An Exercise to Help Identify Your Standards of Integrity

For the Prosperity Pioneer program we are reading “The Energy of Money”. I know, I know, I would never be reading a book by this title myself if it wasn’t assigned reading. It sounds so gimmicky. Plus, the last place I’d expect to find information on personal insight would be in a book about money. But so far I am really enjoying this read. The author mentions, right off the bat, the aspect of the Hero’s Journey, which I find very refreshing. It is exactly the theme that I am coming into knowing more deeply right now and a topic of which I posted about earlier.

This week we had an assignment to read the first chapter which included a couple exercises. I did my reading during the week and as I did the exercise on Standards of Integrity, I felt an emotional reaction afterwards that I was far from expecting.

I would highly recommend you to do this assignment as well, but to get the full impact you have to do it without reading ahead. So if you are open to doing this, please grab a couple of sheets of paper and something to write with. And again, do not read ahead.  Also, if you decide to get the book, it is on page 68.

1. Take out a sheet of paper and on the left side of the paper write down the names of people who have qualities you admire. These are qualities that spark a warm feeling for you and that make you feel like you want to be around them. Go back to your earliest memories and up to now. This list can include the names of family members, friends, teachers, co-workers, and people you don’t know such as authors, political leaders, historical figures, fictional characters (superheroes, cartoon characters) and mythological characters.
2. On the right side of the paper and next to the name of the first person listed, write down the qualities this person has that you admire. Go down to the next person and if this person has qualities that the first person did, then put a check by that quality. If they have a quality that the first person didn’t then write that new quality down. Repeat this process until you have reached the end of your list.
3. Grab a new sheet of paper. Look at the list of qualities you wrote down in the previous step and on the new sheet of paper write down the qualities that you feel an attraction to (even if it’s just a little). It can be all the qualities you just wrote down or some of them.
4. Take a look at the qualities you have written down. This new list you have is a list of the qualities you possess and are called your Standards of Integrity. These are qualities that your authentic self has and when you are acting in a way that does not match your Standards of Integrity, you are likely to feel unbalanced or out of sorts.

This exercise acts on the premise that what you like in others you also have in yourself. It’s the same as when we don’t like something about someone else; we usually have that in ourselves as well. It works both ways. When we are acting in ways that does not reflect our Standards of Integrity, not only do we begin to feel unbalanced, but we can also feel anxiety or depression, and we can begin to see it more clearly in others and begin to compare ourselves to them and feel jealousy and envy.

When I finished this exercise, I began to feel very emotional. Some of the qualities I wrote down were qualities I knew I had but felt I lost. Some qualities I questioned that I ever had. I was able to see very clearly how much my depression and anxiety can stem from, not only my life experiences, but from not being in alignment with my Standards of Integrity as well.

There was also a sense of sadness and joy when I looked at this list. It was similar to unexpectedly seeing someone who I hadn’t seen for a long time. Like when you run into a long-lost friend at the post office or the grocery store. But it was deeper than that. It truly felt like I was meeting the person that I admire most in the world, and then found out that this person was myself.