INTEGRITY 🤫

THE QUIET REBELLION

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, finding myself in a situation where my integrity was questioned.

There was a time when integrity was assumed — not marketed.
When doing the right thing didn’t require a press release, and decency was not branded as authentic leadership. Somewhere along the way, the world inverted: honesty became radical, and silence was mistaken for absence.

For too long, I navigated an environment where enthusiasm was the currency. The louder the optimism, the higher the reward. We were told to show up, shine bright, and lead with energy. But beneath the brightness, I sensed exhaustion — a quiet dissonance between what was said and what was lived. We did not have problems; there were only challenges. We didn’t express doubt; we reframed it. Even fatigue was marketed as passion.

We were told to adapt — whatever that may mean.

It wasn’t malice; it was momentum. The kind that swallows nuance.
Soon, the question was no longer ‘What do I believe?’ but ‘How can I appear aligned?’
And that is when integrity begins to slip — not in one grand betrayal, but in a thousand small compromises, each disguised as adaptation.

I used to tell myself I was being professional, flexible, and a team player. But there’s a fine line between collaboration and complicity.
One day, you realise you’ve learned to silence your own tone — to round the edges of truth so it fits better in the room. It’s subtle. You still tell yourself you’re honest, but the honesty becomes curated. You edit your conscience for readability.

It’s astonishing how easily we rationalise it — telling ourselves we’re just “being diplomatic,” or that timing isn’t right, or that “it’s not the hill to die on.”
But integrity dies not from betrayal, but from erosion — the slow, silent dissolving of clarity.

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The Quiet Reckoning

For me, the reckoning began quietly.
No resignation letter, no dramatic gesture. Just a slow, inner exhale.
A recognition that I had drifted from my own rhythm — that I was living a few decibels above my natural volume. That I had started confusing visibility with relevance, and relevance with worth.

It’s strange how hard it is to reclaim simplicity once you’ve learned to perform sincerity. It somehow tends to sneak in and make itself comfortable - the performative tone, the reflex to please. It’s muscle memory.
The first act of rebellion was small: I began saying less. Listening more.
Allowing discomfort to linger rather than smoothing it over with borrowed optimism.

People noticed. Some admired it; others called it resistance, or even labelled me difficult.
Perhaps it was both. Integrity often looks like defiance to those still invested in illusion.

At first, I doubted myself. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe it was me.
But the moment I stopped outsourcing my truth to collective reassurance, a new kind of strength emerged — quiet, grounded, not interested in approval.

When Doing Becomes Distraction

Busyness, I’ve come to see, is one of the most socially accepted ways to avoid conscience.
If you’re always moving, you don’t have to feel.
The corporate world sanctifies motion — the inbox, the dashboard, the endless call.
But presence, the quiet act of being fully engaged with what actually matters, rarely receives a standing ovation.

The danger of equating busyness with value or even productivity is that it trains us to outsource self-worth to activity. The day feels “productive,” therefore, we must have mattered. But activity without alignment is just choreography — movement without meaning.

Integrity interrupts that dance. It slows the rhythm, asks uncomfortable questions, and forces awareness where numbness once lived. And in a world addicted to acceleration, that pause can feel almost unbearable.

Yet that’s exactly where truth returns — in the stillness we spend our lives avoiding.

The Cost of Congruence

Integrity is inconvenient. It slows things down.
It asks for reflection when everyone else is measuring reach.
It asks you to care about consequences you cannot see.

When you choose alignment over approval, you will lose something — comfort, sometimes opportunity, occasionally belonging.
But you gain something weightier: self-respect. The kind that doesn’t need an audience.

There is a loneliness to it, especially at first.
People who used to confide in you fall silent; you no longer participate in the mutual reassurance of shared pretence. You start speaking in a language that fewer people want to understand or even hear. But solitude, I learned, is not exile. It’s recalibration.

When the noise recedes, you begin to hear your own tone again — the unedited voice that existed long before you started performing leadership.

And that voice — once faint, almost forgotten — becomes your compass again.

The Culture of “Good Energy”

There is a particular kind of moral fatigue that comes from working in a culture of permanent positivity. Everyone is fine.Everyone is excited. Every failure is a learning.
Language becomes a script that protects the system from self-awareness.

The more we celebrated resilience, the less space there was for truth.
We called it culture; I call it choreography.
We rewarded those who could repackage exhaustion as enthusiasm.
And in the process, we lost something vital — the permission to be real, to be human, warts and all.

Integrity, in such an environment, is not loud defiance.
It’s the quiet refusal to participate in the performance.
It’s the choice to name what others euphemise.
To admit that something feels wrong even when it still looks right on a slide deck.

That kind of honesty has gravity. It disrupts the script.
It reminds others — and yourself — that consciousness still exists beneath the costume of competence.

The Subtle Acts of Integrity

Integrity doesn’t need to shout. It doesn’t need any slogans.
It usually moves quietly, leaving traces — not headlines.

It’s in the meeting where you stay silent rather than endorse a decision that betrays your values.
It’s in the email you never send, the rumour you don’t repeat, the applause you withhold when the performance feels hollow.
It’s in the pause before a yes — that split second where you ask, Is this congruent with who I am? With what truly matters to me?

Sometimes integrity looks like restraint. Sometimes it looks like leaving.
And sometimes it looks like staying — not to comply, but to embody an alternative energy inside the system.
To be a subtle reminder that another way of being is possible.

Each act is small, almost invisible. But collectively, they alter the atmosphere.
Because integrity, like oxygen, changes everything simply by existing.

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The Inner Dialogue of Leadership

I’ve come to see that leadership isn’t about charisma or conquest; it’s about conscience.
The courage to keep your inner and outer worlds in dialogue.
The willingness to be the calm in a room that rewards chaos.

True leadership, at any level, is an energetic responsibility — the capacity to remain intact when everything around you fragments.
And that capacity is built not through technique, but through self-honesty.

I used to think integrity was a moral stance. Now I see it more as emotional hygiene — a way of staying clean in a polluted atmosphere.

When you compromise your truth long enough, the first thing you lose is sensitivity. The world becomes dimmer, flatter.
You stop noticing the quiet details that once inspired you — the small acts of decency, the humour, the beauty.

Reclaiming integrity brings all of those colours back.

Coherence as Rebellion

These days, I work more slowly. I listen longer — including to my own inner dialogue.
I measure success not by noise, but by how congruent I feel when I close my MacBook at the end of the day.
Some would call it withdrawal. I call it coherence — the rare alignment of thought, word, and action.

Coherence doesn’t mean comfort. It means wholeness.
It means you can look yourself in the eye and recognise the person staring back — and like her.

Integrity most likely won’t trend. It doesn’t fit into a carousel post.
It can’t be gamified. But perhaps that’s exactly the point — and perhaps that’s its beauty.

In a world that sells disruption, consistency is the truest rebellion left.
To keep your word when no one is watching.
To remain kind when it costs you an advantage.
To be trustworthy in those small, invisible ways.

That is where quiet revolutions begin — not in the noise of grand declarations, but in the steady rhythm of coherence.

And if leadership has a soul, I believe it lives there:
in the silence after a choice well made,
in the peace of not needing to pretend,
in the rare, grounding satisfaction of being — finally — whole.

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🎶My Song for you

I chose Human by Daughter for this post. Not a mainstream song yet extraordinary.

For more good music, go to this Spotify playlist where you can find all the songs from the Change & Evolve Letters!

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📚My Poem for you

Is by David Whyte (born 1955)

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

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👀Impression

I just love the stunning colours of autumn…

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What about you — have you ever felt the quiet tension between fitting in and staying true? Where does your own line between adaptation and authenticity begin to blur?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, leave a ❤️ or send me a message. I always love hearing from you.

Wishing you a happy weekend wherever you are.

Yours

Tanja 🤗

PS. You can now also find my podcast on Spotify

Change & Evolve and feel free to get in touch