The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

Integrity is the cure for unhappiness. Period.

Of all the strategies and skills I’ve ever learned, the ones that actually work are those that help people see where they’ve abandoned their own deep sense of truth and followed some other set of directives.

I know a psychologist who sums up the way of integrity with this succinct prescription: “Know what you really know, feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want.”

Your true nature loves things for their capacity to bring genuine delight, right here, right now. It loves romps, friends, skin contact, sunlight, water, laughter, the smell of trees, the delicious stillness of deep sleep.

When you experience unity of intention, fascination, and purpose, you live like a bloodhound on a scent, joyfully doing what feels truest in each moment.

“I spent a lot of my life lying to get what I thought I wanted. Here’s what I found out: if I live in the truth, I’ll always come out okay. Because only the truth has legs. At the end of the day, it’s the only thing left standing.”

But don’t think that missing your old life means you should go back to it.

There are two questions that will help you differentiate between a white lie and a gray one. First, could you be blackmailed by someone threatening to tell the truth you’re hiding? If so, that lie ain’t white; it’s gray. Second, are you following the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do to you”)?

as you keep making one-degree turns toward integrity, go gently and check in often with your inner teacher.