Have Integrity: Finish What You Start | Personal Development Tips

As someone who has been in the self-development business for over a very, vert long time… I’ve just about seen and heard it all.

One common thing that I see again and again–much to my heartbreak–are those people who start either mine or someone else’s program that they told me they had signed up for, but then either didn’t attend, dropped out early, or just simply blew it off. It happens all of time. The sense of urgency that made them want to start in the first place gets lost. It really is important to finish what you start. Why? It’s a matter of one word: integrity. We all should have integrity.

Why It’s Crucial to Have Integrity in Work and in Life

One definition of integrity is being honest and having strong moral principles. These are of course important, but the other definition of integrity is being whole and complete.

When you don’t finish what you start, you simply lose pieces of your being; of who you really are in your completion. That doesn’t feel very good and it certainly doesn’t do you any good if you want to succeed at anything.

When you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, you lose confidence. Confidence comes from the Latin word confidere, which means to trust. When you don’t do what you said you were going to do, or you don’t complete what you said you were going to complete, you start losing confidence in yourself. That cuts off your intuition, impedes actions negatively, and gets you stuck in the wrong habit cycle if you ever want to be consistently happy.

When someone else doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do, what happens? You think, “Ugh, how unreliable!” Do you think it’s different for you? When you don’t do what you said you were going to do, pretty soon you start feeling really bad about you.

Conversely, once you start to do whatever it takes to keep your word, you feel good about yourself. That’s going to spill over into every other part of your life. True or true?

What’s Stopping You From Finishing What You Started?

The question becomes: what is stopping you from completing what you said you were going to do? Which part of you is not supportive of you keeping your word?

Sometimes it takes a lot of effort and time to uncover our unconscious motives and agendas, but just as patterns build up over time, we can also consciously break them.

We all have these parts of us; the wizard, the nurturer, the lover, and so on. Here we’re dealing with the warrior. The warrior is a simple principle that says you must keep your word. Your word must become law in the universe for you.

From here on out, whatever it is you start: a book, a self-development course, a frickin’ jigsaw puzzle … you finish. You don’t do it for the book, or the program, or for whatever the outcome. That’s a byproduct.

You do it to keep your word and have integrity.

If you cannot do what you said on the small things, what makes you think you’re going to do what you said on the big things?

“Do you know what? I’m going to make $1 million this year.”

That’s a big thing that you just said. At the same time, you just said that you’re not going to drink Coke for the week, and what did you do? The next day you were drinking Coca-Cola.

The key to life is to discipline the part of you that is trying to take you out of your success. Put yourself into some practice.

Exercise: What’s one habit that is really not supporting you?

Is it looking at your emails on your computer as soon as you get out of bed, before you even brush your teeth and go to the bathroom? That’s a bad habit. That just sucks, okay? I know because I used to have that habit. A lot of people do.

Tame one unsupportive habit for one week to gain confidence and trust in yourself. Start with something doable. Tell us how it goes. We want to hear from you!