Jean Edelman Word of the Week: Values

Take Time To Boost Your Shield of Integrity This Holiday Season

Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. This week, my word is integrity. As we are coming to the last weeks and days and hours of the year, I think it's time to really think about our integrity, what are our true values and what's important to us in our life. When we are presented with choices, do we choose our integrity or do we always compromise? The rewarding life is an authentic life, and that is the one where we can be our true selves and speak what is important to us.

And so our action item for this week is to think about times when we have compromised our beliefs, our integrity. How did we feel? Was there fear if we were going to speak up? And what prevented us from speaking up? This life, our life, our journey is about learning and learning about ourselves. And there's going to be ups and downs and sideways and backwards. It's going to be all over the place.

Remember, the goal is to be our true, authentic self. And especially as we're here in the end of the year when we're getting tugged in so many directions and places, we need to stop and really figure out what's important to us, what do we want to put our energy into. Where do we want to spend our time? Integrity.

So my word of the week is VALUES.

The V is for Valor, courage, because it takes a lot to speak up and share our deepest feelings.

The A is for Achieve, a successful conclusion. This is what we want.

The L for Lead, to guide. In most situations we need a leader, and the leader is the one that we know is standing in their truth and knows what they want and has a direction for us. And so be the leader.

The U is for Unique. We are one of a kind, extraordinary, and we need each other and we need to speak and share what's important to each other so that we can understand each other a little bit better.

The E is to Endorse, to support and affirm who are we at the most important moments in our life if we're being pulled around, We don't have an answer to that question. And so it's time to stop, put our feet firmly on the ground and figure that out.

And then the S is for Shield. To protect and defend, we need to defend ourselves from hurtful and harmful and stress and too much time here or there and things that are not important to us. And so build that shield, build that shield of integrity, of self-knowledge, of knowing what's important to ourselves, where we want to spend our time, who we want to spend our time with. Build that shield and know when we want to deflect and when we want to accept. 

Remember, if we're not caring for ourselves, we cannot care for others. Have a beautiful week, everyone.