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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Kelley Kosow. Kelley Kosow received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law. She’s a Certified Master Integrative Life Coach and Relationship Expert who specializes in improving people’s relationship with others as well as with themselves.
From 1996 to 2006, Kelley was Founder and President of her own company, Go Goddess!, which created games, books and seminars to empower, inspire and entertain women and girls; a success that attained global exposure. Go Goddess! was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, InStyle, People Magazine, The New York Times, and The LA Times. Kelley is currently publishing her first book with Sounds True. It’s called The Integrity Advantage: Step into Your Truth, Love Your Life, and Claim Your Magnificence.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Kelley and I spoke about her work with Debbie Ford and the shadow work process and how Debbie Ford asked her to continue her work and carry her teaching mantle upon her death. We also talked about how all parts of us, even so-called negative traits can serve us, and Kelley’s statement: “God didn’t create us with any spare parts.”
We talked about Kelley’s definition of integrity, how it’s possible to have quite a lot of integrity in one part of our life and yet not to have integrity in another part. We also talked about the integrity process that she teaches so that we can come into alignment with all of who we are: our greatest truth and vision. Here’s my conversation with Kelley Kosow.
Kelley, to begin with, I’d love to know how the topic of integrity became such a central focus for you.
Kelley Kosow: Well, I used to always think, and I’ve had with my own journey with the word integrity, so I always thought it was this strong moral code and being brought up by a Catholic mother. Then I became a lawyer and so to me, it was all about morals. Then when I started teaching for Debbie Ford and her work, shadow work, was all based in wholeness. One day, I was leading a training and certifying our coaches and one of the students said that he had—because we talked about integrity of work, the integrity of the work and holding the work with integrity—he said, “I looked up this word integrity last night and I saw the first definition was a strong moral code and the second definition was wholeness.” It was like firecrackers went off and bells went off. I fell in love with a word at such a deeper level and I got to understand it at such a deeper level. Because it makes no sense to be in integrity. We need to be whole and the work that I was teaching at the time and any work I will ever teach will always have that component of wholeness in it.
Then, of course, throughout the years, and I talk about this story in the book, Debbie used to always see me as the integrity holder. “Kelley, you’re the one. You’re the integrity holder.” I don’t know if she was projecting on the fact that I was a lawyer or just so trustworthy or whatever. She kept talking, “You’re the integrity holder of this organization.”
Then in my last phone call with Debbie, we chit-chatted and she was near … She was not doing well at the time. After we chit-chatted a bit, she said, there was this pause and Debbie said, “Kelley, you have to maintain the integrity of the work. It’s up to you now. You’ve got to be the integrity holder.” At the time, she was making phone calls to people just saying how much she loves them, saying what she saw for them, all this other stuff and I was a little bit … I knew at that point in time that she was leaving the institute to myself and my partner, Julie Stroud, who was her personal assistant and also on staff with me.
I was a little bit like, “Why didn’t she tell me what to do or why didn’t she give me more?” Then after, of course, her death, I realized she told me exactly what I need to do and what I need to hold and what I need to bring out in the world.
This word “integrity” and then I saw that it was actually more than wholeness and so my new definition of integrity is being in alignment with all of who you are—wholeness—but also living in your greatest truth and your grandest vision. Because if you don’t have that second part, you’re still not really being the true expression of who you are and it’s still going to feel bad to you on some level, and that will whittle away your self-esteem. You always have to have that second component. It’s a lifestyle to me and it’s one that I adopt, one that I share and one that, just, you spiral up in the energy of it.
TS: Now Kelley, I want to get into in just a few moments what this means, this idea of being in alignment with all of who you are and your greatest truth and vision. It’s a beautiful definition, but for our listeners who may be hearing about Debbie Ford for the first time, you’re talking about her death at a young age.
She died of cancer at 57. She developed a process, a shadow work process, and so you were describing that you were one of the lead teachers of this process. I wonder if you can just orient our listeners a bit about Debbie Ford and her work with the shadow and how that plays in here, if you will, to this whole question of what it means to be in alignment with all of who you are and your greatest truth and vision.
KK: Absolutely. Debbie was a pioneer, a thought leader. She wrote nine best-selling books. The shadow is the parts of ourselves that we don’t see in ourselves, the parts of ourselves that we deny, the parts of ourselves that we deem inappropriate. Because we don’t want to be that, we shove those parts of ourselves, we try to hide that, and we create our persona over that. Because at some point, probably at some point under the age of 10, something happened and you decided, “I don’t want to be that.” Your mother yelled at you for being lazy. You stood up in class and you stuttered and the other kids laughed, and you decided it’s not OK to be dumb or it’s not OK to be seen.
Little by little, we whittle away at these parts of our self. I always love to say, “God, the universe, didn’t give us any spare parts.” Our stupid self can serve us. Our selfish self can serve us. All these different parts of ourselves can serve us. Not only do we disown the “negative.” I don’t want to be greedy. I don’t want to be spoiled. I don’t want to be … We also disown our light. We also disown our brilliance. We don’t see in ourselves that we are charismatic or talented or a creative genius. It’s this disowning of these traits; and when we disown them we don’t have access to them.
Shadow work—and some people think, “Oh my god, shadow work, that’s got to be scary or spooky”—but it’s about finding, bringing the light of awareness to the parts of yourself that are hidden in your shadows. We do this in our work because most of … We’re run by our unconscious, so we have to go back and find out what was the event and what were the meanings that you created at the time, which was under the age of 10.
Of course, under the age of 10, we don’t have the wherewithal to say “Wow, my dad left my mom because they were having problems.” We are meaning-making machines, so we think, “Oh, I was bad.” We take it on ourselves. Or, “I’m unlovable. I never heard from my dad again because I’m unlovable.” We want to go back and see what created those meanings, because those meanings are what’s driving our operating system.
Our shadow beliefs become these self-fulling prophesies, because what we resist persists. When we can bring the unconscious conscious, bring the light to what is in the shadow, then we can look at things in a different way. And/or, if we can start looking at characteristics, especially the negative ones, and go, “Well, how could that serve me? How could being selfish serve me?” Well, maybe, it’s a step that helps me set boundaries or maybe it allows me to say no.
The first word … Because I was this very big, perfectionist overachiever. I remember when something happened. Actually, it was my husband at the time. He was going through some business things and I was projecting on him, “Oh my god, he’s such a failure,” and I couldn’t be with the word failure because my whole personality had been built on achieving. Always being on that treadmill. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? Finally, when I embraced the word failure, I was able … that taught me to let go, to finally stop pushing that boulder up the hill. When we talk about shadow work, it is about wholeness. It is about owning all these parts of ourselves—and with our light, which is crucial, to own your light. Especially for people who want to deliver their gifts in the world and want to have their next evolutionary leap, they’ve got to own that part of them in themselves.
It’s like, if I’m going to write a book, and I want it to be sourced, I have to embrace my divinity. If I can’t see it in myself, it can’t come out. Owning our light is so important and a lot of times, we either don’t, because we’re beating ourselves up so much, we don’t see it. Or we grew up in an environment where someone said, “Don’t be too big for your britches.” Or something happened and we decided “Oh, it’s not safe to shine. If I’m at the head of the class, other people will not like me or be jealous of me or talk about me.”
Debbie was really a pioneer, well, a modern day pioneer because, of course, there were other people like Carl Jung, who talks about the shadow. But she was just a modern day pioneer, who started this conversation. Because she would say, “I tried all those affirmations: ‘I am loving. I accept myself.’ And then two seconds later, I’d be beating myself up.” She had to figure out: What was it? And that’s the birth of her shadow work.
TS: Is there a way, Kelley, you could share with us the pith instructions, if you will, for someone who’s interested in doing shadow work and is having the thought, “Well, I understand that there are things that are running my life, that are ideas and beliefs and stories that were formed when I was very young, but obviously, I don’t know what they are because they’re in my shadow. If I knew what they were, they wouldn’t be in my shadow. I don’t know what they are so how do I get to them?” What did Debbie teach? Is there something specific that I could do right now to start uncovering this material?
KK: Well, you can certainly start by … There are shadow beliefs—statements, those “I am” statements—like, “I’m not good enough. I’m unlovable.” Those, if you start looking at, you can start going back and trying to remember well, what was the event or the environment that I was brought up in that created that belief? Then seeing what happened and bringing that belief conscious. Then you want to also, going one step further, going “OK, wow, let me see all the times.” Because our shadow beliefs are self-fulling prophecies. If I believe I’m unlovable, I’m going to go out in the world, and no matter how hard I try to be lovable, I’m going to attract experiences that are going to make me feel unlovable. No matter what it is.
Then you want to, after you can track it, go “Wow, this happened then. And now I can see how that played out here and played out here.” You’re putting together the puzzles of your life. Now what we then explain… Sometimes you need some help to do this because you can’t do it from the part—well, you can maybe—but we want you to go from your mind; your head to your heart. That is why having a coach take you through or coming to a workshop, you’re in that environment because you’ve built up so much resistance to going back and looking at something that you’ve deemed painful or that you can’t see.
Then the great thing is we are manifestors. So if our unconscious disempowering beliefs are becoming self-fulling prophecies, then what could happen, what’s possible if you can take the unconscious belief, bring it conscious and then shift it from disempowering to empowering? That’s what someone can do with a shadow belief.
With a shadow, you want to … Let’s take negative shadows. Those are characteristics, qualities. You want to look at all the traits. These are basically adjectives that you see in other people, that either trigger you or that you don’t like within yourself. If you’re pointing the finger, like I was pointing the finger at my ex-husband saying, “Wow, you’re such a failure.” It wasn’t that I was just in form like, “Oh, wow, you failed. That’s too bad.” It was like, failure. That’s oh, so shameful. It’s the difference between being informed and affected. Or if someone said to me “failure” and I go, “I’m not a failure!” I’m affected by it.
I would write down a list of words, and this is something that absolutely the listeners or people can do. Start writing down all these words that you don’t want to be, and then try to see, “How could that actually serve me?” If I don’t want to be dumb, “How does dumb serve me? Wow. Well, it’ll have me ask questions. I’ll study so hard.” The fact that we don’t want to be dumb or stupid, maybe it’ll have me take other courses, or it’ll help me be humble enough that I’ll seek a teacher. When you can unconceal the characteristics that you don’t want to be, start looking at, “Well, how could they serve me?”
First you want to—it’s a three-step process actually—un-concealing, making a list of those qualities. The second is owning. Being where I am that, so I can look back at my life. Because we want to get to the “I am” part and say, “OK, I can see where I have been dumb.” Then it’s embracing, the third part, embracing, which is finding the gift of the characteristic. If I can find the gift of the characteristic then I will welcome it in and integrate it.
TS: Kelley, could you give me an example from your own life to make shadow work real? How you went through this three-step process related to something that was running your life?
KK: Let’s take lazy: I could never be lazy. I was made wrong if I was lazy. “Oh, you’re so lazy. Don’t be lazy.” I got all those messages as a child and as a result, I am always doing. I never could just put down … You would see me, I would have a computer, an iPad. I was always trying to do the next thing. I never allowed myself to relax. I never allowed myself on a Saturday. I would be working every day of the week because I had made it wrong to be lazy. I was always doing something. And after a while, it got totally exhausting. It wasn’t very fun. Because for me, if I wasn’t achieving … I defined myself by what I was doing, not who I was being. I didn’t do anything to feed my soul. I did everything to add it to, let’s say, my “resume,” because I could not be lazy. I could not take a day off. I could not just take a nap or watch mindless TV. It impacts your relationships because you can’t even just sit on the couch with somebody. You always have to have a computer in your hand. It impacts your health because you’re never taking downtime.
Embracing lazy and allowing myself to do nothing, I actually now schedule “nothing” time in to my schedule. Because I want to protect that, just like I would writing or time to write or something else like that. I unconcealed that I could never be lazy. I can see how I am lazy and then the gifts of lazy. It allowed me to just sit on the couch and enjoy something with my daughters, or to schedule time and do absolutely nothing. Because if I wasn’t working I was always exercising. It was actually quite cool.
TS: That’s good. That’s helpful having that actual example. Now in talking about integrity, you gave this very beautiful definition that it is wholeness, and yet it’s more than wholeness. It’s being in alignment with all of who we are and our greatest truths and vision. You begin your book, The Integrity Advantage, by telling in detail a pretty, I think, moving story from your own life of how you weren’t in integrity in relationship to your marriage in your twenties. I wonder if you can talk about that because I think it’s a story that many people will relate to. Something where they knew that they were not in alignment, but they went forward anyway.
KK: Yes. I talk about that in the book because my voyage into integrity really came from my pain of being out of integrity. Because when you’re out of integrity, it does chip away at your self-esteem. Then you don’t feel deserving and worthy enough to make higher-level choices. At the time, I was 27 years old and I met a man. You know, he can be a great man, it’s just I didn’t love him in the way I should to have probably married him. I knew I was making a mistake. I knew there were red flags. We went to therapy before we even got married. I talk about it in the book how it was like we were going to therapy to save the marriage for the sake of the children, but we weren’t married and we didn’t have children. It was so problematic.
At the time, it was like I was living from my to-do list of life, which probably goes back to my lazy shadow. Check off. I had gone to college, became a lawyer, working at a law firm. What was next on my to-do list in life? Marriage. Children. White-picket-fence dream. I was just moving along and this man came into my life. He swooped into my life. He was fifteen years older. He had his great joie de vivre. It seemed fun. It was fun, but I knew there were lots of red flags.
I talk about on the day of my wedding, because we lived in Miami, I was at his house and my friend had flown in and I had a towel over my head because I didn’t want to be sunburned for the pictures. That analogy of having a towel over my eyes—that was true. That was true about the whole relationship. There were so many things that I had a towel over my eyes about because those warning signs were there. Yet, I just kept going because I didn’t have the courage to live in my truth. I stepped over my truth. That’s a terrible feeling.
It’s happened time and time again. Whether it’s in a job, whether it’s in a relationship, whether it’s saying yes when you want to say no, whether it’s letting … “OK, I’ll do whatever you want,” and then you don’t want to do. Things we do all the time. And then we become the victim of our choices. Then we become angry at someone else, so it’s a real downward spiral.
TS: Yes. I want to go right into this, Kelley, because what I’m imagining is someone right now who could tune into a part of their life where they have a towel over their eyes. Maybe it’s something like, “I know I should really be quitting my job, but I’m not.” Or, “I know I really should be writing a book, but I’m not.” Or, “I know I shouldn’t be eating XYZ food, but I keep eating it regularly, even though I know I shouldn’t be.” I think there’s probably a lot of examples of that towel-over-our-eyes feeling. There’s something we can barely see, but we can kind of see it, but we don’t want to see it. If somebody recognizes something like that in their life, help them walk through the process you teach in the book, and how they can get to the bottom of what’s really going on.
KK: Well, first they have to—The beginning of the book talks about all the different things to … and really, it makes it comfortable for someone to say, “You know what? Me, too.” Because what I teach, I come in contact with thousands of people each year, and that being out of integrity or stepping over a truth or doing something that we know is not in our highest … Every Monday we swear to ourselves, “It’s going to change. It’s going to change.”—to really get just the humanity of that and have compassion and not try to beat themselves up. For me, the process part of the book really makes it safe for people to say, “You know what? Me, too.”
Then the second part of the book, there is a process. First, I call it “getting naked,” and that’s really radical honesty. In order to get where we are, we have to be able to acknowledge where we’re starting from. In the getting-naked chapter, I talk about just acknowledging, and then all the ways that we build these personas or things that keep us away from accepting it. For me, it was that Disney Dream or that fairytale. I wanted to live in the fairytale of one day my prince will come and we will live happily ever after. Getting naked is about just radical honesty with yourself, and I’m always giving people tips on how to get there.
The second part is, so many of us live on some form of excuse. We rationalize. We justify. We have our excuses—and we’ve bought in to so many excuses. I can remember after I got divorced, I kept saying I wanted to get married again. I wanted to be, but it wasn’t happening. If there’s something that—as humans, because we are manifestors—that we desire or say we want, and it’s not happening, then we’ve got to look at, “Well, what is going on?” Of course, something is going on in your unconscious that’s keeping you from what you desire, because your unconscious beliefs are what you’re attracting.
I had to go look, not only at my unconscious beliefs, but it’s what I call “I had to bust my own BS.” Because if you looked at my actions and my choices, they weren’t leading me to meeting people. I would work a few nights a week. I was a great single mother. I would use my children as an excuse and as a reason that, “Oh, I can’t go out.” I would do that. I would pick men that I knew would not end up being long-term relationships, because the writing was on the wall. But no one, especially because I was out there teaching and helping people and being a good single mom, no one would’ve ever said, “Kelley, come on. Who are you kidding?” It’s that level of looking at—of busting—my own BS. There was something else going on, and I had to look at my excuses, my justifications, my rationalizations. Because it’s all about unconcealing at first.
Then the next part of it, we call it “shift happens,” where a lot of people, I don’t think, make the distinction—there’s a long road—between acknowledgement and acceptance. I can say, “Yes, maybe he’s not the right person for me.” But to truly accept it is a process. It’s like, how many women know or men know, “Maybe this marriage is over,” but they’re not willing to get there? That’s where shift happens, when you get to that point of acceptance. We talk about different ways to get to the point of acceptance.
Then the next chapter is called “The Blessing of your Binges,” and it’s going into your emotional world. Because if we are self-sabotaging or if we are in fear of something, there’s something else going on underneath it. For me, I was an emotional eater and every time something was off, I would go right to the refrigerator. There are a lot of people out there self-sabotaging and instead of beating ourselves up for our self-sabotage, for the strategies we use not to feel, it’s about looking deeper and finding and using those as clues to say, “Wow, if I’m stuffing food in my mouth and I’m truly not happy,” or if I’m shopping or whatever it is, drinking. Whatever your self-sabotage is, look at your forms of self-sabotage, not as something to have to beat yourself up over, but as warning signs that there’s something off. There’s some big emotion that you’re not wanting to feel. And using those as times to wake yourself up.
Then I get into really going underneath that. What is it that you need to feel to have a great life? I call it “What is your Soul Starving for?” That’s about, “What is it?” Because the binges, the self-sabotage is a warning sign that there’s something off, so now you want to go deeper. What’s truly your soul’s desire? What’s your truth? What’s your vision?
Then it’s about embracing your humanity, which is just this forgiveness piece, and having compassion for yourself. And really forgiveness is the hallway from the past to the present so you can create the future you desire. You want to go back and embrace your humanity instead of beating yourself up for everything you’ve done in the past. Because you can only manifest as much as you can forgive yourself because you’ll only feel worthy enough of having that. There has to be that hallway.
Then the next part of this process is the shadow part. The power of “I am,” owning that we are everything and embracing the totality of who you are. Then, of course, I go into helping people create the grandest vision for themselves, because now that they’ve cleaned out the past, they’ve owned all of who they are. Now they need to step into what is their greatest truth and what is their highest vision. We have them, in different ways, create that plan and we have a process for that.
That’s about getting into integrity, but one of the parts of my book that I truly love is what I call “The Integrity Protection Plan,” because it’s really that part of self-care and self-honoring. If we’re truly vibrational beings, we need to protect our vibration like we would a newborn baby. I’m very into your “Integrity Protection Plan,” really getting to know what makes your vibration go up and what diminishes it. Who makes it go up? What diminishes it? And really honoring that. Taking on this level of self-love and honoring the wholeness and the fullness of who you are and how to do that. Then that’s “The Integrity Protection Plan.”
Then really it gets into the “Integrity Promise.” What’s possible? When you can stand in the fullness who you are, you can hold that for others. When you can stand in your greatness, I can hold your greatness. I can hold your vision. Then on the other hand, I say integrity is exponential. When you are clean about who you are and you’re in integrity with yourself, you’re going to make high-level choices, because anything else won’t feel good. Then your integrity will expand. You’ll make higher-level choices and your feelings of self-worth will go up. It’s just so exponential that it’s so exciting to me.
It can also be the other way, which can be painful, but when you get it … it’s just a lifestyle that is so expansive and it honors yourself and then you can honor whoever you come into path with.
TS: Now you mentioned that you like “The Integrity Protection Plan,” that this is important to you. What is your protection plan? How do you do that? How do you protect your integrity?
KK: I am very aware of what works for me and what doesn’t. I am very aware of … Homeland Security starts from within. I’m very aware of the people I let around me. I like to say some people belong on the other side of the street. Some people belong in your living room. Some people belong in your bedroom. And some people can come hang out in your closet—and so always knowing that. I say to myself all the time, “Who do I want to be in this situation?” Or I say, “What is in my highest in the moment?” There are some days that I allow that question to design my whole day. Every minute I’m saying, “What is in your highest? What would be the most self-loving thing you can do in this moment?” When I can have my lazy days, going back to my lazy shadow, on my Saturdays, I’ll sometimes let that question guide me, because I could never understand this concept of self-love.
It’s like, all these people are talking about it and am I the only who can’t figure out how to get there? Then I got there. I realized it’s by truly taking on that level of honoring. And, of course, integrity is an inside job. I talk about this in the first part of the book, how we’re all so outer-referred. But any time we’re trying to keep up, it’s coming from a shadow. It’s coming from a place of lack. We all need to take this U-turn back to ourselves and start learning to ask ourselves, start developing that muscle of self-trust, where we’re looking inside for our answers instead of to the outer world for them.
I talk about the fact that we have this “I am” monitor—the Integrity Alignment Monitor—and it always is this beacon if we can tune into it. It’s the greatest GPS in the world.
TS: Now I’m curious, Kelley, when you talk about it as an Integrity Alignment Monitor. Does it feel like something to you on the inside when you’re in integrity and does it feel like something when you’re out of integrity? Is there a different inner quality? How would you describe that?
KK: Absolutely. When I’m out of integrity there’s that gnawing feeling. It’s just like I knew that day that I was getting married with a towel over my eyes. I knew it. On some level, we know it, even if we try to tell ourselves it’s going to work out fine. For me, I do have that gnawing feeling deep in my stomach. I’ll say, “What is it?” Or if there’s some self-sabotage, like all of a sudden I want to go have pizza or something, which I maybe wouldn’t normally eat. It’s like “Hey, what is that? What is that? What am I trying to run away from?”
It is a very calibrating thing to know. These are my mile markers when something is off. All I need is to go inside and say to myself, “What is it? What’s going on, Kelley?” And I can figure out what I need to do to take responsibility. That’s a great thing because it is living this next level of responsibility and great knowing that you have the power inside of you.
TS: There’s a great quote from the book that I thought was very instructive. You write, “Don’t ask, ‘Am I out of integrity?’ but, ‘Where and how am I out of integrity?’”
KK: Yes.
TS: What I really liked about that is there may be parts of our lives—and you write about this in The Integrity Advantage—where we’re really well-aligned. Maybe our work life is very well aligned, but then there may be other parts of our life where we’re not in integrity. Maybe in relationship to our diet, what we eat, what we’re describing. I think that’s very interesting. How and where am I out of integrity? Could you talk a little bit about how somebody might be in integrity in one part of their life, but not in another?
KK: Sure. Absolutely, I had someone come and they said, “I don’t misspend anywhere else except in self-help programs.” I love my self-help programs so, of course, they’re in one of my workshops and they went on and on. “Nowhere else do I overspend, just in this area of self-help. My husband understands. It’s not like I take his check and blow it on clothing or this and that.” Then you have to look at them, because it’s only one area of your life that can ruin your life. You can’t just … This goes back to busting yourself on your own BS. You really want to say, “Well, how am I out of integrity?” Because there’s always that next evolutionary edge, that evolutionary leap.
If we’re not looking for that, then there’s no room for growth. If we come to this point, ”Oh, there’s no room to grow.” So absolutely, you can say, “Well, look at my life. I have a great marriage. I have a great job.” Then in terms of your health and well-being, you’re not taking care of yourself. How many friends do I have like that? Especially male friends. They’re very comfortable in the fact that they’re great providers. They’re a great husband. They’re a great father, but they are pushing themselves. They don’t have time to go to the doctor. They’re overweight, maybe. This is women, too, because so many women are out there doing everything, but they won’t schedule a doctor appointment. Or they’re eating fast food on the run.
I have women that say they didn’t have time to … They wanted to have a baby, and they didn’t make time for it. Then they wake up at 45 and say, “Oh wow, now what do I want to do about it?” We can get blinded by our own BS even if it’s like “OK, let me just look over here where it’s comfortable.”
TS: Now I want to talk more about this idea of busting our own BS. It’s a great phrase that I think everyone can relate to. And what I notice is I can see into a part of my life … We’re not going to go into it, Kelley, but I’m just pointing out here. I can see into a part of my life, “Oh, that’s my BS and I’m not going to bust it. I can tell and I’ve got some good excuses and they kind of work. They sort of still work and I don’t really have the will to make that kind of change in my life right now. I’m a little out of integrity, but so be it. I’m moving on.” How would you address that listener?
KK: As long as you’re making a conscious choice. “I know that’s off. I know there’s something here I can do, but I just can’t do it right now.” So … A) being really honest with yourself that maybe that’s not as important to you. If you can accept yourself the way it is, then great. It might not be on your top list and it might be a projection of society or a projection of your family or something like that. So as long as you’re being honest with yourself; if it’s something that feels like it needs to be handled, make a plan for it to be handled.
Even last week, and I’m dealing with something with my children, and I said to them “Look, I need …” because I was leading a workshop. “I need the week before the workshop and I need the week after the workshop.” Because I know I’m just like generally very tired, and I’m not all there. “I will tend to it that next Monday,” it was something I had to write, “and I will have it written by Tuesday.” I gave myself a timeline that felt honoring and also honored them. Sometimes you have to make a list of, “OK, this is what I’m going to do,” but at least, if you can’t accept it, schedule it in. Or be honest with yourself, “I’m just not going to deal with it and I’m OK that I’m going to have a mediocre result in that part of my life.” That’s OK as long as you’re conscious about it, and you can accept it.
TS: Now in reading The Integrity Advantage, as the book progressed, it felt to me that one of the subterranean, if you will, root causes of a lot of ways that people are out of integrity comes down to this sense that there’s some kind of scared child in our life that is making the decisions. I think you point to this in the book. I mean the other theme that seemed to run through The Integrity Advantage is how so often in relationships, people don’t have the courage to say the things they need to say because they’re afraid. They’re afraid. If I really were to confront my partner and say I want our sex life to be different or I want this to be different or whatever. Or if we were to confront someone in a work relationship and say, “I really want to talk about what’s happening here.” We’re too terrified to do this. There’s this sacred part of us. You could call it the scared child and I wonder if you could talk some about that and how do we work with that fear of taking this next step? We’re too afraid.
KK: Well, you have to bring compassion to that little child, because any time we are in the wound or experiencing that wound, it’s often our little child that is running our lives. Any time I’m living or feeling the angst of a negative belief or a shadow belief, it is that little child that’s saying, “It’s unsafe to love. It’s unsafe to be seen.” I revert back to the time that the wounding happened. Even though I’m in a 50-year-old body, it’s that little child saying, “Wow, if you speak your truth, they’re not going to like you.”
I think the other thing, so yes, there’s that scared child who needs compassion. We now have to become the mother or the father of that little child saying, “I’m not going to leave you. Back then, whatever happened happened, but I’m going to love you. I’m going to lead you and you can come out now.” It is. It’s learning to parent that child within in another way because we … become our own tyrant, almost. We become the abusive parent to ourselves. Now it’s time to go back and say, “You know what? I’m going to check in with you. What do you need? How can I hold your hand through this fear?”
Because most of us have lived through the fear. The other part that keeps people from going inside and really doing anything is now they might be confronted. I always say to people, “OK. When you speak your truth, it’s not about being attached to somebody’s answer.” It’s not that they’re necessarily … If I have a partner and I request that they put their dishes in the dishwasher, and granted this isn’t maybe the best example, and they don’t do it. Then I can see, if I were to express any of my wants or needs and they don’t honor what I’m saying, now I have a choice. Do I want to be with a partner who, even if I can communicate my wants and needs, doesn’t listen or doesn’t honor them or doesn’t respond in any way? Then I have a choice. Sometimes, those choices can be scary to make, but generally by the time they get to me or this book, staying small and compromising ourselves is so painful that we know something needs to be done. That’s when you speak a different way.
TS: Now let’s say someone’s just conflict-avoidant. They’ve identified: I’m conflict-avoidant.
KK: Right.
TS: I’m listening right now and I know there’s some things I need to say to this person in my life, but again I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m just terrified to be direct like that. Kelley, can you help me?
KK: Right. I would have them look at what “they make conflict” means. For some people, even speaking their truth, equals conflict. It’s like a direct math equation and that’s why they don’t speak in their truth. If you go back, this is going back to that meaning-making machine and the shadow beliefs that are running their lives, there’s not a question that if you go back, they’re going to find that speaking up in their homes equaled chaos or equaled them getting in trouble or equaled someone yelling at them or someone hitting them.
I would go back with them. I would say, “Where did that belief come from?” They can see that belief where it was born. They can see how it was running their life. Do you know how many clients I have … And I write a story about this, about this man who never spoke up, never spoke up, because in his house, you know, big boys don’t cry and if you spoke up you would get hit. Literally, he started seeing this image of himself behind the couch. This little boy quivering behind the couch.
He’s in a marriage. Of course, he has a very strong woman who is challenging him and one night, she says to him, “You know what? I don’t think I can do this anymore.” He doesn’t speak up. Now, of course, she has a wound of being unseen. The next morning, she explodes. “I talk about separating and you don’t say a word? How is that love?” He had to start looking at where the belief came from, what his belief was, and the cost.
Then he had to start taking action steps. OK. I’m going to speak up here. A lot of people, they’ll come and speak their truth to me and that’s the first step. They go, “Wow, I feel better. Now maybe I’ll speak it here or speak it there.” Then it’s taking action steps to help solidify the new belief that it’s safe to be seen. Those thoughts of finding out that belief and then seeing what the cost has been and then creating a new belief.
TS: Now Kelley, you call the book The Integrity Advantage. What’s the advantage, if you will? Why that title?
KK: The advantage is that you really start loving your life and yourself. You feel like such a clean, clear vessel and you feel worthy enough to just keep spiraling up. There’s such an advantage, because I do see this as a lifestyle and this is the way I live and other people live, and just you feel worthy enough and clean enough to keep going for that next thing. You just become this beacon. You spiral up because it just feels so good. You’re not judging other people.
TS: Here’s an interesting question for you, when you talk about integrity being a lifestyle. You can tell from the outside, if you will, that somebody is living the yoga lifestyle. You know. You look at them and they talk about yoga. Can you tell if someone’s living an integrity lifestyle from the outside?
KK: From just looking at them?
TS: Or talking to them or seeing their life? I mean how can you tell?
KK: I think because they’re just very clear. People can tell that I do. Everything they say is in alignment to the way they live, and they can hold it for you. There is this collective consciousness. I can hold for other people what’s in their highest because that’s the way I hold myself. Most people, yes, when they meet me, they’re like, “Who are you? Why do you walk through life with this confidence?”
I think that shows when you are owning all of who you are and living in your deepest truths and living in your grandest vision and always knowing that that’s spiraling up. Who I am today is not necessarily who I’m going to become tomorrow. I live in this place of possibilities and so I’m excited about life.
TS: OK, Kelley, just one final question for you. Our program is called Insights at the Edge, and one of the things I’m always curious about, is there some current edge you’re working on. Even here with the integrity lifestyle, is there an edge, if you will, in your own life as you spiral into greater and greater and greater exponential integrity?
KK: I, right now, in this last Shadow Process, I was very much looking at what I’m manifesting in my life or even the relationships. Am I calling forth relationships to reflect my wounded self or am I calling forth relationships that reflect my level of self-love? I’m always living in this paradigm that the universe is always giving us feedback. It’s the most benevolent partner and mirror and teacher that we have.
I’m always looking at what is being reflected back to me? If it’s chaos, if I’ve hit my car and my telephone fell into the toilet then I know, “OK, chaos in, chaos out.” If it’s like miracles, and tense people are calling me and you get this email in your email box, you know, “Wow!” Then I know that it’s coming from some other place. I’m always living in this paradigm that the outer world is a reflection of my internal world, and I’m always fascinated by what my outer world is reflecting back.
That brings me back to that Integrity Alignment Monitor. It’s so exciting, the circle we’re in. We’re always getting feedback on how we’re doing when we look at the universe as our mirror and then align it back up to this Integrity Alignment Monitor.
TS: And right now, what the universe is reflecting back is that you are launching the publication of a new book, The Integrity Advantage: Step into Your Truth, Love Your Life, and Claim Your Magnificence. I just want to congratulate you on that and say what a beautiful reflection to be having the fruition of your work to have this book published now.
KK: It is. It’s a great gift and it’s a great honor to go back to where we started, my teacher, Debbie Ford. I know she’s up there cheering me on.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Kelley Kosow. She’s the author of the new book, The Integrity Advantage: Step into Your Truth, Love Your Life, and Claim Your Magnificence.
Again, thank you, Kelley. Thank you for writing this book, The Integrity Advantage and for your own commitment to a lifestyle of integrity.
KK: Thank you.
TS: SoundTrue.com, many voices, one journey. Thank you for listening.
