One of the topics we returned to regularly in the nine-month Money Course I took in 2014 was the idea of integrity. Lynn Twist, one of the instructors and author of The Soul of Money, worked for many years with Werner Erhard (founder of EST, which then morphed into Landmark). Integrity is one of the central ideas that much of Erhard’s work revolves around. This six-page article, Integrity: Without It Nothing Works, is well worth the read. In it, Harvard Professor Emeritus Michael Jensen clarifies that by integrity he means wholeness, distinct from the moral conations it’s often associated with. Here is an excerpt:

An individual is whole and complete when their word is whole and complete, and their word is whole and complete when they honour their word. We can honour our word in one of two ways: first, by keeping our word, and on time as promised; or second, as soon as we know that we won’t keep our word, we inform all parties involved and clean up any mess that we’ve caused in their lives. When we do this, we are honouring our word despite having not kept it, and we have maintained our integrity. Integrity in this sense is not the morality of a way of being, but rather defining it in terms of wholeness.

The second semester of the course was dedicated to increasing income.  The instructors outlined ‘The Life Cycle of an Offer’ and identified four phases: Design, Negotiation, Fulfillment and Completion. Integrity is integral to all phases and the math is pretty simple when it comes to increasing income. Earnings increase through the number and size of offers one is able to make and fulfill.

Each category requires its own expertise and competency. They suggested we rank ourselves as Beginner, Competent, Proficient or Expert in each and report on our findings. They also suggested we CELEBRATE whatever we discovered, because without knowing where we’re at, we can’t possibly know where we’re going.

My expertise showed up clearly in the Fulfillment and Completion phases. I’m a ‘starter and a finisher’— a useful combination for the project work I’ve done for most of my working life. I love a new challenge, love to know there is an end date, and I love to learn. And while I’ve done reasonably well in negotiating terms for the offers that have come my way, it’s been me as a hired hand that I’ve been promoting in my consulting work.

Yet I’ve always yearned for my work to be more aligned in me. That I would one day discover that certain something I could love and get behind unequivocally—an offer I could design and call my own. In that realm I was still very much a beginner, and negotiation didn’t yet exist.

This quest to discover what I love brings me back to integrity. Integrity defined as ‘the state of being whole and undivided.’ The most surprising benefit I’m getting from writing my weekly blog posts is the access that’s opening up to aspects of myself I’d forgotten existed. Sometimes it’s a little edgy getting there, but in the end I feel like I’m becoming a more whole and integrated being.

This interview with Jewel – singer, songwriter, author and extraordinary human – speaks eloquently of how she used her pain and struggle to cultivate deep empathy, and her goal of learning “how to avoid being a human full of holes, but a whole human instead”. She closes with this advice:

1.     Work hard.
2.     Be great at your craft and learn your field.
3.     Go deeply within yourself to find your own intuition. This leads to originality so you don’t just succeed, but innovate. There is no single path to success-success is the inner knowing it takes to hold a vision and listen, and the stubbornness it takes to keep standing every time you get knocked down.

How would you rank yourself in the different phases of the Life Cycle of an Offer? Is there anywhere in your life where you feel there’s a gap between who you’re showing up as and who you’d like to be? Let me know, I’d love to hear!