When you have the answer, ask yourself how much time have you spent in the last few months on what is so important and meaningful to you. You might be surprised to discover that the most important thing in your life isn’t your priority, or at least you don’t give it enough time.
You may find that you are trapped in a sea of duty and obligation, that every day you do what you are supposed to and not what you want or desire. You may even find that your heart says one thing, but your mind dictates another.
This lack of coherence between what you feel and want and what you actually do generates dissatisfaction, frustration and regrets. Feeling divided and realizing that desires and feelings go one way while behaviors and habits go the other, generates a deep inner conflict.
A life full of commitments and sacrifices is not the best way to develop the different roles you take on. That way, when you’re at work, you’ll feel guilty about not spending enough time with your family, but when you’re at home, you’ll worry about unfinished business. So your mind will always be elsewhere. You will never be fully present. And before you know it, life will be over.
To resolve this inconsistency, you must develop emotional integrity.
What is Emotional Integrity?
The more aware you are of your feelings, the more likely you are to handle your emotions intelligently and assertively. Therefore, you will feel more satisfied with the life you lead, which will increase your emotional well-being. However, one essential requirement is required to achieve this goal: emotional integrity.
The concept of emotional integrity refers to the courage to acknowledge our true feelings and desires without judging them through the lens of society. In essence, it means being completely honest with yourself by acknowledging your emotions, impulses, and dreams.
Emotional integrity also involves staying true to those affective states, being able to express them assertively and consistently in our daily lives. It is, therefore, a matter of recognizing what we feel – pleasant or not – and of being faithful to it, despite what others may say or think.
Unfortunately, emotional integrity is an underdeveloped and underrated skill. Whenever a loved one asks us how we’re doing, for example, and we respond with a curt “good,” even though we’re broken inside, we turn our backs on emotional integrity.
When we dare not pursue a dream or even identify what is holding us back, we lack emotional integrity. Even when we’re stuck in relationships and situations that make us uncomfortable, simply because we don’t have the courage to admit that it’s not what we want, we forget about emotional integrity.
What is an emotionally complete person like?
People who have developed their emotional integrity have some characteristics in common:
– Are honest about their feelings, desires and dreams, both with themselves and with others.
– They are not ashamed of their emotions and feelings, nor do they recriminate or blame others for what they feel, because they take responsibility for their affective states.
– They develop an emotional self-awareness that allows them to understand the origin of their feelings and to detect dysfunctional automatic response patterns.
– They face uncomfortable or painful truths, being aware of their shadows, limits and vulnerabilities.
– Pay attention to their emotional needs and try to meet them assertively, without harming others or themselves.
– They plan their lives in such a way that the really important and emotionally meaningful things take center stage.
How to develop emotional integrity without dying trying?
We live in a society that represses emotions, especially those classified as “negative,” so it’s understandable that most people believe they can’t “afford” to express how they feel.
In fact, a study conducted in India reveals that those who live in cities develop less emotional integrity than people who live in communities inserted in natural contexts. For this reason, the first step in developing emotional integrity is to distance yourself from social beliefs about the affective sphere and to stop classifying emotions and feelings as “bad” or “good.”
Robert Solomon said emotional integrity involves living fully, in color. For this philosopher, life contains both the red of fury and the yellow of joy, the blue of moments of happiness and the green of disgust. A life worth living is colorful, which implies not only experiencing and accepting emotions of different colors, but also of different shades and with various intensities. Solomon believed that the opposite of emotional integrity was just a monotonous and monochromatic life.
We need to understand that if we feel guilty about what we are feeling, we will have a tendency to repress and hide those feelings, even from ourselves, preventing us from being emotionally honest. Instead, we must learn to accept what we feel and desire, without judging it. That open attitude is the cornerstone of emotional honesty.
Of course, this stage can be painful because it involves discovering inner shadows, aspects of ourselves that we had conveniently kept hidden because they were not socially well-liked. At this point you may find, for example, that the way you’ve structured your life meets social standards and makes others happy, but it doesn’t meet your deepest desires and aspirations or make you happy.
In a second moment we will have to ask ourselves difficult questions that allow us to question our life. Just keep in mind that there are no right or wrong answers. It’s about connecting with what you feel and want, that part of you that you have been silent for a long time. Acknowledge your needs, wants, drives and ambitions without any judgment or guilt. That emotional honesty will become a solid foundation upon which to make better decisions to more clearly determine your goals and behaviors.
Finally, we need to apply emotional integrity to our daily lives by starting with the little things. When someone close to you asks how you are, for example, answer honestly. It’s true that emotional honesty shows your vulnerability, but don’t forget that it also builds stronger emotional bonds.
Applying emotional integrity also involves rethinking your day-to-day activity to make room for those things that are most important to you and give you genuine satisfaction, because they are in tune with your dreams and desires. Make a list of what you really want.
Imagine the life you want to live, think about what you want to achieve, and visualize the impact of what you want. So reverse engineer your decisions to help you live the life you want, instead of just sacrificing your dreams, emotions and illusions at the altar of duty.
