Integrity Versus Despair: Dwelling on Important Things

As people are entering their last phase of life (Integrity vs Despair) there will be some major developmental changes physically and mentally. As a person becomes elderly their health may start to decline as well. They may develop some memory loss that could lead to other diseases and cognitive impairments as well. At this stage of a person’s life they may become more dependent on their family and may experience signs of depression guilt and shame (Overstreet, n.d.). Feelings of isolation and loneliness may start to development if they experience death of a loved one.

I believe that when I am at this stage in my life I would dwell on thing things that brought me the most happiness like spending time with my family and friends and I would look back on all the accomplishments that I made in my life as my testimony to personal growth and development. I will feel a great sense of pride watching all the milestones that my child has achieved in his life. I would have to come to terms with things that I couldn’t change learning from my mistakes and focus on the things that I enjoyed and that I was successful at. Sometimes it easy easier to overlook the positive things and focus on the negative this could cause feelings of hurt, despair, guilt, or sadness which can overshadow all the great things that I achieved in my life. I would have integrity and accept that I lived my life as well as I could and that as long as I’m still here I can still be productive by looking back on my life and things that I’m not happy with try to turn those negatives into a positives. There’s always going to be pros and cons with every situation so overall if I made great achievements in my life and it was meaningful and fulfilled, I would have lived a happy life. The key to having integrity as opposed to despair is to have acceptance, I would have to be at peace with the decisions that I made and enjoy whatever time that I have left living in this world.

I would have a sense of ease knowing that I worked hard at building a foundation that my family can be proud of I continued my education, had a great career had a wonderful family and financial security. Personally, I’m a planner so I think about my future quite often because we live in a world with so many uncertainties and being well prepared is always a positive. I would like my last years of life to carefree stress free happy full of laughs and smiles. I would like all my personal affairs secured and just enjoy the last years of life as comfortably as I can.