What are our values? They’re ways of being and believing that we hold actually important in our hearts. They’re things we prioritize, make time for, and use as a compass when faced with choices in life, big and small. They’re things telling a lot about who we are.

And then the question becomes, what stories about who we are do we want to tell other people?

We want to be seen as good and trustworthy and deserving of connection. So sometimes, we profess values that make us look good on the outside but in reality we don’t hold them within. It’s especially common in people holding big privilege – as they become uncomfortably aware of their unearned advantages, they try to make sense of it by portraying themselves as good people. In the culture of meritocracy, eloquently professing values works like magic for creating and maintaining public image. But whether those values are real of fake is invariably revealed when the time and situations to practice them come. That’s the hard thing about integrity: it’s measurable and observable, and more so than we think it is.

Join me today for a conversation about integrity and clarity of values. Starting from the definition, we’ll talk through different intentions of professing values: as a practice of authenticity, as a hustle to fit in and be in the trend, and as a way to attract publicity and make money. We’ll see that after we profess something, it doesn’t take long for life to give us a situation where it has to be practiced – and that’s where, way too often, hypocrisy is revealed, and the denial/blame/rationalization/gaslighting shitshow starts towards the person who called out the inconsistency.

As people opt out of practicing their stated values in such situations, one of the most common lines of rationalization is “I’m too busy and I don’t have the time.” When they have big positions, big possessions, big connections – big privilege, in one word – they’re licensed to feed this excuse to others as something plausible. But in fact, it reveals lack of courage, accountability, and self-awareness. Integrity is not about having the time. It’s about making the time. As Marie Forleo points out time and again on her show, “If it’s really important to you, you make the time. If it’s not, you make excuses.”

Yes, when you’re an A-list celebrity or a politician, what you practice in real life may be completely hidden from the majority of your audience through the work of publicists, representatives and speech writers – or your own Hall-of-fame-level rhetoric. But your true colors still come out eventually. Some people, interacting with you in private and off camera, still get to see who you truly are. And the more effort you put into crafting a shining veneer of your personality, the more their trust in your inherent human worth will be undermined. If success is about money and fame for you, you’ll be okay with it as long as the majority of your audience stays successfully brainwashed into believing in your honesty, spirituality, empathy etc. But if you define success by achieving purpose, building meaningful connection, and making real difference, hypocrisy just won’t do it. You have to show up exactly as you are.

If you're not willing to prioritize something, stop professing it as a value, even if everybody around you does so.