within yourself and ask the tough questions? You know, the kind of questions that require brutal honesty. The ones that pull back the mask, dig deep into the layers, then excavate through the bullshit and noise to uncover your most profound truth.
My guess is … never, or not nearly enough.
Because I see this with every C-suite executive, business owner, emerging leader, and entrepreneur I work with. They mean to, but it never actually happens. They are too busy, or have too much on their plates.
Or, when asked the question, “Are you in integrity with yourself?” … they immediately respond, “Of course I am.”
So, then I ask some follow up questions, digging deeper into the layers, and that’s usually when the wheels start to fall off.
When I start to break down the aspects of integrity and how they feel they are measuring up in each of those areas, there answers become something quite different. “Oh, I never thought about it that way,” they muse, often as the aha lights are starting to come on.
“Wow, I didn’t even consider that,” they continue with both awe and a sense of curiosity (and, maybe even a little shame).
So we begin to excavate.
We start unpacking all the layers and the mask they often forget they are even wearing, and we explore the nitty gritty, the messy stuff beneath the proverbial surface and facade of things.
They get real, and vulnerable, in their truth.
One of the tools I use with every client to help me excavate these truths is Human Design. In assessing their unique energetic blueprint and operating plan, I can gather additional insight into how they are wired and where they may be prone to get kicked out of alignment, thus also then out of integrity with themselves.
Human Design provides a way to connect-the-dots, and help them calibrate back to how they are designed for optimal performance. It helps us understand how they work, rest, and play best.
We take a look at how they access energy, and where they take in others’ energy, absorbing and amplifying that energy, as a result, leading to imposter syndrome and burnout.
Another symptom of misalignment and being pulled out of integrity.
In understanding our Human Design charts, we can better understand what alignment looks like and feels like, and where we are most susceptible to being pulled out of our own alignment.
Where we ultimately are not in integrity with ourselves.
This impacts every interaction, whether it be our relationships (with others, with Source, and with ourselves), our work, our impact, and our purpose.
And, much our conditioning comes from the openness within our chart. These are the areas where we draw in energy from the outside world: from other people, our environments, and even the planetary transits.
The resonating message we receive no matter how our chart is configured is that we cannot live in integrity if we struggle, in any way, with our own sense of self-worth and personal value, or the value of others.
In one Center, in particular, we can learn a lot about the conditioning, stories, and shadows we may be carrying about our own sense of self-worth. This is the Will Center (also known as the Ego Center).
This Center is part of your personal identity story, and it is responsibile for creating on the material plane. Meaning, it focuses on the energy of money, managing resources, the material world, self-worth, willpower, ego, discipline, and sustainability.
Depending upon whether this Center is defined (it appears colored on your chart) or open/undefined (it appears white on your chart) tells us a lot about how this energy plays out in your life.
When your Will Center is defined, you have consistent and reliable energy to draw from, and that you broadcast out to the world. You may even find that you are able to create energy that motivates or empowers others simply due to your presence. You know what to truly value in life.
This is also the center for business and sales, so you may find yourself on the grind, pushing harder and harder through exhaustion. One of the ways you might pull yourself out of integrity is to lose sight of the fact that you need active, consistent cycles of rest in order to be sustainable.
Now, if your Will Center is open/undefined, you find yourself, perhaps, with a different dilemma and different way you get pulled out of integrity. Because you don’t have consistent access to the energy within this center, you borrow it from your external world. Thus, you absorb and amplify the energy in such a way, that imposter syndrome gets activated.
You think you have to prove your worth. That you need to demonstrate a level of willpower easily accessible to those who have the center defined. When, in reality, you are not designed that way. You are here to gain wisdom about how to value yourself and others. To know when and how to best make commitments, that usually need a powerful why for you to be able to sustain staying the course.
It’s only when you know that you are worthy just because, without the need to prove yourself, that you are able to bring yourself back into integrity.
Even within the Will Center, itself, we see the five aspects of personal integrity play out powerfully.
Let’s take a moment to break these down further.
Understanding the 5 Aspects of Personal Integrity
Aspect #1: Physical Integrity
When we look at physical integrity we are talking about providing your body with what it needs for optimal performance.
- Are you getting enough rest?
- Are you nurturing your body with what it needs most?
- Are you fueling your body with nourishing food and energy?
Aspect #2: Resource Integrity
In terms of our resource integrity, we are assessing how we use and leverage our money, time, and material resources.
- Are you investing your money, time and/or resources wisely?
- Are you getting real returns on the investments you’re making?
- Are you serving others from the overflow, or depleting yourself?
Aspect #3: Identity Integrity
This is the level of integrity most of us think about when asked the question: “Are you in integrity with yourself?”
- Are you compromising yourself in order to please others?
- Are you compromising your own sense of self worth, in the process?
- Are you undercharging your prices for the value you offer?
Aspect #4: Moral Integrity
When we talk about moral integrity, we are evaluating your core values and due north. Knowing and standing in what you believe and know to be true.
- Do you have a set of core values or moral principles you live by?
- Do you have clear boundaries around what’s ok for you and what’s not?
- Do you compromise those values in exchange for validation/approval?
Energetic Integrity
Now, we look at how you are making commitments and promises in exchange for the energy you have readily available.
- Are you saying “yes” to things you don’t have the energy for?
- Are you making promises you cannot or don’t want to keep?
- Are you pushing or forcing yourself to have willpower when you don’t?
When you are out of integrity, in any of or all of the areas outlined above, you tend to do one of two things: you either burn yourself out trying to prove your worth and value because you don’t feel as if you’re not enough, or you hide the fullness of who you are for fear of being too much.
Either way, you are operating out of alignment AND out of integrity.
For you have inherent value simply because.
As Karen Curry Parker (founder of Quantum Human Design, and one of the original former students of Ra Uru Hu, founder of Human Design), says: “You are a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event.”
The Universe would actually have to rearranged itself it you were not here, as you are a specific piece of the overal Cosmic Puzzle. Your Soul Purpose, and the work you are here to do, is the work ONLY you can do.
When we operate from a place of authentic integrity, we able able to fully lead from love, with love. Integrity is about being aligned AF.
Are you in integrity with yourself?