The Baack Paack

One of the groups that I, and many members of the BaackPaack are affiliated with is called the Be Your Best Foundation which puts a great deal of focus on the notion of personal integrity.   Until recently, I never really applied “integrity” as a guiding principle in my life, and I have to say, now that I do, it has made a very positive change.

Looking at the definition of the word:

• 1.

  the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

  2.

  the state of being whole and undivided.

Most people immediately resonate with the first definition. Words such as honesty, high morality, & principles all come into play.
However, I never really thought about the second definition and how to someone on a journey of transformation, the second definition is just as, if not more, impactful.
As we travel though life, we often see each action, or events in our life as unassociated with the rest of our life.  Most define ourselves by work, and then have “separate” lives outside of that world.   “Hi, I am James and I work in IT..”  Only after follow up questions do we get to what James does in his “personal” life, does he have a family, does he like to travel.. etc.  However, what I have come to realize is that all of the parts of our lives, from time put in to scurrying for work, to the time running on the trails, are part of the collective whole.  Trying to distinguish between them, or separate them, infers a a level of priority, which is why many of us fall down in our personal life as we treat our personal life as SECONDARY to our professional life.  And most justify it, rightly so, since the professional life generates the income that we can then spend during our personal life.

We wake up, eat, slam coffee, get dressed, take care of a myriad of family duties, possibly do the daycare shuffle, and then jump back in the car to drive to a place of employment.  From there we work 6 – 12 hours, then do the steps in reverse.  We land at home (as we drive very fast on the way home to get their quicker for some unknown reason), only to decompress into a pile on the couch or our favorite easy chair.   Mentally beat and physically tired, we then make a conscious detrimental decision to not take care of ourselves and exercise.
“I am too tired..”
“I am too stressed..”
“My back is sore from sitting all day..”
Followed by a quick promise of “I will work twice a hard tomorrow.”  Feeling content with our decision, we change out of work clothes and start the evening routine of watching TV and consuming the evening meal.

Tomorrow rolls around, and the same routine presents itself, only this time, you are twice as upset with yourself, (only for a few minutes) and promise even stronger effort on day three. Day three gets here and you don’t even have the internal conversation about exercise, as you have become weary of beating yourself up about it.

Sound familiar?
This was a way that I lived my life for YEARS.  I am sure many of you can relate as well.  Internally, I knew that I needed to do something, however, I lacked something that kept me in the “state of being whole and undivided”.  I lacked the ability to treat my personal well being with the same importance of my professional well being.   I lacked Integrity in my personal life decisions.