I read a chapter in Stephen Covey's "The Speed of Trust" today, and while I'm not big on self-help literature, I did find something valuable in his chapter on integrity. Covey suggests that the reason we have so many little laws and rules in society and our everyday lives has to do with the degree to which we do not trust ourselves or one another to make the right decision and stick to it. Instead, we comply with the rules we have to to avoid completely screwing one another over, but it kills a lot of time and energy to do so. If our word was our bond, we could get so much more done.
So Covey starts talking about being a congruent person, that is, a person whose actions and words are reflective of their intent and belief. It's not a novel argument, but I like that he talks about the positive side of integrity rather than focusing on hypocrisy, which is a lack of self-congruency. My experience tells me that focusing on the problems with ourselves and others usually ends with an increased sensitivity of our failures, but little in the way of progress. I know this because, for most of my life, I have been both incredibly negative to myself, and have not been particularly good at enacting the changes in my life that I want to see happen. Even during this time of Lenten Commitment, all I see sometimes are the ways I fail to live up to my expectations. It feels like I should be running more, spending less, and studying more. But this kind of thinking is not helpful at all.
I am not a terribly self-congruent person. I've been prone during my lifetime to lie or fudge the truth to make myself look better, especially when lying to myself, and all it has ever done is make me feel like crap. No change, no improvement, just self-pity and self-criticism. I won't say that is completely a thing of the past, but it is something I'm working on everyday, particularly right now.
One of my reasons for blogging is that I want to be more real, on paper, with myself and others about who I am. What I do not want to do is spend my time focusing on how bad a person I am or can be. Instead, I want to talk about what I'm doing to work on it. First, I'm understanding that I do not control the universe. I am not the center of the universe. How I act affects others when they are dealing with me, but it would be narcissistic to think that I am the most important person in everyone's story. With that said, I am looking at becoming the person I see myself becoming rather than trying to convince people I am that person. I want to have a good marriage to a woman I love one day. It is a deep desire of my heart that is unrelenting. I used to worry about trying to get a relationship and keep one, but that's the wrong approach. Instead, I need to work on becoming the kind of man that would make a good partner. I am doing that, and I'm trying not to base my progress on outcomes, but rather on whether I feel comfortable with how I conduct myself with others and by myself. I'm still not great at it, but I can be honest that I don't have it all together. I make impulsive decisions with money sometimes, but I'm thinking about the decisions I make with my money everyday. I brood about what I'm angry about instead of confronting the person directly, but I'm starting to ask myself whether it's worth it to hang on to things. I'm fighting to not beat myself up about every little thing, even though I want to tell myself I'm not good enough every day.
With that said, on day fifteen I worked on a journal article I'm resubmitting, ran a full thirty minutes, and spent $0.
On day sixteen, I took a break from running, I spent $28 (bought gas today), and I'm about to keep revising my paper (on a Friday night, no less).
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