What Do All of These Issues Have In Common?

Consider the following symptoms that most of us either personally struggle with or read about on a daily basis:

• Not eating enough food that gives you what your body needs – or overeating
• Not getting enough sleep to function well
• Not exercising enough to maintain your strength and stamina
• Not doing what you tell someone you will do
• Ignoring your own personal boundaries and become resentful and depleted as a result
• The high divorce rate
• Over-consuming on the one hand and poverty on the other hand
• Internet spam and scams
• Global warming and littering
• The AIDS epidemic and other health crises
• Chronic over-spending and debt by individuals, couples, businesses and governments
• Corporate greed and government corruption
• Fanaticism and terrorism

Virtually all of us know we have big problems today; individually, in relationships and collectively. We focus on coping with them and surviving despite them. We use aspirin to cover up a headache.  Media sound bites oversimplify stories because they believe people do not want to understand issues deeply enough to develop educated perspectives about what real solutions might entail. We look for quick surface ‘fixes’ and when we don’t find them we blame others for the problems rather than joining together to co-create solutions that resolve and transform the issues at a root cause level. This ‘quick fix’ attitude pervades every realm of Adult Development: personal, relationship and leadership.

The work I have done for over three decades with individuals, couples, families, businesses and leaders has taught me that a single theme ties together all of these seemingly separate symptoms. This theme reveals a way to concurrently solve all of these problems, rather than continuing to merely manage each symptom separately as though it is not connected with the others. It is something each one of us can do a huge amount about in our own lives. In so doing, we can also have a considerably more far-reaching impact than we might have believed we were capable of having. I would even go so far as to suggest that this common denominator is the holy grail of personal, relationship and leadership development.

You Are Part of the Solution to the Global Lack-of-Integrity Pandemic

What is the common denominator to which I refer? It is integrity, or a lack thereof. I am fascinated by how many people find the word “integrity” vague and difficult to define.

The opposite of integrity is just as confusing. There are so many variations of being out of integrity that we have created many different words for the opposite of integrity: corruption, dishonesty, manipulation, lying, etc. These words only illuminate specific aspects and flavors of lack of integrity. I am fascinated that there is no English word in common use today that captures the full spectrum of the opposite of integrity.

There is a term in the field of linguistics called an “Empty Category.” It refers to any phenomenon that exists for which there is no word to name it. When this is the case, it becomes much more difficult to recognize, talk about, and do something about, or with, the phenomenon.

Because there is no word for the full-spectrum opposite of integrity, our current global pandemic of lack of integrity is difficult to recognize, talk about, and do something about. How odd that a phenomenon this widespread and far-reaching in its impact has no name! I find this fact even more fascinating in light of having observed throughout my professional career that all forms of individual, relationship and collective suffering seem to be responses to lack of integrity.

Lack of integrity is, of course, nothing new. It has existed throughout history, cultures and religions. What is new is that we live in an age in which we have collectively gathered so much power from science, technology, and global interconnection, we now have the capacity to damage or destroy far more of humanity, and indeed our planet itself, with our lack of integrity.