Integrity Ain’t Easy

The real cost of alignment (& the self-trust it builds)

”Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gain.”

-Chris Karcher

“Integrity” is one of those words people love to claim. For a long time, I used the word, but not in a way that was in integrity. I valued it conceptually. I was separated from it internally.

Early in my career, I didn’t understand what my values were. Without that awareness, I didn’t have strong values anywhere. I was operating on default settings: perfectionism, masking, and reactions that felt safest in the moment. I lived on my own from the age of 19. Early in my life, I experienced poverty. I valued being out of poverty more than I valued integrity. It made sense at the time.

However, I started exploring my values, and I began to see the gap. Even just starting to ask myself, I started to see shifts. I began reflecting on whether what I was saying, the choices I was making, and the people I was sharing time with were in integrity with who I am, who I want to be, and the kind of world I want to support.

That’s when integrity stopped being a word and became a way of life.

My core values: Integrity, Accountability, Informed Consent

My value system is simple to name and hard to live:

Integrity: alignment between beliefs and behavior
Accountability: owning impact and repair
Informed consent: clarity, transparency, and mutual agreement

Once I started taking those seriously, change followed. Not the cute kind. The kind that costs you things.

Because integrity is inconvenient, it removes your shortcuts. It demands that you stop doing things that “work” socially if they don’t work ethically.

The first thing I dropped: gossip

One of the earliest changes was stepping away from gossip.

I mean gossip specifically. Not sharing information that needs to be shared. Not talking with a friend because you’re genuinely concerned about another friend. Not processing something hard so you can navigate it with care.

Gossip is people building ego and social capital by undermining others.

Once I saw it that way, it didn’t make sense to keep participating. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just incompatible.

From there, integrity pushed me into more direct conversations. More honest conflict. Less triangulation. Less performing.

And then it turned the spotlight onto the ways I fall out of integrity.

My most common integrity failure: people pleasing

My exploration led me to my integrity gaps. For me, one of the biggest was a lifelong commitment to people pleasing. It showed up in the places where I abandoned my truth and my need to manage someone else’s feelings.

It still shows up. It’s still the fastest way for me to leave myself in a room while telling myself I’m “being nice.”

Integrity asks me to notice when I’m trying to be acceptable instead of truthful.

Integrity is most often small, annoying and quiet

What surprises me most is how often integrity shows up in ordinary, private moments.

It shows up in conversations with myself.

Do I stop and grab my sugary caffeine favorite on the way home? Can I wait and make something at home? Can I choose water even though coffee sounds amazing?

This doesn’t mean I will never stop for the sweet deliciousness. I do. Joy matters too. At some point, I might choose sugar-free, and that’s okay too.

The point is the practice of asking. Those questions create awareness. Awareness creates choice. Choice creates patterns. Patterns create a life.

At one point in my life, there were several Dunks stops a day. Shifting to a few times a week aligns with my integrity. It’s also a pain, because once you start living this way, you start seeing how many places you could be more aligned.

And lately I’m noticing it in my body, too. When I’m not moving, I feel out of integrity. Not in a shame-based way — more like honest information. My body is for moving. The practice is learning to choose movement with self-compassion and curiosity, not as punishment, because integrity isn’t a stick. It’s consent to be in alignment with my deepest self.

It feels like unnecessary effort… until it doesn’t.

Where integrity got expensive: job interviews

Some of the most integrity-heavy moments in my life have been job interviews.

For years, I treated interviews like auditions. I tried to be the easiest version of myself: low needs, high output, endlessly flexible. I wanted to get in the door, and I told myself I’d figure out the complex parts later. As a late-diagnosed neurodivergent person, I didn’t have the understanding or language for what was going on anyway.

But neurodivergence doesn’t disappear because you don’t talk about it.

For me, that looked like over-adapting, over-performing, and burning out — and doing it all quietly while telling myself it was normal. I called it professionalism.

It was actually self-erasure.

Learning to negotiate my neurodivergence in interviews has been clumsy. I’ve over-explained. I’ve under-explained. I’ve tried to make it sound “normal enough” so nobody would flinch. This is people-pleasing in a blazer, and it was my default and dress code.

Eventually, I realized that integrity is a form of informed consent. An interview is essentially a conversation of agreement.

So I started practicing clarity instead of performance.

Not oversharing. Not a whole nervous system biography. Just clean language about what helps me do excellent work:

“I do my best work with clear priorities and definitions of success.”
“I’m direct, and I appreciate directness back.”
“If something changes, I work better when it’s named early.”
“I’m highly effective, but I don’t thrive in siloed environments.”

The impact has been surprising. My interviews got better.

Not smoother — better.

Because the conversation got truer. I started seeing the job for what it was instead of what I hoped it would be. And the people interviewing me revealed themselves faster too.

Some teams can answer clearly: how priorities are set, how feedback works, how shifting work is communicated. Other teams lean on slogans and vibes: “We just figure it out.” “We’re like a family.” “It’s always changing.”

If transparency scares them in the interview, it won’t become safe after onboarding.

Sometimes this honesty costs me an offer. Good. Because an offer that requires me to pretend I don’t have needs isn’t an opportunity. It’s a contract for future exhaustion.

Integrity is saying: I would rather be accurately understood than universally liked.

The cost and the payoff

Deep integrity costs you shortcuts.

It costs you social ease sometimes. It costs you the relief of blaming other people. It costs you the option to stay asleep in your own life.

But alignment is worth it.

Because living this way builds self-trust. Self-trust changes everything.

Misalignment is a slow leak.

I’d rather do the work.