Empowered With Integrity: A Special Summary Episode On Wisdom Shared Across The Show

An empowered person is someone who lives with integrity. They believe in themselves because they know that what they do is right and noble. They are not afraid to stand their ground and be unapologetically their true selves. And over the past couple of months, Dr. Kim Grimes, along with her guests, has been reminding us of the importance of living with integrity. In this special episode, she rounds up all the knowledge and wisdom shared throughout the show. Relive the powerful messages and feel empowered to shine your light, share your love, and help others tap into their greatness. Join Dr. Kim Grimes and reflect on what is guiding you: your integrity or your appetite.

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Empowered With Integrity: A Special Summary Episode On Wisdom Shared Across The Show

Coming Full Circle On Integrity

You are you unapologetically. Your integrity or your appetite. We have been talking about integrity. What’s guiding you? How do you position your integrity as your guide? I am so excited that you guys have been doing a phenomenal job keeping up with us and staying in tune with what we are sharing. The love that you have given to our guests has been phenomenal.

I’m coming to you from a remote site somewhere in Spain. By the time this is released, I will be back to my humble abode. I’m excited for all of the support that we have been receiving regarding this show. By now, you all know what we have been talking about and you all know what we do here straightforward. We empower you to be true to how you were created. It’s all about you not allowing people’s opinions to affect how you show up in life. Don’t waste your time being intimidated by the presence of others while thinking little of yourself.

We are all about not allowing the world to dim our light or to dim our glamour. It’s about you uncovering your greatness. That’s what it’s about, finding your true identity and owning whom God created you to be. Our point is this. You owe no one. You owe no one an apology for being true to yourself because you are you. When you show up being you, you will be empowered to shine your light. You will share your love and you will help others to tap into their greatness.

Over the last couple of months. We have had some awesome guests. They came and shared with us their view on integrity. Their messages were powerful. Wouldn’t you agree? They empowered us in a mighty way so that we can get a clear understanding of what our personal integrity is. Are we being led by our personal integrity or by our appetite?

I’m so grateful for our amazing guests. I’m so grateful for each of you, our readers as well, and I pray that each of you has been fed by the stories that we shared over the last couple of months on our topics, but needless to say, I know you have been wowed. With the love, comments, and accolades you gave, we are thankful and we are grateful. Thank you again for sharing. Please continue to share this show with your friends. Please tell your family members about it. Share with your community and also introduce it to your tribe.

We are on our 21st episode and I hope you read them all, every last one of them. If you did not, that’s okay but you don’t want to miss any, especially the last five episodes because like I said, we have been talking about integrity and this is huge. Integrity is huge. It speaks about who you are, and so the question is, do you have it? If not, if you don’t have integrity, then what is guiding you?

What Is Integrity?

Most likely, I would like to add, your appetite. We had some phenomenal guests show up and share their integrity stories. What you don’t want to do is miss any of the juicy and scrumptious information that has been shared thus far. I am so honored that you are here. I’m truly grateful that you are sharing your time with us. I need you to know this. Your support is priceless. With that, let’s review our last episodes what we call your integrity or your appetite. Our last five episodes were amazing because of those who came on and shared.

What we know is this. In a post-COVID era, we can agree that we are witnessing so much dishonesty, untruthfulness, an increase in violence and so much more. I believe that is because it plays a part of our integrity and that’s why I started this discussion. What’s going on with your personal integrity? As humans, we are quick to excuse our personal lack of integrity. We are good at that, but we are not quick to excuse the breach of integrity in others.

We see that but we don’t want to excuse that. We can excuse our own. We don’t want to excuse the breach of the integrity of our loved ones, our friends, and our leaders. That’s why we asked the question, what is integrity? In the episode, we had five guests to come and share, and we also share our definition of integrity. We said it is the resolve and the courage to do the right and noble thing because it’s the right and noble thing to do regardless of the consequences. Integrity is universal. It’s inescapable expectations that assume and ought to.

We even shared a scripture that came out of the book of Proverbs 11:3 from the New American Standard Bible version. It said, “The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them.” We know we ought to do right and when we don’t, what we do will eventually destroy us. The question still remains, do you have integrity? If not, then what’s guiding you? Thus, to our topic your integrity or your appetite. We stated that your integrity is more important to you than your infallibility. Respect from others is contingent on your integrity and not on your failures, mistakes, and coverups.

We said the lack of integrity is a personal thing, but it’s not private because the lack of your integrity or my integrity impacts the people that are around us. No ifs, ands, and buts about it. Why is maintaining integrity so hard? The answer we gave was because of our appetites. Because of our appetites, we always want more stuff, money, food, sex, attention, and responsibilities to say the least.

We always want more. Our appetites pose a constant threat to our integrity just about every day. Because we want more, we have to say no to one to protect or satisfy the other. Are you saying no to your appetite to satisfy your integrity? In order to satisfy our integrity, we learn this is a constant tension that we live with every single day at multiple levels.

Integrity is huge. It is a part of who we are, and so we have to begin to acknowledge how we are showing up. What does integrity look like for me and for you? We say no to our appetite to protect our integrity. Are you saying no to your appetite? At times, we say no to our integrity to fulfill our appetite. Are you saying no to integrity to fulfill your appetite?

Here’s the thing. We can’t have it both ways. You already know that instead of us having a large number of guests speaking on different topics, that’s not what we do. What we do is we create a series and we invite several guests to come and discuss the same topics. We do this because each and every one of us, we are all different and we all have different perspectives.

Here at the show, we want to share different perspectives so that we can reach a larger diversity of readers. We want to touch those who don’t look like me and you. We want to touch a larger diversity of readers. We are going to sum up what was shared. We are going to talk about the key points that our guests spoke about. I want to make sure we share that as well.

Susie Carder On Integrity

That’s what we have been talking about, our personal integrity. This is not new to you. We have been discussing it and it’s a part of who we are. We invited Susie Carder to come on and she shared with us what I like to call scrumptious tidbits. I want to share what Susie has said and then remind you how scrumptious her feedback and input were on integrity.

The first word that pops in my head is integrity. I have always been guided by a different compass and it got me in trouble a lot as a kid. I would question, ask, and push boundaries if I didn’t understand I wanted the answer, and to me that’s integrity. You can’t say something because you say something like your parents would say because they said so.

Growing up, there was a strong desire to do something impactful in the world and I pushed the envelope a lot. Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing consistent and uncompromising adherence. It’s being consistent in my desire, wanting to make a difference, and being and giving a voice where there was no voice before.

Are you consistent in your integrity? Are you giving your integrity a voice when there was no voice? Are you being consistent? That’s not all. Let’s finish reading what Susie had to say.

You cannot treat me that way. You cannot because I was so broken from my divorce. I should have taken time to heal, but no, you jump right back into a relationship. I was out of integrity with myself trying to fill this void that people, void by man or love from somebody else. I’m on integrity with myself. You have to notice when things aren’t breakdown. If you are in debt, that’s out of integrity. You are spending more than you are making, and that’s out of integrity. If you don’t balance your checkbook, that’s out of integrity because you don’t know. If you tell a lie, I don’t care if it’s a white lie, that’s out of integrity. I’m not saying be perfect. I’m saying notice and clean it up.

Dr. Saundra N. Cherry On Integrity

Susie shared with us how it is important for you to notice. Notice when you are out of integrity and clean it up. Dr. Cherry came on and she shared with us what got you in your choice of integrity. Let’s read what Dr. Cherry had to share.

Just be your authentic self because when you and your authentic self, people can accept you. That means that I’m the same. If you see me in church, I’m the same. If you see me in the community, I’m the same. If you see me wherever you are going to see the authentic me. That’s what you are going to see. I understand that I had to first learn who I was and who I am in order for me to say, “When you see me, you see the authentic me.”

You are not going to see somebody that’s trying to pretend or perform because that’s not necessary. That’s short-lived. When you are authentic, when you step to the table, or when you set wherever you go, people know, “That’s who she is.” That’s who you are. That’s what it means for me to be unapologetically me because I can be authentic in my real self.

Are you authentic in your real self? Are you struggling, being you? That’s a question for you to ask about your integrity. Dr. Cherry wasn’t finished.

“To whom much is given, much is required,” and so I can appreciate who I am right now, but I can also know that there’s more growth in me. I’m open to growth and have a growth mindset. I can be transformed and I can be that person because I do believe that people are attached to me. There’s something in me that someone else needs. If I stay in this one place on who I am, then I won’t get any better. Neither were those who are coming that are attached to me, they won’t get any better. Not only do I set the bar high for others, but I set the bar high for myself.

Lora Lindquist On Your Brand Of Genius

How many of you know that people are attached to you? They need what you have to give and are you setting your bar high? Are you setting it high for yourself so that you can serve others? Dr. Cherry was amazing. We are so grateful that she came and shared. We then invited Lora Lindquist. She talked about designing your own brand of genius. We are talking about your integrity or your appetite. Let’s read what Lora said.

One of the ways that you can authentically embrace loving yourself is by being confident not only in your strengths but confident in your weaknesses. You are not making excuses, but you are allowing yourself to be honest, aware, and embrace it. I struggle there and I’m going to keep working on it. I’m going to keep getting better but I’m not going to play small.”

I can’t remember who said it. I know some great person that said, “You playing small doesn’t serve the universe.” Like the Scripture says, “To love others as you love yourself,” when you love yourself, your capacity to love others grows and you can’t give what you don’t have. Learning to love yourself serves the world and it grows in your capacity to love and serve others and see them also through the eyes of God.

Are you being your authentic self? Are you embracing your authentic self? If not, you are out of integrity and you are being guided by your appetite. Let’s read to what else Lora has to say.

In order to be humble, you got to be like, “I’m not good at that.” That’s nice of you to say, but then you downplay yourself. That is the wrong response because playing small doesn’t serve the world. The right response is, “Thank you. I am grateful for the gift God has given me.” Give the glory to God. You accept the compliment, your greatness, your talent, and the recognition of such. It’s okay to even let yourself be a little warm and fuzzy inside about it. Let yourself be warm and fuzzy. “I am good at that,” and then so that you don’t cross over into arrogance, you give the glory to God and say, “I’m grateful that God has blessed me with this gift and that I had it.” That’s what gifts are. They are made to be given away.

Michael Krause On Making The Right Choice

When was the last time you gave away your gift? When was the last time you helped and served someone with your gift that is so very important and it speaks to your integrity? It speaks to what’s guiding you. If it’s all about your appetite and you want more and more, check your integrity. We then had Michael Krause come and share with us how to always make the right choice is what he’s talking about. We are talking about your integrity or your appetite. Let’s read what Michael shared.

It’s so important that we align ourselves in work, play, and family as our united single selves. That’s how we start to become authentic. We don’t make apologies for our faith, priorities, and values. It’s so important that no job or activity that we choose is a reduction in our values and priorities. Those are not easy. They can come with complexities, but the first step in self-empowerment is, “I’m not going to give up what’s important to me for this opportunity. No money, ego, award, or certificate is worth sacrificing who I am.”

What’s worth sacrificing who you are? What’s worth sacrificing your integrity? Nothing. Align yourself with who you are, your values, and your belief, and stand and own who you are. Michael wasn’t finished. Let’s read what else he has to say.

I would encourage everyone, “If you don’t feel comfortable or confident in who you are, you need to determine your source of truth. What authority and what determines right and wrong in your life?” That’s what I mean by a source of truth and it’s deeper than values. It’s at the very core of who you are. In any situation, you will know what is right and wrong and this is why. I think that our souls and our spirit help us understand that. We might not understand why, but it is in us and it’s all. I would encourage you to explore that.

Jorge Cruz On Trusting God

What is your truth? That is a powerful question. I’m going to explore that. I need you to stop and think about what your truth is. Hold on. Before you answer that, we also had another guest come on, Jorge Cruz. How trusting God can keep your integrity? Let’s read what Jorge shared.

If you are doing something that you’ll enjoy the most, but you are going to be hurting other people’s life, then it’s not good. There’s no way. Even if you have the talent to kill people with a gun and you are very good at shooting, that’s not good. I have the talent to shoot straight to the point to target. That’s awesome, but become a policeman or something but don’t become a drug dealer or whatever. Whatever you are feeling that you have, the talent that God gave you, go have a purpose for that talent. If that talent that God gave you is going to be good for you, good for others, and good for everybody, go for it. Do whatever God is going to support you even if you think it’s impossible.

It’s our gifts and talent that God gave us to serve the world. Are you using your gifts and your talent to serve others? If so, then your integrity. If not, then you are being guided by your appetite. Jorge wasn’t finished. Let’s read what else he has to say.

Don’t ever let anybody or even your negative mind tell you that you cannot do it because of stupid things like, “I don’t speak English perfectly. I am tall. I am fat or whatever.” There’s nothing that will stop you. If you have a dream, go for it. I promise you that He will talk to you. He will use other people. You will notice when He sends somebody to help you when you are at the last minute and you say, “I’m going to quit.” Don’t quit. That’s the most important moment for you to see the blessing.

What Is Guiding You?

We were blessed by five guests who shared with us their version of not only integrity but how they live by their integrity and not their appetite. By being who you are, sharing your gifts, and being aware, it’s so much information that I’m sure that we were able to touch and bless millions of people. With that, we are going to bring this series to a close. There’s always more conversation around your integrity or your appetite.

We want you to stop and think, “What is guiding you? What guides you? What keeps you doing what it is that you are doing? What drives you when you are having a hard time, you don’t know, you are clueless, you are alone, and you feel by yourself? What is guiding you and keeping you on track? Is it your appetite? Do you find yourself always wanting more? Do you find yourself not being satisfied because you need to have more stuff or money? Is that you? Are you in that space?”

If so, then again, let me be the first to say you are being guided by your appetite. Check your appetite, not your integrity because your integrity is what’s going to make you aware of your gifts, talents, values, and beliefs, and you are going to stand on that. That’s what’s going to guide you when you are interacting with people, your family, and your friends. Being able to share and serve someone else from your gifts and your talent. It puts you squarely inside of your personal integrity.

Are you being guided by your personal integrity or by your appetite? That’s a question that you must answer. We are here to help you find the answers to that as well. One of the things that I mentioned earlier is, “What is your truth?” I would love to explore and have a conversation about that. What are you saying to yourself? What are you telling yourself that’s making you continue to be out of integrity and/or what are you saying to yourself that’s keeping you in integrity?

We know it is so very easy to lose yourself in these clashing ideas and conflicting beliefs. We are dealing with post-COVID-19 and different variants and the flood of information that we receive on a daily basis. It is so easy for you to lose yourself in that. Society has rigid expectations of us, endless opinions of who we are, our self-expression, and self-appreciation. That’s challenging.

We struggled in trying to express not only what we have to say and how we feel but we are struggling in expressing our emotions. That’s why mental health is on the rise. It’s off the chart because no one taught us emotional literacy. Within our society, rigid expectations and endless opinions are there. We struggle with our self-expression and self-appreciation. It feels challenging, daunting, and weird. Some of us don’t even know how to do it most of the time because of this.

This causes us and you to dumb down, run, and hide. It causes us to not be who we were created to be, and what happens is that we go with the flow. We become numb. People say anything and we go with it. No. That’s not why we are here. The show is here to put an end to this disparity mindset and to help you to begin to own your authentic self. That’s what it’s all about, your integrity when you own your authentic self. When you show up being who you were created to be, you are sharing your gifts and your talents, and you are serving, you don’t have to serve the entire world but you are serving the people that are around you, the people that are in your inner circle.

Questions, do they want you around them or they don’t want you around? You guys heard me say it before. As an adult, I get to choose whose playground I go into and who comes and can play in my playground. I get to choose, and so it’s about you being your authentic self. My request is for each and every one of you that’s reading, please continue to join me here. Meet me here in this safe space for episodes on top of episodes where I will initiate influential conversations about you being you.

I’m going to continue to support you and to serve you in the area that’s going to help you be you unapologetically. Here’s my stance because you are you and the thing I know for sure is there is absolutely positively no one better at being you than you and I say it all the time. I dare you to find someone who can do you better than you.

That’s what being you is all about. That’s what You Are You Unapologetically is all about. Thank you so much for hanging in here with us with our series on Your Integrity or Your Appetite. We hope that from this series, you learned a little bit about your integrity, what it looks like, who’s guiding you, and which one. Is it our appetite? You want more and more. Are you being guided by your integrity where you are willing, able, open, and wanting to serve the world by sharing your gifts and talents?

For those who are not sure what your gifts and your talents are, go to my website. You can download Path to Greatness which is an exercise that teaches you how to uncover your greatness. Reach out to me if you have any questions. You guys know how to find me. Don’t hesitate to do so. I hope that each of you reading enjoys this series. Thank you for being here. I’m humbled. I truly appreciate you and I honor your time. Thanks so much and God bless.

Important Links

• Susie Carder – previous episode
• Dr. Saundra Cherry – previous episode
• Lora Lindquist -previous episode
• Michael Krause – previous episode
• Jorge Cruz – previous episode
• Path to Greatness