Talking truth about "self-improvement" as it relates to health, overall wellness and expressing the truest version of you. This is Marta Mrotek with Something Honest…..

If you’re looking at synonyms for Integrity words like honest and responsible or trustworthy are the first to come up, and they’re all good ones. But I already thought that I was all of those things. My problem was that I felt broken. And if you really want to understand the work we’re doing here there’s another definition that explains how this principle can help put us back together when we’re falling apart. Integrity is a state of being whole or undivided. It doesn’t just point to our weakness or faults. It can fill in the cracks and make us stronger.

Hi Everybody, this is Marta and we are laying some groundwork for the Integrity Challenge with some of the benefits, some information about when and why to practice and a journaling exercise for getting ready to create a purification ritual. You might want to go back to the Integrity Talking Points if you haven’t listened to it yet. But if all caught up and ready to go a little deeper, I hope you’ll stay with me until the end for my answer to our challenge question for this week and some ideas for how you can respond.

We’ll start with some indications, and not just feelings but also some characteristics that point to when and why we might need to work on energetic alignment. Then we’ll talk briefly about the benefits and we’ve got a journaling exercise to take a slightly different view on the inventory.

So, let’s look at some of the characteristics and emotions that might indicate an immediate need for purification practice so that you can use them as reminders to start changing your state. One of the most common indicators for this one is Dishonesty.

Indications for Practice

Dishonesty. And maybe something a little more subtle showing up as unethical behavior, or insincerity or just the desire to withhold the truth. There aren’t many obvious physical symptoms for this one but there are habits that most of us can recognize if we look for them. Now right off that bat I want to say that you don’t have to tell everybody everything. Your business is still your business and you don’t owe the world a full explanation of what’s going on in your life. As a matter of fact, I think we can actually grow our pain when we’re out there repeating all the details of everything that’s wrong every chance we get. It’s something that I still have to consider carefully when I share my story. At one point, I took a break from telling it just to make sure I wasn’t affirming it in any way. So when I say withholding the truth I’m talking about keeping important information away from someone who needs it or using that as a way to hide something.

We’re not always talking about great big lies that are intentionally deceitful or harmful, those are usually pretty easy for us to see. Even if nobody else knows and we are using them to cover up something that we’ve done wrong, we know what they are, and we can probably at least admit them to ourselves. But sometimes we tell, you know, those little white lies, with good intentions, and it’s easy to explain them as one of the ways that we protect other people, and ourselves, from embarrassment, or something else that we might consider harmful, or uncomfortable or awkward. And there can be a big gray area here. Some of these really might be harmless and in some cases they might even be appropriate. But sometimes they’re related to a false storyline that we like to repeat. And that has a lot to do with the idea that we’re all addicted to living a lie. Most of us have a certain image that we’d like to project and when that image doesn’t line up with who we really are we tend to make stuff up that fits. We might just change little details about our story to make a point, or we might create entirely false events that we think prove our point more strongly. And while it might not even be all that harmful to anyone else this kind of deception is almost always harmful to us at some point. Even if we’re never publicly exposed and we can keep those secrets, we still have to carry them, and it is a burden. And again, there are subtle variations to this, sometimes the lies we tell ourselves are the ones that hurt us most. And they might just be little thoughts that go through our heads saying that we’re not good enough, or strong enough, or interesting enough, or damaged enough to be interesting. Sometimes we actually look for things that we can use for excuses to explain our behavior and even if we never say them out loud, if we’re using them to hide the truth, they’re still keeping us from expressing who we really are…

You might think none of that applies to you. There was a time when I didn’t think it applied to me either but when I took a closer look I could see how my efforts to protect the people that I love where all wrapped up in those well intended lies that led to enabling and codependency. And I’m not saying that’s what it is for you. It might be something totally different. Your job is just to get clear about it and be able to admit it, whatever it is, at least to yourself.

Another indication that might not exactly show up as an emotion is irresponsibility. We talked about this quite a bit in the Talking Points Episode and how so much of this has to do with your ability to respond. I don’t think there are very many people out there who are irresponsible on purpose. I think there are lots of promises broken and commitments ignored by well-meaning people. I used to have a really hard time accepting that. I saw it as laziness mostly. I absolutely could not understand why people couldn’t just follow through and do what they said, and I still have to work on not being judgmental about that. It’s one of my thought patterns that leads straight to building resentments. I’m over driven by my desire to be there when people need me and looking for ways to carry someone else’s burden. To a fault. Like, I’m not bragging about that, it’s a problem. It took a long time for me to see that differently and realize that everybody’s programming is different, and people weren’t necessarily dropping the ball because they didn’t care, but because they didn’t have it in them. They weren’t lined up with that energy, for whatever reason they simply could not respond effectively.

Yogic philosophy talks about both sides of that coin. And it can apply to us whether we tend to over or under respond. It starts out pretty simply in relationship to stealing. And I know that might seem unrelated at first, so just stick with me. It’s good for us to explore since we’re working on Integrity. And depending on the person we may or may not have to admit to this one. Maybe you have physically stolen concrete items from another person and that’s one of the harms that you have on your list. But what if you haven’t? Or what if that was a long time ago or just something doesn’t seem like it’s a problem for you? One of my favorite things about this kind of self-study is moving from what’s really obvious and working my way toward what might be hidden. There are lots of different ways that we can steal that don’t have anything to do with what most of us consider theft. Sometimes we steal from other people in ways that seem almost insignificant, like stealing their time when we show up late, or coming up with a really good excuse for not following through on something that we said we’d do. But sometimes it’s even harder to recognize, the one that got to me most is when I realized that every time I took responsibility for something that wasn’t mine to change or carry I was stealing an experience from the person I thought I was helping. All my enabling and excuse making for other people, all of the covering up and picking up pieces behind the scenes was at least in some way delaying an opportunity for them to grow. And I don’t really think of myself as a controlling person but that’s what it was, I was trying to control something that didn’t belong to me and in the end, I was stealing from both of us. I wasn’t lined up with the right kind of energy either. I was over responding and overprotective and I terrified by idea of what might happen if I loosened my grip. I think so many of us walk around thinking that it’s our job to keep everything together. And some of us were programmed for that as children. I know I was. But it’s exhausting, and usually a losing battle, and often it turns out that we’re not really helping at all, we’re just prolonging the inevitable and making things worse. In my case, even though I thought I was being ultra-responsible I had it all wrong. Nobody was getting stronger, usually we were both getting weaker and that’s our last indication for this practice.

Weakness. Weakness is almost a dirty word these days and while I don’t think we should be calling that out in other people I do think that labeling it as such a terrible thing makes it much harder for us to recognize it in ourselves. Sometimes this can be one of those more physical symptoms and I’ve got to say that if it is for you there are a couple of physical solutions to explore. This is one of those times where it might make sense to go see a doctor first, maybe you go get some bloodwork done to make sure there’s not an obvious disruption in the body itself. And that might include going to see a mental health professional. There are real physical and mental conditions that can play a part in this and none of that is anything to be ashamed of, it just makes sense to make sure everything is working the way it should and to do it now so you can start healing and then you’ll be able to investigate some of the more subtle aspects of whatever is coming up for you.

If however we’re talking about weakness as something more like an emotion or a character flaw the “cure” almost always has to do with energetic alignment. Either there’s a connection that needs to be repaired or a truth that needs to be acknowledged or a confession that needs to be made. It’s not a one size fits all answer so you might have to practice looking inside and lining things up to recognize what needs changing.

Benefits of Practice

We can move through this pretty quickly because most of the benefits are just the exact opposites of the indications.

Strong and Responsible. Alignment practice makes us strong. The process of purification helps with that, going back to the analogy we used for refining metal to make it stronger or the process for purifying water and how that relates to finding clarity. They’re simple examples but they go a long way to explaining how we can improve our response ability when we line up with an energetic source.

That leads to strengthening the connections that make us more authentic, more ethical, and honest and sincere. When you start moving energy more effectively and getting in touch with that truest part of you on a regular basis the desire to hide yourself starts to fade. The burden of carrying secrets and covering things up becomes way too great and pretty soon your motives are pure and you’re crystal clear about what needs to be confessed or amended. We’ll talk about that a whole lot more in the Humility Episodes in couple of weeks but for right now, I guess that’s our last benefit for today and it’s a big one! Integrity exposes who you really are and who you were always meant to be.

We’ll start taking a deeper look at that in just a moment. You can always just listen along but even better grab your notebook and we’ll work on an exercise that helps to get prepared for practice. First, we’ll pause for a quick break. We’ll back in 60 seconds or less with some starting trigger journaling that applies directly to working with the Principle of Surrender..

We’re back and working on a journaling exercise for confession. So this journaling that we’re about to do sets us up for the Practice Challenge where we’ll create a Purification Ritual that leads to Energetic Alignment.

Purification Journaling Exercise

Sometimes I actually call this one the Confessional. Again, if you are working with a sponsor in a 12 Step Program you’d do this part in person. And if you have a religious or spiritual tradition that includes formal confession now could be a good time for that and this is a good way to prepare for it. But if you’re working on your own for general wellness and you don’t have a someone to talk to about your inventory this is a powerful method for officially making that admission to yourself. And this is one of those times where I really do recommend pausing here and there so that you can write or listening all the way through, but then going back to go through the exercise on your own.

You’ll want at least one, or maybe a few loose pieces of paper, it doesn’t really matter what kind because we won’t be keeping them but just give yourself plenty of space to write and don’t worry at all about how this one looks. The exercise starts pretty simply by turning back to those pages that you wrote when we were working on an inventory in the Study Journal for Courage. Whether that was a week ago or even if it was just an hour ago you want to read through what you wrote to see if you can find anything that might relate to weakness or a simple inability to respond effectively. If you find something there that does point to a physical or mental condition or symptom, take a quick note, without creating any kind of excuse, for you or anyone else, but just to see if there really might be a valid reason for what happened. If something new comes up that’s not already on that list, you can add it now. Knowing that all of this works for both harms and resentments. Was there anything going on with you, or the other person, that could be better understood as something that comes down to a real energy issue? And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about physical energy or something of a more metaphysical nature. You’re just looking to see if something like that might explain what’s on your list. Taking quick, very factual notes as you work your way through.

At this point you’re working pretty methodically, not doing a whole lot of thinking. You’ll just move straight to looking for areas that apply more to enabling or withholding information. Starting back at the top of the inventory, considering that idea of stealing opportunities for other people to grow or learn or have their own experience. This is usually something that had good intentions behind it or maybe something said or done to protect someone. Again that could apply to your motives or to the other persons. Knowing that you might write some of these down more than once, there might several explanations for whatever happened so it’s okay to write it again. Just taking notes as you go, again not looking for excuses but to see if there might be an explanation in there somewhere.

Next, starting at the top again and taking notes for anything that might be related to self-image. These might be outright lies, or over exaggerations, either to prove a point, or to cover something up, or in an effort to hide something about ourselves, or to project an image of ourselves that really doesn’t line up with who we really are…

And then before we get to the last part of this you might want to see if there’s anything left on your inventory that didn’t fall into any of these categories. Anything that’s still sitting there unaddressed and if there’s something specific that comes up that might explain a trigger or a pattern that led to it, or anything else that comes to mind and just make note of it.

Okay, we’re going to go through just one more time and whether you’ve already written them down or not this time you’re looking for anything that stands out as a secret. And maybe this time including why you think you’ve kept it secret.

When you’re all done you might have a slightly different perspective on your inventory but even if you don’t you’ll want to save these loose pieces of paper, we’ll use them again so just put them someplace safe for now. If any of this writing brings up something that’s emotionally charged or painful use what you’ve learned from what we’ve already done to change your state and to look at it more objectively. And if it’s extremely difficult or painful know that you can always stop, reach out for whatever resources you need to process and heal and then come back to this practice with us when you’re ready.

Okay, we’re ready to go back to our Challenge Question for Integrity.

Since we’ve already been asking, “What next?” from the beginning, “How do you know the next right thing?” might seem like an easy question to answer. I guess the deeper question is how do you know what’s right? And how do you know what’s next?

For me knowing the next right thing is all about listening to that part of me that always knows what’s true. If we’re really honest with ourselves we do know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and we know what needs to happen now and what can wait. Impulsivity and procrastination both play a part on this one in my life depending on the circumstances and my alignment with Source Energy. I know I keep coming back to it but usually if I can quiet down for a few minutes the answers come. Sometimes I know what needs to be done at some point in the future and I have to remind myself that I really am just asking “what’s next” in this moment and just interested in what needs to be done right now.

Come find us. Join Facebook Group so we can talk it over together. We’re out there on so many different social media platforms.

So many thanks to all of you for listening. Make sure you’re set to get notifications, come back for the Integrity Challenge Episode and make sure you get all THREE Integrity episodes for more on how to start living in alignment with who you were always meant to be.

Check our links in the description to find show notes on the Something Honest Podcast Page and go to wellnessmeetings.com for more about the Wellness Meetings Method….. Something Honest is a Wellness Meetings production with original music composed and produced by James Mrotek at Mrotek Media.

This is Marta Mrotek sending out so much love and gratitude. Until next time, let’s get to work on being well.