At times of unprecedented uncertainty created by the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, many of you are sitting at home wondering when will this all end? What is the prolonged impact on your life, and what will the future hold for you.

Here is the Good News!

As a human being, you are equipped with powerful tools. One is your ability to adapt, change, and find solutions to challenges presented to you. But, what most of you and companies struggle with is knowing how to apply those God-given abilities with integrity.

Why?

Because you can’t fake integrity! Building a reputation of integrity takes years, but it takes only a second to lose. With time passing by, people don’t remember your successes of failure, or what you did or did not do for them. They’ll remember you by how well you treated them and how you made them feel.

I often teach my clients; success comes and goes. Building a reputation of integrity is what changes, saves and transforms your life for better and forever. It is wise never to allow yourself to do anything that would damage your honesty, for it creates negative karma that destroys the results of all the hard work you may have put all your life.

Your dishonesty is what breaks partnerships that can transform your life, and damages all of your relationships, especially the one you have with your body, mind, heart and soul. The consequences of your lack of integrity are far-reaching. They will show up in your life as physical health problems, business failures, loneliness, rejection, lack of meaningful relationship, separation from the people who helped you get where you are, financial problems, relationship conflicts, and being seen as fake.

In the last few weeks, I have had an increase in clients booking Skype sessions looking to overcome fears, doubts, and clarify what it is they must do now to transform their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self. Many of them experienced emotional charges associated with the current crisis, conspiracy theories, and the loss of identity and income. Others were searching for ways to re-invent and better adapt their business in the new conditions and help them put in place a stage plan for when all of this will be over.

Most of these people who booked are confident, strongminded, and success-driven CEO’s of prominent corporations, business owners, professional people and entrepreneurs who put growth, wealth and integrity high on their priority of values.

But, as I started to question particular actions, choices and decisions they call came to acknowledge the lack of integrity within their values. It showed up in their way of being, doing, and thinking about the long term cost of not upholding their values.

Here are the top five behaviours I observe over and over in my clients, businesses I have consulted, and the people I meet daily that are guaranteed to damage your integrity and alter your long term achievements and success in life:

1. Telling lies to mask your insecurities, intentions, and toxic behaviours.
2. Crossing personal, professional and business boundaries and manipulating others to get what you want.
3. Going silent when you are not honouring your promises and contractual agreements.
4. Ignoring people’s messages, calls, and personal or professional responsibilities.
5. You talk the talk, but you don’t walk the walk.

Before sharing the five reasons on how integrity can transform your life, let’s look at what integrity means. Integrity stems from the Latin word ‘integer’ which means whole and complete. So integrity requires for you to develop an inner sense of ‘wholeness’ and consistency of character.

In my upcoming book “The Unfakeable Code” I share how people can visibly see your integrity through your actions, words, decisions, methods, and outcomes. When you are ‘whole’ and consistent, there is only one you show to the world. You bring that same you wherever you are, regardless of the circumstance.

You don’t put on a mask to feed your disempowered persona’s you may have developed since childhood. You don’t leave parts of yourself behind. You don’t have a ‘dating you’, a ‘family you,’ a ‘social you’ and a ‘work you.’ You are YOUR UNFAKEABLE AUTHENTIC YOU all the time.

Given the real definition of integrity, you may recognise that it is challenging to be in honesty 100% of the time. This is why so many of my clients have taken the stay at home opportunity to focus them on doing the inner work focused on mindset and spiritual transformation.

And here are five reasons why integrity can change, save and transform your business, personal and professional life.

1. Your masked personas can mess up all of your critical areas of life by justifying your actions and behaviours using the “I am honouring my values” excuse. But your true, unfakeable, and authentic being by default aspires to be in integrity with what you and others value. It makes every effort to communicate in other peoples values and create win-win-win situations for all concerned.
2. It is a scientific fact that emotions get the best of you, can cause physical, emotional and mental illness. You feel unable to manage your behaviours, actions intentionally, and don’t permit yourself to be your true self out of fear of what others may think. Being in integrity with yourself helps you master your emotions and truly ‘integrate’ the various parts of yourself into ONE, complete WHOLE person you show to the world.
3. No matter if you are someone working for a company, a solopreneur, business owner, or a leader of a country, people don’t collaborate, engage, or trust those who lack integrity. Showing up with integrity consistently at times of crisis and blessings will lead to being known as someone they can rely on, trust, and go to for advice, service or shoulder to lean on.
4. How others view, you can close many doors or open many opportunities. It’s one thing to ponder how you think you’re perceived, but quite another to know for sure. Talk to your spouse, friends, coach, manager, employees and network contacts outside of the company about what you don’t and do well. Make it a priority in daily living with integrity, and it is what people take into consideration how they view you. Do actions that restore broken relationships and trust.
5. Living with integrity improves your ability to live and lead authentically. How honest or accurate are your behaviours, activities, and words with other people that you interact or influence depend on your intentionality and thought? I consulted recently with a CEO who on our initial session told me how much he cares deeply about values. Yet on further questioning, he realised he is out of integrity because there is a lack of honesty and authenticity in how he behaves in his everyday life. While he said that he cares about his relationship, he communicates aggressively when challenged and spends very little time with his family. While he said he cares about teamwork, he doesn’t listen to others and gets defensive when challenged with different views. He kept preaching about creating a culture of love but publicly criticises and demeans employees he had no time or respect.

Integrity is about being the same regardless of the situation. If your mood changes by the day and make rash decisions on certain days, yet calm and engaging on other days, then you are inconsistent with your actions, values and outcomes.

To remain in integrity is a conscious choice that you are capable of making every single day, even when the situation or environment is not great. You will recognise a person with integrity no matter what the environment is, being with family, friends, church, or at a boardroom. You will observe the consistency in their behaviour, actions, and words.

Working on living a life with integrity not only develops your character and wholeness but also determines how successful you become in life. You can build your integrity through various means, such as reading, getting coached, listening to the counsel of others, going to personal and leadership development courses, and reflecting daily on what is. It is not working in all of the critical areas of life.
The more you live with integrity, the more you enrol others to be on the same journey, the more others are drawn to you, the more opportunities you attract, and the more you inspire others to be on the same route of a lifelong pursuit of ‘wholeness’ and ultimately, INTEGRITY.

With love and wisdom
Tony J. Selimi

P>S. Don’t suffer alone, during the Corona Virus lockdown and stays at home period, I work on a virtual basis with clients all over the globe, facilitating the realisation and accomplishment of their business, personal and professional goals. To book a real-time Crisis Management Sessions and solve your immediate problems via Skype, providing there is a compelling fit of values and vision, please email my PA at info@tonyselimi.com for payment information and arrange your Skype session.

What thoughts go through your mind when you hear the word “coma”? Do you joke about it, or do you take it seriously? At difficult times in your life, do you find yourself asking the question why am I in this situation?

If the answer is YES, then you are ready to wake-up your truth, from living an illusion and being in a “technological coma” that is stripping you off your true identity, your freedom, happiness, and most importantly the time you have left in this world.

Truth is, for many of you, the word “coma” is associated with someone who has had some kind of accident or life-threatening illness that stops them from responding to any outside stimulus such as touch, voices, other sounds, or any sort of activity going on nearby. Some of you may even jokingly use the word “coma” to describe people who don’t pay attention, are sleeping deeply, or not fulfilling their true potential.

But the kind of “coma2 I am talking about has nothing to do with effects of a physical injury. It has to do with:

The psychological, behavioural, and habitual changes that are happening at a speed of light due to rapid social, technological, and economic advancements are forcing many of us to be glued and married to our phones, ipads, and countless applications designed to rob us off or priceless time and give us an instant dopamine fix.

Recall the last situation that you were in. Where you on a date, with a friend having dinner, in a social gathering, family event, or at an important meeting at work? Now, see if you can recall how many times did you or the people you were with checked and did some kind of activity on their phones?

Do you or did anyone you were with took the time to switch-off from technology and the associated applications that increase your cortisol levels thus inducing more stress and anxiety in your life?

Did you know that by not doing so, the message you are subconsciously sending to the other person when you constantly check your phone for facebook updates, what’s up messages and Instagram likes is that of “ I have something more important to do, I value something else, I don’t value your time, etc.” The bottom line is, the other person may come to their own conclusion that being with you is a total waste of time and you don’t truly value their time and them.

Perhaps you have a friend who on moments notice cancels that movie-date, exhibition you were looking forward to seeing, or simply catching with them over a coffee and decides to honour another engagement. If you do, then you may want to look deeper within you the reasons this person is still in your life.

Over time I have let go many people whose behaviours and values were different to mines and the kind of meaningful, trustworthy and loving relationship I love enjoying in my daily life.

The countless dopamine fix behaviours we have developed are not only destroying the social fabric of a healthy society, business success and the relationships we have built over a lifetime, but they are also fuelling the global problems that mankind is facing and is looking to solve.

Some to mention are the threat of terrorist attacks, extremism, extreme levels of poverty, unfair wealth distribution, the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, supply of clean water, providing universal primary, secondary, and university education, managing cultural, generational and gender differences, dealing with high divorce rates and instilling the morals and ethics in the “millennials” that may save humanity from destroying itself.

In my multi-award winning book # Loneliness, I call this new phenomenon, the virus of the modern age. If not caught, stopped, and cleaned in the now, it will continue to spread globally at uncontrollable rates infecting everyone with behaviours, beliefs, and actions that may take mankind into an irreversible trajectory of self-destruction.

This new gold rush for dopamine fix is also affecting every family, every relationship, and every business across the world. Many business leaders and CEO’s that seek my help to address various personal, leadership and people problems felt that many of their workers are asleep.

Some event felt that the “millennials” are to blame because they are a generation of entitlement, narcissist, self-focused, and lazy people. Unless this problem is addressed and alleviated in the now, many people will lose their jobs, some businesses will stop to exist, and those who survive will deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Perhaps now is the time to wake-up humanity from this coma that pushes us to seek friendship in social networks with people we never met, create and buy AI pets, sex, sales, police and soldier robots to satisfy our endless needs.

Recently I gave a TEDx talk titled “Technological Armageddon: A Wake-Up Call” based from a chapter in my book #Loneliness that so far hundred thousands of people have watched and shared it across various social media channels. In a nutshell, this talk is a global call for us to remember what makes us human being and not human doings that we are more and more forced to become.