How changing your environment changes your integrity - And why integrity & surroundings are part of the same puzzle
Have you ever thought about the power of our environment?
It says - we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with.
But what if that is not only true for the 5 people we spend the most time with, but with basically everything else as well?
With the job we spend time with
With the urban landscape we spend time with
With the people surrounding us, that are not the closest 5 people, but everyone else
With the books, and thoughts, and news, and insights, and furniture, and clothes, and … you get it, everything else that surrounds us
What if these elements shape us in ways we may not be able to explain in the magnitude of shaping and creating?
How business cultures shape who we are and how fast we “adapt” to a new business culture
I became highly aware of that phenomenon when I was working as a research assistant at TUM university. It is a prestigious, entrepreneurial university in Munich, Germany with some amazing professors.
But still, university structures and opportunities of how to construct courses and teach and options for research are limited and preset by university and country rules. You have not as much freedom as you sometimes think you may have.
And when new professors join the university they often had high ambitions of how to change some of those structures, and bring fresh wind into the noble halls of the university decorated with old grandeur.
Would it work?
In the first weeks, they would be making a lot of buzz, speaking openly about what they plan to change, what they plan to create and initiate.
But then? After a short while, they would become like everyone else. Constructed and restricted by the rules of the game. And they would start to bend down given those constructs that you find in universities.
Nothing was fresh anymore about them and they became part of the system, they acted like the system, they behaved like the system. They decided to be part of the system and adapt to it.
There is nothing wrong with it. And I think we forget how difficult it is to remain and have enough internal stamina to not be changed by what we do. And even if we have strong internal integrity, it may be bodily and surroundings-wise impossible to act in a way that gives rise to it.
Can we? When surroundings shape us in ways that undermine our ability to keep integer in all we do? And aren’t we malleable in ourselves in every aspect anyways without having integrity in ourselves for real anyways?
What if we are not made for it? But we need to define being integer anew? if it is not us being always the same but being us always going with the flow of change? Adapting to whatever circumstances come along the way?
But what would that mean to how we define how to live our life?
And is there only one way of integrity or are there more?
Let’s look at the differences:
When is it suitable to stay as we always are?
When is it suitable to stay in change as we always do?
What are elements in our life where we should define integrity as the steadfast ability of ourselves to stay the same and act the same, and where should we define it as our steadfast ability to be in change constantly?
Let’s lok at a different example.
The case of the Politician in a broader spectrum
I am not a politician. So don’t get me wrong. But how often do politicians change their opinions to adapt to what their voters want? In which sense should have a steadfast integrity of sameness of 10 years ago and now and where should it have a steadfast integrity of change of 10 years ago and now? What pieces of their career should be each? Should they believe in always the same things or should they believe in different things? In which respect should they do them? In respect to the votes they receive from voters and their chances of winning elections? Or in the realm of proposing specific political views? Or promoting specific programs that support their political views?
When a politician always cares for childcare. Is that something that they should care about as well in 10 years compared to now? Or did they care for it 10 years ago? What if the circumstances changed? Their own ones - first they were single with little attachment and focus on children, and now they are parents and see how their circumstances shaped their views on having a strong focus on childcare - or what if the world changes - and children are now in more danger to be exploited and hurt? And what if the politician has 10 other items he cares about? For which does he decide to put his focus on given the other ones and the circumstances?
I think we can say, that in the case of his program, circumstances do matter. And circumstances do shape what they propose and promote. In a year of Covid, politicians did not care about many things, but mainly Covid, as it hurt many of us in unprecedented ways. Personal circumstances, voter behavior, world affairs, it all shapes how they put together their program and what they most care about and what kind of strategies they will promote.
Is that really that bad if that changes over time? We tend to value those people higher that have a steadfast belief in something, someone that we can trust to behave consistently?
But is that consistency a consistency we look for in form of what we care about and what we value and what we expect the politician to act upon? Or is that a consistency of another kind?
What if that consistency is not related to the content of the program and strategies, but on the HOW?
What if we value steadfast consistency and integrity not in the what, but in the how? In the values and principles and guidelines in which we do make our decisions? For example a politician may say - I care for our country and so whatever I do is meant to support the country. Well. that is difficult to define? Beause what is the country they stand for? How do they define country? There is no clear definition here. This would need further clarification.
But what if the politician acts with a value of fairness? If he or she looks at a problem and tries to decipher what is fair and what is not fair? Is that then integrity? Consistency in what he or she values? But again, how to decide what is fair and what is unfair? What kind of factors does he or she take into account to determine what is fair? Are these the structures and rules of the country? The legislature? The law that is set in stone for exactly those reasons - to make sure that politicians and citizens of a country act in accordance to the law? To the innate regulations and rules of how to decide and how to determine whether something is fair or unfair?
Isn’t it eactly those rules - as outdated as some of them may be - that give politicians the set of rules to act upon to keep consistent while being in a political service to act upon?
What else could it be? What else would be there if personal rules and guildeines are not possible to be described? Or explained - the values and rules upon which we base their decision making process?
Isn’t that the integrity that we need to stay steadfast for politicians? Because what if we diffuse the inner values and guidelines and workings of a state if we take away the fundament on which it is built? The fundament on how we can expect our politicians to act upon?
How long will the construct that we build survive? How long can we say, it is built on values, on integrity, on guidelines, on law?
Is that the integrity that we need to stay staedfast? That we also kind of expected when professors changed universities, when politicians entered the political game, when we move cities and when leaders change jobs?
That we adapt to the circumstances of the game. And that we adapt of how we make decisions and how we act upon the foundations of the institution we work for.
The rules of the game. When I work for a German corporate company, I may soon make different decisions based on the explicit and implicit working culture that surrounds me each day. And when I work for an American startup Tech company, I may soon become a bit like them and make decisions as they always do make decisions. The system works. No one risks the idea of behaving and making decisions differently. The rules of the game are what make us join those places in the first place.
We feel connected, we feel that what they portray and how they decide and what they promote is what is connected to our own innate values. We care for them as much as they care for them. We build an integrity aligned to their values?
But isn’t that integrity a changeable and malleable integrity again? One that changes with the environment we are in? One that changes with the people and values that surround us? What if I change jobs, isn’t then the value system and guidelines that I act upon different ones and the activities that I care for different ones as well?
What stays then the same? What is integrity then? When circumstances change us not only in what we believe, but also in how we make decisions? When politicians are supposed to adhere to the laws of the country and professors are asked to adhere to the guidelines of the university game and doctors are supposed to heal us in a specific way and based on specific methods? What if we adhere to those new guidelines - in how we make decisions, what we value and how we collaborate with others?
What will that tell us about our integrity? When circumstances change us profoundly? In every aspect of our lifes?
Will we have to re-evaluate what integrity really means? Can we really say that it has these two types of integrity? Or may it be something else?
What if integrity is not the steadfast belief that we may constantly change or not change at all in how we make decisions, and on what we base them, but instead on the choices we make to choose what we believe in to be compatible with what our surroundings and environment choose?
What if we define it differently - if we define it as allowing ourselves to act in ways that are good to us as a human being? That support our innate ability to be true to our innate human nature?
But again, what is that innate human nature? Is it what our rational mind give us as perfect life or is it what our hearts and our bodies give us as the ways to live our life?
And what if what they tell us, what we tell ourselves, is different now than 10 years ago than 10 years ahead? What if that is in change as well?
But would that change the integrity we just defined? The integrity that is integer by choosing an environment that is integer to whom we are?
When we choose a company to work for as it promotes what we love to promote and it has a culture that acts in ways that is aligned with how we act. When we choose a city that acts and behaves in ways that are aligned with how we act and believe, when a political party is aligned with how we think and what we value, when a partner is bringing out in us what brings us to shine and support?
What if integrity is that other kind of integrity? The integrity of aligning inner and outer? In making us swim like the penguin in the water and not fumbling fumblingly in the desert? In making us float through the water of flowing moving flowness? When it makes us come alive not because we are always steadfast in our opinions and what we care for, but in the way we align with our environment and our surroundings and feel to hve a safe space where how we act aligns to how others act and how we look at things aligns with how others are looking at things, and what we care for aligns with what others care for?
Then there is alignment. Then there is integrity. Integrity of inner and outer, an ability of the body and mind, heart and life to be in accordance with each other.
But is that really the only integrity we should count? We should look at?
What happens if we value a human life and then we become part of a surrounding that does not value a human life, not because they do not value it, but because they changed and decided over time, that they devalue a human life? Will we just go with it when we decide that we define integrity as an alignment of inner and outer surroundings? Or will we leave them and try to find another tribe that still believes that a human life is valued and cared for in each sense? But what if we leave, the human life we care for is not cared for anymore, as the surroundings or institutions we were partof is all-encompassing and we don’t have the power to change their power of acting in ways on that belief that can harm not only us but all we care about as well? How will we act then? Will that really be able to build our integrity? Our consistency? With that, we come back to our early definition of integrity. the consistency in believing in specific foundations that are used to make our decisions built upon that foundation. We decide to leave. But what if the circumstances do not allow us to leave? whatif we have to fight? To make a change?
But will the fight that we are willing to take on us be able to be fought without harming any kind of human beings? What if we come to the belief that there are humans that are valued and others that are not? Simply out of the cicrumstances? That some humans changed in order to de-value the human life. And based on our own tribe changing their foundational belief, we decide that we need to fight that change, as it undermines our ability to life in accordance to our innate values. We fight, but to win the game, we need to undermine our own values and hurt human lifes? Will we take that step? Undermining our own values to restore the values and foundational guidelines on which we build upon our decisions and actions?
Will it bring us back what we miss and care for? Or will it make us to de-value human lifes ourselves over time, as we act according to de-valuing human lifes in order to create the very foundation we try to protect? How far can we go doing that? And where will there be spillover efects through our actions that change what we care for? What is important to us? When will we become exactly those that we try to not be and when will base our decisions on those things we try to impede?
But what is integrity then? When we are shaped by our circumstances and surroundings? When we may act according to our beliefs but also against them to restore what we believe in, when we may actively go looking for surroundings that support out inner-outer integrity and by doing so we join companies and political parties we feel connected and aligned to, but through interacting with them and being part of them, they shape us through their implicit and explicit cultures and we are shaped by our surroundings and change in the process ourselves as well in ways that we may not even be aware of. We promote what the company promotes, we act upon values that a political party values, we grade exams as the university system we work in proposes.
It all shapes us, and it all changes us.
Every single day, every single minute, we are changed and shaped by our surroundings. What then stays? Is that integrity? What stays then? With all that changes and is malleable, what is it that stays?
What stays when we saw that we as human beings change as well? When our surroundings change us? When we whom we have been a minute ago is another person that whom who we are now? When we whom we are now, are another person than we will be in 10 minutes?
What is then integrity? How can we define us? is it then something that we innately have? Acting in our own human terms. Like floating water? Like that piece within ourselves that simply acts, free from any inner and outer voices, change expectations, and else. Simply floating in the wind, simple being without any form of adapting and changing, but simpl the being in the raw, genuine moment?
Or is integrity then our ability to shape us and not shape us. To deliberately define our core values upon we want to act upon? And we define them for us. For what we believe in and for what we care? Like that we are kind, that we value a human life, that we are friendly, and curious?
Or is integrity the malleable, adaptable, changeable being that is aware of the dichotomy and complex world we live in, of all that is going on, and decides to act in accordance and alignment with itself in that moment. Combining the floating oneself and the deliberate definition of ones values. Being there, listening to hunches and feelings and simply acting. And the integrity is the being, the acting in that moment. All there is, all experiences, all shaping, all change integrated in that moment. And if that action is a good one, an aligned one, then the body stays in alignment. No weird feelings, no itchy feeling coming up, it floats and the penguin is happy in the water. But whenever there is that itchy feeling, the feeling of non-alignment, then that is the sign of dis-alignment, the sign of dis-integrity. The sign that something is off. That it is on us to re-align and choose a different decision, a different actions, to apologize, or to look deep to it and check, what happened and what we did to someone or ourselves that we lost that integrity? And that it is time to bring that back into this floating mode?
But what would this form of integrity need to stay alive? To be real and graspable?
How can we know that integrity to be place when we are all over? When we follow here and there and one voice or another voice? What does it need to know? Or does it need to know as wel? Or is it pure feeling? No thought? No value? No words? Simple beings? Simple hunches? Simple action? No questioning, no wondering, no defining orderly and constructed values to act upon? But let the foundations on which decisions are based to be defining itself through the actions we take each day? What defines us when there is no definition? What defines us when there are no words?
What is integrity, when integrity is a mere construct for us to give ourselves a meaning?
When it is what it is. A mere word that tries to make sense of the complexity life has to offer and tries to give us clarity of what we care for and what we value by the word itself. What if it is what it is, a construct of the human mind. To bring ourselves in structure and in focus. To not lose ourselve.s To not run errands. To focus and have a purpose and a goal we strive for?
But what are surroundings then? What if we act against our inner integrity to achieve integrity in the form of a steadfast fixed belief based on the expectation society and our position and job expects us to do. What if we act upon that? Isn’t that then not against our inner integrity? When we let our surroundings shape us? When we let ourselves be changed by what is going on around us?
Will we not undermine our own inner being? But what if we are shaped by our surroundings implicitly and explicitly? How can we then force ourselves to create a steadfast integrity when it cannot stand the test of time? When we decide for ourselves to be a steadfast believer irrespective of the change happening to us over time? What do we do to oureslves when we restrict us in that way? When we do not allow for innate change? What if integrity definition one on a steadfast not changeable integrity is in sharp contrast to the steadfast changeable integrity of ourselves? Can they co-exist? When can they do that? And what does it tell us about ourselves? And what if we create tension in our inner selves as we act against our own inner integrity to create a steadfast not changeable integrity but act against society and the inner workings of what holds us together when we stay true to our inner integrity and act solely on it?
What if there simply is not that one solution, neither is there this one integrity and neither is there this one way of right or wrong? What if it simply depends?
What if it depends on ourselves in how we want to define it. And what if we act on spectrums. What if we make ourselves aware of those various, malleable and changeable factors that determine how we act and what we care for and on which foundations we build our decisions?
What if we define some key values we care about right now and use them as guiding principles for our own actions. Those that have proven valuable to us in the past, and those that we have acted upon in the past. We keep them as lights for us to make it easier for us to make decisions, as we know that they treat us and those we care about well. And we integrate those that we may need given the society we live in.
And then we free ourselves from them. And we act according to our inner integrity. We simply are. But whenever we have a tough decision to make and we are unsure about it, we can defer back to the values and guildlines we have given and losely defined for ourselves.
And when we work for a company, when we are politicians, and when we are professors, we seriously look at how they become at the institutions they work for? How do they think? What do they value? What is important to them? And based upon that careful analysis, we decide - is that an environment in which I strive, in which I can best keep and honor and bring to life my inner integrity? Can I be true to myself in that environment? Does it allow me to be who I am. Is the feeling of floating me often feelable and happening? And if it is, fantastic. And if not, it may be time to leave it or change it. And then, in that process of leaving or changing, you will learn a great deal - how will you act when circumstances change? Who will you become when they do? And how will you change what you believe in.
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