Cognitive dissonance occurs when you do something that is juxtaposed or contrary to your beliefs and core values. Integrity allows you to minimize cognitive dissonance and will help you stay true to yourself.
Integrity is the trait of being truthful and possessing morally upright values. This means that people of high integrity will do actions based on what they believe in, and will honestly present themselves to other people. Not only that but people with high integrity will always be accountable for their own beliefs and actions.
Like all hard and soft skills, instilling integrity will take effort and time. Not only does this require the person to set their own personal objectives and goals to better themselves, but it will also require the person to make conscious decisions in their actions.
Begin by conducting self-reflection exercises and examining the actions you do every day. You can do this through journaling and meditating on the actions you have taken in a day. Doing this will help you gauge your current trajectory in relation to your integrity.
After you have reflected on or examined your own actions, you must write down or examine the beliefs you hold. This will help you create a reference for all the beliefs you hold, and will help provide explanations and context for your everyday actions.
Learning a skill or instilling a value will take a long time. This means that the person will have to consciously spend time working on themselves. You can ease this process by having an actionable plan or outline.
Another way of developing integrity in your life is to spend time with people who have high integrity. These people can help influence your actions and steer you on the right path.
Integrity vs. despair is the final part of a person’s psychosocial development, which deals with the satisfaction of life. This stage asks the question, “Did I live a meaningful life?” which will push the person into two different modes named integrity and despair. Integrity indicates the person believes that they have lived a meaningful life after conducting self-reflection and introspection. While despair indicates that the person believes that they have not lived a meaningful life after having done some self-reflection and introspection. This stage will end with the person’s overall satisfaction in their life, with both integrity and despair acting as the positive or negative direction of a person’s satisfaction. Note that the person’s position during this stage is not fixed and may ebb and flow in either direction. Another thing to note is that this final stage of psychosocial development occurs in people aged 65 to death.
Integrity is the attribute associated with a person’s standard in their work. Being able to indicate your own shortcomings and problems to your co-workers and bosses is a great example of having integrity in the workplace. Another example of integrity is in the taking of accountability for the actions you have done in the workplace, which is highly associated with the trustworthiness principle of integrity. When dealing with academic integrity when it comes to school work, scientific work, or academic work, one needs to be able to provide sufficient evidence and backing for their work.
There are four principles that are associated with integrity in the workplace. First is, to be honest about yourself and how you feel in communication and interaction. Integrity is being able to be transparent about your character when interacting with your colleagues, bosses, and clients. The second principle is, to be honest about what you are saying to other people. Integrity is closely related and correlated to the standards one set for themselves in work, being able to communicate without any ambiguity prevents any misunderstandings from happening. The third principle of integrity in the workplace is being able to be accountable for your actions and mistakes. People with integrity will often be upfront and honest about the mistakes they have done and will do their best to fix or alleviate those mistakes. The final principle of integrity concerns itself with the trustworthiness of the person. A person with high integrity will do what they say and will deliver their output on the agreed-upon time.
Integrity is a core value that focuses on the beliefs and standards held by the person. This is a very fundamental core value as it is connected to the person’s ability to be accountable for their actions.
