Article: Where do you lie? Tips for being a person of integrity.
©2009 Vicky White, The Feng Shui Coach. Get Vicky White’s FREE “5 Biggest Attraction Mistakes ” report and her FREE articles to boost your creativity and your bottom line, at:
http://www.lifedesignstrategies.com/
Have you ever been to a workshop where you’re given a page of agreements to sign before you go in the door? Most people sign them. I know at times I’ve not wanted to create a fuss or be the focus of attention and have signed. Or perhaps you sign it without reading, not really intending to follow through.
Agreements are made and broken almost without thinking.
And at a high cost: losing credibility, trust and respect with others, creating messes that need cleaning up, and in addition losing trust and confidence in yourself. Which is reflected in the quality of your life and your prosperity.
Where do you lie (no pun intended) on this continuum? Do you make agreements you don’t keep? Or are you a person of integrity?
(In Feng Shui – integrity relates to the Fame & Reputation area – how you’re seen in the world -and it also relates to passion and energy. The more integrity you have, the more passion you’ll feel for your life).
Wherever you are, here’s what I’ve learned about negotiating this tricky field. Use these tips and you’ll raise your level of integrity and feel more confidence.
1. Be prepared to say “no” more often: Some people are good at asking for what they want. This doesn’t mean you need to say “yes”. Give yourself the space to get clear about whether you really want to do what you’re about to agree to.
2. Don’t say yes to anything unless you are 100% committed to following through. I once had a son-in-law who always said yes – he wanted to be nice and be loved I guess – but it lead to a whole lot of frustration when he didn’t ever come fix the taps or whatever it was he had offered to do.
3. Write your agreements down – forgetting them is no excuse for not delivering. It still puts you out of integrity. Research shows that when we don’t write something down or make some effort to store it in long-term memory, the memory can be lost in as little as 37 seconds. And not just for the more mature among us!
4. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind: Just because you agreed to do something you don’t need to if it no longer feels right, or if some kind of emergency comes up that stops you. But you do need to communicate with the other person/people as soon as you know you won’t be delivering. And if you find things coming up to stop you keeping your agreements, perhaps it’s your subconscious telling you something.
That’s one kind of agreement. And then there are agreements you make with yourself!
In the Clutter Busting Coaching Circle, we’re using the forum for accountability to install new habits. I decided my April habit was to be: walking for at least 10 minutes every day. I know the hardest part is getting out there and telling myself it only has to be 10 minutes makes it easier.
Well, April 1st came and wouldn’t you know it, it was snowing. I heard a little voice saying – I’m not going out in that! And once again I was tempted to not keep my agreement with myself. I was also tempted to change my habit – after all I hadn’t announced it to anyone on the forum yet!
But recently I’ve become aware of how I don’t always treat myself with the respect I treat others. And I see my clients doing the same thing. I’m ready to change this.
So there I was before 9am in my leggings, raincoat and walking boots going for my walk as promised. I walked for 20 minutes. It felt great – I was dry, I was keeping my word, I had broken a pattern of ‘any excuse will do’ and I know nothing Spring or anything else can throw up can stop me now.
I also made a decision to be someone who powerfully and joyfully keeps my promises to myself. I repeated this as I walked and guess what? I was soon laughing and smiling and having fun. Really!
Instead of staying in my warm office, feeling bad because once again I had broken my word about exercise, I started my day powerfully and I am 100% committed to keeping my promise to myself for the coming 30 days and creating a new habit that serves me on many levels. (Hint: announcing it does wonders!)
These are my tips for keeping your promises to yourself:
1. Be very careful what you promise yourself: make very few promises and be 100% committed to keeping them.
2. Write them down and review them each day.
3. Tell yourself: I am a person who keeps my promises to myself.
4. Up the ante: for something that’s a really big deal – perhaps it involves fear – make it public. You will give a talk in public by May 30th 2009 and if you don’t, you’ll donate $500 to a cause you powerfully disagree with – George Bush’s re-election campaign or the ‘cut all the trees down’ campaign! You choose!
And here’s my favorite tip:
Take a few moments to think about agreements you’ve made lately, or even further back. Create a moratorium – give yourself permission to reassess every one of them – agreements with others and agreements with yourself. Start with a clean slate.
Which ones are you 100% committed to? Great, write them down and take action.
The others? Communicate with those involved (including yourself) and renegotiate.
Apply these tips as you move forward and grow your level of integrity, your confidence and your reputation. It feels good, I promise!
