The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

by Martha Beck

But when we clear our minds of that righteous urge to destroy, our perceptions of wrongdoing remain clear. We can see evil, recognize it for what it is, and address it without falling back into errors of righteousness. How? By turning our attention away from arguing and moralizing, and focusing instead on our integrity, our deepest inner truth. Psychologist Steven Hayes calls this connecting with our “core values.” His research shows that focusing on values has an almost magical ability to accomplish the very things we think we’ll get by attacking our enemies. Simply shifting our attention from attacking our enemies to defining our values can “reduce physiological stress responses, buffer the impact from negative judgments of others, reduce our defensiveness, and help us be more receptive to information that may be hard to accept.”