9 Practical Steps To Build Integrity

Integrity is a state of being consistent in upholding high moral standards or positive values. In our world of today, integrity has sadly become a scarce value.

If you want to be different from every other person around you and make a change, you need to possess and exhibit integrity. Here are 9 practical steps that will help you develop integrity.

1. Define your values

To become a person of integrity, you need to start out by defining your values. What are the values you want to be identified with? What are the values that you so strongly believe in that you would do your best to defend? Will you commit yourself to them steadfastly even you are faced with unpalatable situations? Define those values right now.

2. Consistence

Remember that a building that remains solid is considered to have a good structural integrity because of its consistence. You have to remain consistent with your defined values! Even poorly constructed buildings last for days to a few years before they eventually collapse. This means that upholding your integrity should be a continuous and daily task. The journey to building integrity actually ends only after you take your final breath.

3. The Enabling Environment

Are your closest friends and associates people with integrity? This is a question you must answer out of outmost sincerity. If they are not, be sure that their presence will either discourage you or become an hindrance to your journey of developing integrity. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are influenced to varying extents by every single person in our circle. This is why you need to ensure that you have the right enabling environment.

4. Discipline and Commitment

Because building integrity is no easy task to embark on, you need to stay disciplined, focused, committed every single day. Discipline is the control that you gain when you enforce rules and guidelines with obedience. If you are going to encounter success in building integrity, you have to inculcate the art of discipline.

Staying disciplined will help you to keep grinding even when you are discouraged.

5. Should you make promises?

A person with integrity always tries to do whatever they have promised. Do you know one of the reasons why they are able to do that with 'ease'? It is because they do not make empty promises. They don't make promises to seem good to others. They are very intentional about every single promise of theirs. They only say it if they think they can do it.

So should you make promises? Well, I think you know the answer to that now. You should only make that promise if you are going to fulfill it.

6. Fulfill your promises

Growing up, 'a promise is a debt that must be paid' was a very common saying our teachers at school would always tell us but a lot of people rarely follow it.

You can learn a lot about a person just by looking at how often they fulfill the promises they make. If a person makes countless promises and only fulfills a handful of them, they most likely lack integrity and are untrustworthy.

Whenever you are not totally sure if you'll be able to do something, never promise. Instead, tell them that you will try your best if you really want to help them. If you succeed in doing it, perfect! If you don't, well you tried your best, you do not owe them any explanation and your integrity remains intact.

7. Know you'll be hated

The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that speak it

 – George Orwell

Many people are going to dislike you when they realise that you have integrity. Some will even go great lengths to antagonize or frustrate you. Now that you know this is what will happen, it is up to you to decide if you want to develop integrity. But trust me, having integrity really pays off! I mean, would you even be reading this if you weren't interested in developing integrity?

8. Emulate a character of integrity

Martin Luther King

Studying a character of integrity and then emulating them is very beneficial. It's better to learn from the mistakes of others rather than falling into the same pits of mistakes that could have been easily avoided.

There are so many characters of integrity like Jesus Christ (he's the perfect example if you ask me), Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and many others. Pick one, study their lives carefully and implement whatever you learn from them in your own journey.

9. Defend your integrity

If you followed all the steps above diligently for at least a few weeks to months, you are already on your journey to building integrity. Who knows, your new reputation as a person with integrity may have been noticed by one or more people.

Now's definitely not the time to rest on your oars yet, it's way easier for your reputation of integrity to be destroyed. You have passed through a lot to reach this point and that should be a motivator for you to continually push forward. Defend your integrity at all cost! And that will make you truly stand out among others.

Thank you for making it to the end of this post. I'm sure that you gained something useful. Are there other steps you follow to develop integrity? Please share them in the comment box below, I would love to learn from you.

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