We all want success. Success at home, at work, in our businesses, in our finances, in our relationships or our spiritual lives. But what is the Essence of Success? What is the one element that’s necessary for us to achieve our goals and to feel that we’re making a difference?
The answer is fairly simple.
It’s Integrity.
Integrity could be described as Honesty, but more precisely, it’s the state of being whole, or undivided. It’s the ability to stand as strong as steel, in the truth, without being pulled off our center.
Bucky, on the Essence of Success
One of my mentors, Buckminster Fuller, wrote extensively on the Essence of Success. He attributed success to having integrity, and he described integrity as “holding your shape.” During an interview in the 1980s, he said, “We are here in support of the integrity of an eternally regenerative universe. Integrity is the essence. In an invisible world, there are no visible aesthetics. In an invisible world, the only aesthetic is integrity.”
What he means is that in the absence of every other asset, you have your integrity. You have your word, which is your bond. You have the ability to keep your promises and do what you say you will.
This includes keeping your word and exercising integrity with others, as well as with yourself.
And from that single aesthetic comes success.
The Essence of Success is Integrity
What does integrity look like?
A variety of circumstances and leadership opportunities will manifest themselves in countless ways, and so, integrity will take many different shapes. It would be impossible to describe every form of integrity. Instead, we can again look to Bucky’s advice. “What you can do personally is commit yourself to what is the truth.”
That’s all.
It really can be that simple.
Define the truth, tell your truth, and live your truth.
This is integrity
It’s important to always remember that we did not invent the universe, nor do we run it. The direction that “the crowd” is going is not always rooted in truth; it’s not always the intention of the universe.
If you follow truth, instead of “the crowd,” you will enter and lead an entirely new era of humanity. And that, my friend, is the Essence of Success.
Extracting the Essence of Success from Truth
Before people see the results of acting with integrity 100% of the time, they often ask, “When will I experience success?”
Let’s use the example of financial success, or accumulating enough wealth in order to feel unburdened and secure, for the short term and the long term.
Follow Your Passion
When you follow your passion with truth in leadership, “It will not be a matter of making a living,” according to Bucky. “You’ll be doing what you see needs to be done because you’ll feel you want to do it. You’ll want to qualify to be able to serve one another. You will have no question at all about earning a living.”
Follow Your Truth
What he’s saying there is that if we follow our truth, keeping our word and acting in the best interest of all involved, we can’t help but be successful. The money will come, and it will come because we have acted with integrity, 100% of the time.
When you think in this way, you are committing yourself to the success of all humanity—and how could that ever be categorized as a failure?
The F Word, in Relation to the Essence of Success
Since I’ve broached the F word, or failure, I think it’s appropriate that we talk about how to turn our failures into successes…and I’m doing that in my next installment.
And let me be clear: I’m not going to talk about eliminating failures or giving up on those things that aren’t working. I’m going to teach you to legitimately put each failure behind you like a course you’ve graduated—and then start anew by creating new and exciting successes. I have a specific formula that’s been proven again and again, and I’m sharing it in Transform Every Failure to Success.
In the meantime, how are you showing up with integrity in your leadership role? And where do you struggle to maintain integrity? Have you made promises you regret? And has that regret affected your ability to lead?
These questions only scratch the surface of the conversations we’re having in the Conscious Leadership Academy, the World’s Best Superleader Support System. Visit essenceofbeing.com/cla to learn more. And don’t forget to join the Healing Forest, Essence of Being’s public Facebook group, where uplifting healing and learning are the basis for growth and the Essence of Success!
