Yes! Exactly! Again, my readers are more succinct than I. And hooray for that. Some of these concepts stretch my brain to the max, it seems. Although from what I’m learning about the brain aging, that is a damned good thing!

I’m definitely putting “walk labyrinth” on the list. But I like your homey, simple one, too. I have thresholds! I can do that!

Absolutely.

I was having trouble expressing myself yesterday. I feel like the essence of it hit me this morning: having integrity is keeping your word, and your word can be applied to just about anything. Taken that way, what you’re writing makes complete sense.

Keeping one’s word implies a commitment to someone else, but the concept can be applied to oneself as well, though I think it’s harder to live up to one’s own ideals. Your Ideal of Me goal, e.g., is ongoing. As long as you’re alive, you never get to cross it off your list unless you give up on it.

Your comments on discipline hit home because I’m 3 weeks into a self-imposed challenge to workout 20 min/day for 30 days. I’m reminded how much I hate feeling obligated to do anything every day even though I initiated the challenge in the first place.

On meditating: it’s not my forte either; labyrinths are cool (used to walk the one at Rose Cathedral in SF now and then); and I find I can do it in conjunction with something physical. Yoga, or even playing Dance Dance Revolution- things that put me in the moment. A quick meditation I like: every time you cross a threshold, stop, take a deep breath, survey the room you’re entering, exhale, and enter.

Definitely!! That was my old acting teacher’s point exactly.

RE: integrity and/vs. discipline, I see where you’re coming from. I do.

Thing is, I have a pretty complete and well-thought-out view of the Ideal of Me. That idea of me includes a me that can live as long and healthily and be of maximum value on this earth as possible. So things I do that go against that violate my integrity. My discipline is something in service (or not) of my integrity. But it also strongly affects my integrity. Eating well is a necessity for my greater-good goal, my integral goal, of being a strong human vessel powered to go the distance.

At EstroFest tonight, we spoke at length about the mind in service of the flesh. We spoke of Ricard and Jill Bolte Taylor and what we needed to do to harness the power of our minds both to calm the distress generated in other parts of our brains and to help our poor, weak, magnificent bodies do more.

Long story short, I’m no meditator (makes me itch, like church) but there may some labyrinths in my future.

My gut reaction to this post a couple days ago was that integrity and discipline are not so intertwined. Mulling it over and considering integrity’s other definitions, I can see what you mean. Still, I consider them to be quite different.

in·teg·ri·ty (n-tgr-t)
n.
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.
(from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=integrity)

One’s ability to keep to a diet or workout regimen doesn’t apply to how I think of integrity (def. #1). You may be violating the integrity (#2) of your body by eating fries, but the violation itself wasn’t a violation of integrity (#1).

If you expand it to think of integrity is as keeping true to beliefs you hold dear, then, as I see it, just because eating a healthy diet all the time would be better for you doesn’t make eating well a belief you hold dear. (’you’ in the generic sense here.) Until you’ve really committed to the belief/idea/change, integrity doesn’t really come into play.

Why does all-or-nothing have such allure?! Is it perfectionism, competitiveness, need for drama…? I heard Mathieu speak at the 92nd Street Y here in NYC and he poked fun at himself for being billed as “the happiest man in the world.”