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Life Fulfillment Integrity: Integrity Stimulus Plan Key #1

Here is the life fulfillment formula that we as a society have pursued for the past few decades, in the United States and elsewhere: Wealth + Lifestyle = Life Fulfillment...PLUS life fulfillment isn't possible without sacrificing integrity, people and social responsibilty. This faulty formula and its accompanying destructive belief is worse than wrong: it is centrally responsible for the huge messes we are now trying to bail ourselves out of.

In pursuit of profit and lifestyle most of us have compromised our integrity, life fulfillment, social responsibility, sustainable abundance and our constitution to one extent or another. The pervasive and profoundly damaging integrity deficits this has led to are directly responsible for creating our massive financial deficits, our health care crisis, and virtually all of the other challenges we face today. And we all know it. Never in our lifetimes has it been more important to take a fresh look at what does and doesn't create life fulfillment and sustainable happiness. Only by doing this will we discover that we don’t have to sacrifice integrity to attain life fulfillment or profitability. The truth is that sustainable happiness is impossible without integrity.

What Doesn’t Create Life Fulfillment

Life fulfillment distortions create the following integrity deficits:

• Narcissism and Entitlement Are Integrity Deficits: Today's culture of self-centeredness and lack of self-responsibility is directly responsible for the problems we have. Neither narcissism nor entitlement will buy us life fulfillment. What these attitudes will continue to buy us is more of the problems we already have as individuals and as a society.

• Greed and Irresponsible Debt Are Integrity Deficits: These integrity deficits pervade all segments of society. They are directly responsible for creating our huge financial deficits… personally, in businesses, in the financial sector, and in governments. No amount of greed or lifestyle-by-debt can buy us life fulfillment as individuals. Greed and irresponsible debt have purchased our current financial collapse. Continuing to allow financial corruption and continuing to use Debtism as our economic system will buy no one the life fulfillment they seek. But it will continue to sabotage sustainable prosperity in our country and around the world.

• Trying to Make Outer Fixes Fill Inner Emptiness is an Integrity Deficit: Defining self-worth based on outer trappings such as the size house we live in, the possessions we own, the prestige we accumulate, or power we exert over others, is a prescription for never attaining life fulfillment. All strategies to create an outer fix for inner emptiness are doomed to fail. Justifying debt or ignoring retirement planning in order to fund a lifestyle won't make us whole. Overachieving in order to feel marginally worthwhile won’t make us whole. Controlling others in order to feel safe or to prove we have impact won’t bring us the love, safety or appreciation we seek. But all of these strategies will cause life fulfillment to remain elusive.

• Ends-Justify-the-Means Thinking Is an Integrity Deficit: We live in an age of ideological "rightness addiction" in which people believe they are so justified in forcing their ideology on others sacrificing integrity, ethics, and the law for this purpose is justifiable. This kind of ideological rightness addiction isn't healthy cultural diversity: it is group narcissism. This form of arrogance has been tearing our country and our planet apart because it is incapable of helping us come together. Ends-justify-the-means strategies are used by the self-centered and the entitled, the greedy and those trying to fill inner emptiness with outer fixes, and ideological rightness addicts. All faiths remind us that the ends don't justify the means. Ends-justify-the-means strategies will never buy us life fulfillment, and they certainly won’t buy us sustainable solutions to our societal challenges. What both individual and group narcissism will buy us is increasing amounts of resentment and hatred from others, which in turn will cause our problems to continue to grow worse.

What Creates Life Fulfillment

Sustainable integrity-centered life fulfillment is most of all about living in integrity with our three core drives:

1. Authenticity: Being who we truly are, which translates into self-integrity
2. Connection: Bonding with others, which translates into relationship integrity
3. Impact: Positively influencing the world around us, which translates into societal integrity

We feel fulfilled only when we express all three of our core drives, and true integrity is living at the intersection of self-integrity, relationship integrity and societal integrity. This is why integrity and life fulfillment are inseparable. This is why aligning our three core drives forms the foundation we need for getting our country back on track.

The time has come for all of us, from everyday people to world leaders, to re-align ourselves with what creates true life fulfillment, and to re-align America with what creates a healthy society. The time has come for all of us to recognize that the core principles responsible for integrity-centered life fulfillment also create a healthy integrity-centered society. This is why Life Fulfillment Integrity is the first element in the Integrity Stimulus Plan.

What Will You Include in Your Integrity Pledge About Life Fulfillment Integrity?

1. Becoming the Change

Which of your three core drives do you tend to focus on the most and neglect the most?

What specific commitment will you make to become better at honoring all three of your core drives?

2. Impacting Your World

Select a specific action you will take to help upgrade life fulfillment integrity in America. Here are some possibilities:

• Family: I will instill in children in my immediate or extended family the importance of integrity, and an understanding of how life fulfillment, integrity, and their three core drives, are inseparable. 
• Media: I will lobby the media to more thoroughly and regularly cover stories related to life fulfillment myths and the importance of living in integrity with our three core drives. (You can do this by letters to editors, contacting show producers, calling in to talk shows, etc.)
• Schools: I will advocate for integrity education to included in the curriculum of the schools, colleges, universities and/or other training programs in my community, or that I have some other connection with.
• Places of Worship: I will get my house of worship, or my religious or spiritual organization, to sponsor integrity intelligence training that develop the skills people need to live in integrity with all three of their core drives.
• Community and Service Organizations: I will get the community and/or service organizations with which I am connected to promote awareness of what does and doesn’t create life fulfillment or to provide integrity intelligence training.
• Businesses: I will advocate to businesses with which I am connected (as an owner, executive, employee, vendor, stakeholder or customer), to make integrity intelligence skills an integral part of staff development, and to sponsor integrity training programs in the community.
• Internet: I will use the internet to increase people’s understanding of individual and societal life fulfillment issues, and how life fulfillment, integrity, and our three core drives, are inseparable. (You can do this by e-mailing people you know, providing information on your website, blogging on other websites, and/or posting information on social networking sites to which you belong).
• Other: You specify.

Decide who you will contact, what you will say or do, and how this will happen. Then do it.

Revisit your commitments every six months and modify them to keep your commitments aligned with your passion.

Click on this link when you are ready to go on to Integrity Stimulus Plan Key #2: Health Integrity.