"Breaking our word to ourselves is one of the most damaging things we can do."
— James McPartland
Are you a person of integrity?
Do you always do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it, and if not, do you let the person know and make it up to them?
How about with yourself?
Have you ever made a promise to yourself, not told anybody about it, broke that promise, and maybe felt that it wasn't that bad?
If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking, “that happens quite often.”
Well, what happens when we do this to ourselves?
We elevate the importance of someone else's behavior over our own. To put it another way, we can diminish the importance of meeting our word to ourselves and elevate the importance of someone else by meeting their word instead. We put ourselves down and elevate the other person.
Frustration and stress often comes from someone not doing something they said they were going to do for you. This is quite often a reflection of breaking our word to ourselves. Breaking our word to ourselves is one of the most damaging things we can do, but if we will use the tool of integrity and fine-tune ourselves, it could be transformative.
Where do we start?
We can’t give something away we don’t own. The most important thing we can do is focus on the word we give to ourselves. Unless we practice holding up our own word to ourselves and elevating who we are to ourselves, no one will ever be able to meet the success criteria of integrity. Our word to ourselves is just as important, if not more important as the word we give to others, so we would do well to demonstrate the action we're looking for in other people.
The relationship you have with yourself, the word you give to yourself, is one of the most important aspects of living a life of integrity.
Comments