integrity

I have a thing about telling people I’ll come to parties/ get togethers in advance but when the time comes around I’m tired from work/ insert other excuse.

One of my not so redeeming qualities =(

Hey Dad

I’m sorry about the phone call last night. I realise you just wanted to talk to me. I don’t apologise for how I feel though.
I worry about you. Both you and mum actually, with the amount of drinking you guys do. I feel fairly isolated from you and would love to spend more time hanging out with you, however feel that the amount that you drink somewhat limits your capacity to communicate with me and me with you.

In my “ideal world” neither you or mum would drink regularly. I would be able to have a relationship with you that had a foundation of love and mutual respect, not what I feel it is now – that you need to rely on alcohol to enjoy mine or anyone else’s company.

You’re a good person dad. You say that you don’t care how long your life is as long as you’re enjoying it while it’s happening. If being drunk is what genuinely makes you happy then I will have to deal with that. I really don’t think this is the case though.
I want you around, I want to be around you. Just understand that if you’re choosing alcohol to make yourself happy over a relationship with me (i can’t speak for Robbie) then that’s your choice.

I love you, I just wish you’d meet me half way here

Caitie

asserted myself. and here I am. Happy on my high horse lol

Let those people in my life that I feel I’m comprimising my integrity for, know that what’s happening is not ok with me anymore. If that doesn’t help things then let go.

One of the my major learnings from the ManKind guys has been the concepts of accountability and integrity. This is something that has I guess been peripherally important to me in some way but has come into incredibly sharp focus through a lot of the processes I’ve had drilled into me.

Basically I am accountable for every agreement I make, to myself or others. My integrity as a man rests on this accountability and if at any point I lose integirty, or am out of accountability, I need to make up for it in some achievable way.

The continual application and practise of this has made me very aware of when I am making verbal agreements, when I am being wishy-wasy/non-commital and when I am agreeing to do something that I have no intention of following through with – lying through my teeth.

I have a tendency to blame circumstances, situation, forgettfulness, any number of external things in order to justify or explain myself not keeping agreements but this is giving my balls away and not accepting ownership of my integrity.

• Accepting that I am out of integirty
• Considering what I made more important than keeping the agreement
• Seeing how this pattern plays itself out in other areas of my life
• Considering the impact that not keeping the agreement has on myself and others
• Making a new agreement which I CAN keep in order to regain my integrity

I would invite you guys to consider my integrity in our relationship and if at any point you feel that I have not kept an agreement, bring it to my awareness. I will only do the same for you with invitation.

In addition to external agreements with others I have been applying this process to agreements that I make with myself – or to make it up to myself when I give in to fear instead of beating myself up about it and creating more mental negativity.

Simply accept.. “OK, I was unable to follow through with that.”
Through acceptance of this basic data I can then clearly consider why I was unable to (usually the ole’ deepest fear rearing its head), percieve what the effects on myself and others were on this particular occasion, acknowledging that it is an expression of the patterns I am trying to overcome and then giving myself an achievable, usually soon or instantaneous, goal to complete instead. The charge around that incident is then resolved and will not contribute to accumulation of negativity (Eckhart’s ‘pain-body’).