Beating Cancer in Heels: Do you care about your integrity?

According to Wikipedia, integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, moral uprightness. It is generally a personal choice to hold oneself to consistently moral and ethical standards.

In coaching school, we learned a lot about integrity and just how important it is to keep it. With that said, sometimes life can slap you around and cause you to lose some of that integrity, and when it does, it seems like a whole new world starts to create itself.

When we lose our integrity, we start to pay less and less attention to our morals. This then affects our ethics and when we do it for too long, it will start to affect the people and things around us. So what makes us lose it? I can sum it up in one word, LIFE.

Life happens and at one time or another you might have to make a decision that could jeopardize or compromise your integrity. It might be pressures, depression, self-doubt, carelessness, a change in mindset or just being less focused.

Whatever the reason, people have been doing it for years so don’t stress out if you lost yours for a little while. No one is perfect; remember, you can always bounce back even stronger than before.

As a survivor, I understand what it is to have a “nothing is that serious” mindset. What that means is, if it isn’t going to kill me, I am going to try very hard not to stress out over it.

Obviously, this is easier said than done and trust me, I know. Letting your emotions take over your integrity can disappoint and hurt others but ultimately you will feel it the most.

You are the one that will have to face the consequences and usually the stakes are higher as the years go by, understandably so because the older we get, the more aware we become of just how precious and valuable our life truly is. To put it simply, no one wants his or her time wasted.

Sometimes we need to take a break and work on ourselves before we can work on anything else. Some people can handle doing both simultaneously and others need to walk away and regroup.

It’s up to you to decide what is best and if you can’t see your way through it, you can always seek out professional guidance. Every basketball player knows what his goals are but someone is always going to help him achieve them. This is not a game. This is your life, so let’s get to it!

Now I ask you:

What do you stand for? Need help? Ask someone, what do you value about me? Maybe you are a reliable person or are known for your honesty.

What can people expect from you? Need help? List the qualities you value about yourself.

How important is keeping your integrity to you? Need help? Write down how it felt when you keep your integrity and how it felt when you didn’t.

Are you doing your best to keep it? Need help? Have others mentioned a change in your actions or lack of? Have you noticed yourself not being a person of your word?

That’s it for today, Coachee! Stay tuned for more tips and stories from your Life Coach Marlena!

REMEMBER: Women between the ages of 20-40 diagnosed with cancer get six free coaching sessions through the nonprofit BeatingCancerInHeels.org.

If you are interested in being coached one on one or group coaching with FRIENDS, please contact me at Marlena@MarlenaLC.com. You can also follow me on Facebook, Beating Cancer In Heels and Marlena Ortiz.