From Control to Coherence: Why Integrity Is What Actually Scales

From Control to Coherence: Why Integrity Is What Actually Scales

This week I am sharing the shifts that have recently landed for me, and each one of them is something that I have been unlearning and learning for quite some time. They have only just recently become embodied. However, I can feel and see the difference in both my internal and external reality. 

For most of my life, I believed that I had to maintain control – over my image, over the perceptions made about me, over my thoughts and feelings, over every move I made. I forced myself to perform, perfect and pedestal others – overriding myself constantly. My needs were always secondary to what was expected of me. And I lived up to those expectations to the fullest degree.

The cracks started to become more apparent through my relationships, my business, my connections, my body, and the way I felt day in and day out. It wasn’t until much later when I realized – I was not living in integrity. 

Integrity, to me, is radical honesty with who you are and what you want and actively choosing to live in that truth… your truth. 

For so long, I lived in someone else’s truth… Not in one single person but in multiple people who told me who I was and deciding that that must be truth. I allowed the perceptions, opinions, and judgements of others become mine to hold, and with that, their emotional worlds, their internal realities, and their lived experiences. 

When this realization finally made its way to my consciousness, my entire world collapsed. My marriage ended. My business collapsed. My finances disintegrated. My health deteriorated. And my identity – who I was as I knew it – became undone. 

There are two reasons I made it out of this collapse the way that I did. 

  1. I believed in something greater than myself guiding me through it, and I never doubted that. 
  2. I chose to let the collapse be my new beginning. I allowed everything to fall and fail so that I could find myself through it.

And truthfully: I found my glory in rock bottom. I found my value in it by detaching from everything and everyone that once validated me. I found my essence, my truth, my light through this collapse.

I no longer began to operate from control, but from coherence – within myself. 

And this week, I’m sharing with you the real shifts that I’ve embodied as a result of this work on myself.

I no longer follow a routine, but a rhythm. 

There was one point in my life where my routine was my lifeblood. If I wasn’t following a strict routine day in and day out, regardless of how I felt, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I would be so hard on myself as a result. This means that I would workout while sick or injured. I would eat the same thing every day, even if I was hungrier some days. I would time block work, and if nothing was on the schedule, I would give myself arbitrary tasks, just to feel productive. Routine was restrictive, and my body eventually showed me that it wasn’t going to be restricted anymore. The control edge I thought that routines gave me proved to be more harmful than helpful.

Rhythm is how I move now. This doesn’t mean that I simply “go with the flow” and relax all day. I consistently show up for what I’m devoted to, but the degree of influence and impact varies based on my internal queues. My diet, my workouts, my work flow… it is all intuitively led. If living in routine is following a strict, clock-based schedule with fixed steps, then living in rhythm is embracing a flexible, flowing pattern that responds to my internal needs, energy, and the natural ebbs and flows of life. With rhythm, I get to prioritize my purpose and sustainability over rigid execution and external rules. To put it plainly: grace has finally entered my life, and it allows for rest, creativity, and life’s changes.

Routines are external structures. Rhythms are responsive intelligence. 

I no longer try to control my body. I trust it and honor it. 

I’ll be honest: my body has been put through the grind because of me – because of what I believed I needed to uphold, because of what I believed I needed to be capable of, because of how I wanted to be seen and perceived. My body probably thought I hated it; and I certainly treated it like I did. In response, I developed autoimmune issues, symptoms of high cortisol, uncomfortable skin flare ups, lots of digestive problems and allergies to specific foods I had never had before. It’s true what they say: the body keeps score. 

When I started to work with my body, and not against it, something changed. I began to not only feel safer within myself, but I began to feel safety as myself. I began to appreciate myself and love myself, because I started to appreciate and respect my body. The autoimmune issues vanished. My cortisol levels are now in a healthy range. My skin healed. My digestion normalized. I still have some allergies, but I know what’s right for my body and what isn’t now. This change didn’t happen because of any prescription medication or doctor’s advice. It was born out of self-love. When you love yourself, you trust yourself and you honor yourself. 

When the body is respected, it stops resisting. 

I no longer move because of discipline. I move because of devotion.

Most people think of discipline as simply willpower. The thing is… most people don’t need more willpower. They need to stop overriding themselves. I have a tremendous amount of willpower and therefore the capacity for discipline. I can perform through burnout, and I’ve done so for most of my life. Discipline only benefited my need for control. But I don’t want to be that way anymore. It isn’t aligned with how I want to live in the long-term. It doesn’t reflect who I want to be and what I want to embody. Devotion is my new discipline. 

Devotion may sound soft and feminine, but it’s actually a power move. It’s consistent allegiance to what’s true, and because truth is my north star, that’s the only thing I follow and live by. And therefore, it completely removes the need for willpower. Who needs motivation when truth is your guiding light? I’m devoted to my body. I’m devoted to my business. I’m devoted to my kids and my home life. I’m devoted to my essence, to living an aligned life and to making an impact as the truest version of me. I move because I’m committed to my integrity, not because I’m chasing a specific result. This is how real and lasting authority is built – in a way that is sustainable, predictable and rooted. 

Discipline without attunement creates short bursts which lead to burnout. Devotion creates longevity.

I no longer see things in black and white, but a spectrum. 

My external reality used to dictate my internal reality. It used to dictate my movements. I used to collapse as a result of the noise, the opinions, the circumstances of my life. This means I moved in reaction to life. My external reality used to dictate my internal reality. It used to dictate my movements. I used to collapse as a result of the noise, the opinions, the circumstances of my life. I used to live in so many absolutes. However, as you work on your own ways of thinking and being, you realize not everything is so black and white, and most importantly, fixed. The way that I perceive another person is entirely based on my own personal range of perception. If I look at people as good or bad or right or wrong, I don’t allow for nuance or flexibility or grace. 

This range didn’t make me passive. It made me stable – a safe place to land for myself and for every life I touch. 

I no longer assume I need to maintain an apex frequency in order to be magnetic. My full integrity matters. 

You don’t need to be “high vibe” in order to be magnetic. This is one of the biggest problems I have with the manifestation matrix. Your intentions matter. Your integrity matters. This is what defines you – not your constant and consistent high vibration. Who you become… or in other words, who you unbecome, as a result of shedding everything that isn’t you… is what matters. It’s your essence. It’s your highest frequency. It’s your universal signature. And no matter your mood, or current emotion or current circumstance – life mirrors who you are, at your core. That is what you are constantly and consistently emitting – you. 

This is what coherence has given me: the ability to stay with myself no matter what is happening around me. To move without collapsing. To respond without abandoning my center. To live, lead, parent, create, and build from truth instead of tension. Integrity is not a concept to me anymore; it’s a lived state. And from this place, nothing needs to be forced. Not my body. Not my work. Not my impact. When you stop managing yourself and start trusting yourself, life doesn’t get smaller; it gets more precise. This is the work beneath everything I teach. And it’s why what’s built from coherence doesn’t just grow; it lasts. 

This is the foundation of everything I hold inside Soul’d. Not optimization. Not performance. Coherence. If you feel aligned with that, you’ll know where to find me.

Click on the link above to watch the latest episode of Soul’d, or listen to it here on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sould-by-christina-giordano/id1760357148 or here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2EXmS5t7jgohMD4P4ZzKEu 

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