According to Oxford Living Dictionary, the word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, leaning whole or complete.  In this context, integrity is the inner sense of “wholeness” deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character.

As such, one may judge that others “have integrity” to the extent that they act according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold. 

This got me thinking about are we really aware of what our own individual values, beliefs and principles are? To what extent are we honest to our self? (pun intended)

Sometimes, we don’t realize that all our lives, we are living based on adapted integrity qualities of others or even worse, we live with our made up idea on how our character should be and try to hold a strong claim to it. This is all fine till there comes a point where we are not comfortable with those values ourselves or fail to act according to those qualities that we claim to have and relied upon most of our lives.

The very definition of integrity means inner sense of “wholeness” which is I perceive as a feeling we achieve when we have discovered, recognize and accepted ourselves for the values, beliefs and principles that we are deeply connected to as individuals. Well, to discover what these personal integrity values are for us, we need to explore. Which is why many recommend travelling. The more time we spend away from familiar routines, the more we learn to embrace the unknown and abandon ourselves into the great vastness of the universe. We give our a chance to explore different feelings, thoughts, experiences and values which to some we may connect ourselves with and realize them to be our definition of integrity.

However, this may not be the only way, many times, we get such realizations through our life experiences that we go through in our daily life, and if we are conscious enough in noticing our own ways of making decisions and what kind of values we assign to those decisions, we will discover our own integrity. This is when we realize how we are unique in our own way of understanding ourselves and the world around us. This values then help us give a sense of integrity (the feeling of complete and wholeness in our life) in which we are comfortable in our own skin  and this then gives us the strength of face any challenges in our life in a more distinct and meaningful manner.