Integrity and Completion

Peter Sandhill

Miracles are those things that happen when we least expect them…

When I was 26 I had the honor and pleasure to live and work in Japan for three years. I was teaching English (my profession before facilitating HAI Workshops) at an American University. Before going to Japan, I had completed my teaching diploma and wanted to do something different, adventurous and professionally challenging.

While living in Japan, I met many Americans and, for the first time, fell in love with American people. You see, I'd been brought up in Australia and was taught to be critical of the international actions of the American government. I learned to trust and appreciate my American friends and became very curious about visiting the US.

When my time in Japan was coming to an end, I contemplated going to Europe or the USA for a graduate program. Someone had mentioned an incredibly interesting program on the East Coast and I noticed myself gravitating towards the potential US experience. The more I began to ready myself for a move to the USA, the more I noticed this very deep and complex internal struggle. As I looked I saw that I couldn't 'move on' without going back to Australia to clean up a lot of 'mess', baggage, unfinished business. Call it what you will. The truth is, I had to talk honestly with my family. Coincidentally (or not) a friend visited me in Japan from Australia and shared about this amazing experience he'd had at HAI. His experience of 'choice' at HAI was the single most influential thing that had me enroll, from Japan, for the next workshop I could attend - in ten months time. HAI called me home and gave me some tools to start the process of completing and cleaning up with my family.

When I returned to Australia, I slowly began to demonstrate a whole new level of honest sharing and connecting that helped me move through many challenging past experiences. On this path the term integrity seemed to keep reappearing. Integrity. I began to notice all the ways that I wasn't true to my word, the ways I didn't walk my talk, and specifically all the people with whom I had unfinished business. I came across a tool called the Integrity Checklist. It's a tool or guide to use to clean up the past, to get current, to really move forward. As I began doing this list (it took me five months to really complete it) I began to notice more and more subtle ways that I wasn't actually living the FULL truth or things I just needed to say to people that weren't in my life anymore. I offer you the Integrity Checklist as a possible guide for your growth (below).

The process was one of the most profoundly beautiful I've ever experienced. I bought all sorts or colored paper and wrote deep, truthful heartfelt letters to my parents, siblings, friends - old long lost friends, newer friends - to past lovers, to employers (past and present), even to a school teacher I had in fourth grade. I cleared broken promises from years before, even subtle ones. I discovered budgeting, cleaning (as in house cleaning), filing, honesty and, most of all, love.

Slowly a feeling of tightness that I didn't even know was constricting me began to loosen. I felt a delicate kind of space inside that was new. I handled money, my home, my relationships, and my health - think of it as a thorough spring-cleaning. The things that made this process so powerful for me were that I was patient, tenacious, and thorough. I really took my time - five whole months.

What I received back is the gold that made the process so beautiful. The things people said to me, as they in turn cleared with me, were incredible. One friend with whom I hadn't spoken since eleventh grade was shocked that I had called. Yet he remembered the incident I apologized for and said it made his year. As a result of my clearing with my parents, who had been divorced for ten years, they actually spoke and cleared with each other their hatred and resent. They are now friends again (a miracle in my family). With old friends and lovers who in some way had fallen off the planet, I shared conversations that we were never able to broach in the past. Relief. And poor Miss Edwards who I terrorized in fourth grade - and I mean terrorized. She hardly remembered me but did remember her first year of teaching as the worst of her life. That was largely due to me. She sobbed hearing my words of apology.

Please consider doing the process and see what happens. As at our workshops, expect miracles.

INTEGRITY CHECKLIST

Begin the checklist by inserting the completion date, for the targeted item, in the left-hand column under 'Completion Date'.

Check off each item as it is completed.

Your name: __________________________________________

I now agree with myself to complete the entire Integrity Checklist by:

____________________

Peter Sandhill is a HAI Facilitator.  For coaching and counseling contact Peter at hai.peter@mac.com