Today I am publishing my first annual Integrity Report.
The purpose of this report is to self-evaluate the degree to which I am living in alignment with my values, goals, and life vision. This self-evaluation stands in juxtaposition to my Annual Reports which will focus more specific goals for the year.
There are 3 main questions that I will answer in this Integrity Report. (You are welcome to replicate these questions for your own Integrity Report.)
What are the core values that drive my life and work?
How am I living and working with integrity right now?
How can I set a higher standard in the future?
Here we go…
1. What are the core values that drive my life and work?
As I sat down to write about the core values that drive my life and work, love, healing, and evolution came up.
Love
Am I loving myself through my work?
Am I loving my family through my work?
Am I loving my followers through my work?
Am I investing in myself and nurturing my growth?
Healing
Am I creating things that catalyze healing in the world rather than division?
Am I using my position in my home, businesses, and sphere of influence to inspire healing?
Am I caring for myself in a way that is healing and growth-minded?
Am I creating time in each day to heal and grow the garden of my mind?
Simplicity
I am increasingly simplifying my life or complicating it?
Am I saying "no" to things I don't want to incorporate into my life?
Am I delegating, eliminating, or automating things as appropriate?
Am I prioritizing the tasks, projects, and items most aligned with my long-term vision?
Beauty / Art
Am I creating works of art?
Am I challenging others to think critically through my work?
Am I creating things that are beautiful?
Am I pursuing a higher sense of beauty in my personal dealings and style?
Presence
Am I showing up fully in everything I am doing?
Am I valuing my interactions with others by putting aside distractions?
Am I being intentional with my schedule by blocking out time for my priorities?
Grateful
Am I practicing gratitude in my daily experience?
Am I showing others my gratitude for their contributions to my life?
Am I surrounding myself with others who are grateful for their lives?
Am I showing gratitude for my body through healthy eating and exercise?
Authenticity
Am I being authentic about my own needs and wants with others?
Am I being authentic rather than "people pleasing"?
Am I disappointing others before disappointing myself?
Am I bringing my full self to interactions across different settings (work, home, private)?
Relational
Am I building powerful relationships that are mutually beneficial?
Am I investing in the important relationships in my life?
Am I creating time to spend and work with others who matter to me?
Generous
Am I seeking to be generous in my dealings with others?
Am I balancing my desire to be generous with the needs of my family and friends?
Am I sharing my ideas with the world more than I am consuming?
Evolution / Growth?
Am I evolving through my work?
Am I growing through the activities I engage in each week?
Am I proud of the person I am becoming?
Am I taking on projects within my zone of proximal development that allow me to pursue growth in a way that is healthy and manageable?
Am I building in time throughout each week to learn and grow?
Legacy
Am I creating something I will be proud to leave for my children?
If I died today, would I be happy with the contribution that I am making?
Am I building things that can sustain themselves and grow in perpetuity?
2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?
Making amends for my past errors. In 2024, I've been slowly working through a list of people I felt I owed amends to. I haven't made it through my entire list, but for the people who I have been able to speak with, the process has been a healing experience for me and them, as well. I've noticed that I tend to hold things in very deeply, and creating the space to acknowledge them, share them with others, and let them go has been liberating. This process is both scary and cathartic for me, and I look forward with both courage and fear to continuing it this year and beyond.
Additionally, by working with a life coach, I have learned an effective process for making sincere apologies that has worked wonders in my personal life. Since this process is not something that was ever taught to me in my education or in the home, I'll share it with you here in case it benefits you:
Here is the process I have been using when seeking to make amends with someone you have harmed:
What am I taking ownership for?
What was the impact of my decision?
Apologize
Here is what I would like to do make this right...
Is there anything else I can do to make this right?
Negotiate if their request feels out of the realm of possibility
Recommit to the agreed-upon course of action
Here is what I need going forward...Can you do this for me?
Is there anything else I am missing?
When going through this process, it is helpful to keep the following ideas in mind:
Believe that the person you are speaking to has love for you
Keep the focus on the other person
Know that you are good enough and that apologizing does not make you "less than"
Work as love made visible. I subscribe to the idea that "work is love made visible," which means my work should be a form of service to the world around me. I am proud of the contributions I have made to society by creating multiple companies that focus on helping children and adults develop better executive function skills while also training others in the art and science of doing this work on their own. A few of the benefits of working in a way that communicates my love for the world and others are that:
People value this work more and want to engage with it
I can value the work more and earn more income from it than previous work
I enjoy creating it and performing it
Prioritizing key projects. After a colleague recommended the book The One Thing to me last year, I took some time to read it and have been moved by the simplicity and impact of the concept. If you have not read it, the big idea is this -- what is the ONE THING that will have the biggest impact on any area of your life and how can you build in time to focus on that? This process has given me the direction to focus less on busy tasks like responding to emails and more on revenue-generating projects like speaking, creating content, and building high-impact relationships with others.
3. How can I set a higher standard in the future?
Be more present in the moment. As my impact has grown, I've often tried to do multiple things simultaneously (answer text messages while on an evening walk with my children). This is out of alignment with my desire to model a high level of presence across situations and show my children what true engagement looks like as a parent. To remediate this, I am going to block in time for things like responding to texts, emails, and phone calls, separate from those daily interactions with my wife and children. Ideally, I would like to reach a point where my children do not even see my phone weekly or where having a phone on me at all times is unnecessary.
Pursue mastery of time blocking and delegation/automation/elimination. I have come to the conclusion that blocking out time for things like email, responding to texts, writing gratitude notes, and basically anything that doesn't require a meeting with someone else is just as essential as blocking out time for meetings with others. With this in mind, I am looking forward to getting better at blocking out time for the tasks necessary to develop skills and take action around the things necessary to stay in alignment with my values of growth, authenticity, and creativity.
By the end of 2024, I would like to have improved my ability to block out time for the things that really matter and improved my ability to delegate, automate, and eliminate the things that can be taken off my plate.
The pursuit of less. Going forward, I am eager to find ways to pursue less, to say "no" to more projects that don't align with my long-term vision, and to say "yes" to the few best ideas that are aligned with my long-term vision. I heard a neat story about how Steve Jobs reduced the number of products Apple offered from over 300 to less than 15 after he took control of the company in the 1990s. In this vein, I plan to simplify every aspect of my life, from the physical items I own to my wardrobe, the projects I am working on, and more.
The Bottom Line
My hope for this report is that the process helps anchor me in my core values and principles that will govern my actions until I write my next report in mid-year 2025. I encourage anyone to use this format and evaluate your level of integrity with your core values and life vision.
Thank you for being a reader -- I hope to continue to provide value to you for years to come.
-Sean, July 2024
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