There are some great sayings that immediately come to mind, as I write for the first time in so long. My humanity has me immediately start to make excuses and explanations and justifications for why it has been so long.
Some of those great sayings are:
“Guilt is a just a way of “looking good” when you are out of integrity.”
What this means is that when you said you were going to do something, and you didn’t do it, you are “out of integrity”. You broke a promise. That promise can be to yourself and to others. You said you were going to do something either by a particular time, or on a regular basis, and you didn’t do it, or you stopped doing it. Think of something like, “I’ll send that letter/money/package to you this week.” as something for which you made a promise or a commitment, and you didn’t do it. Something you stopped doing can be, “I’m going to get up early/go to bed early/workout regularly/eat right/write on my blog.” So when you either didn’t do a particular promise, or stopped doing a regular commitment you made, you can say that you are “out of integrity”. It’s not bad or wrong. If you let your brain go there, there won’t be progress or a shift.
Being “in integrity” just creates an environment that works for all. Getting back in integrity requires a couple things. First, you declare that you are OUT of integrity. Save the excuses! Keep it simple. “I said I was going to do X, by this date/time, and I didn’t. My new promise and commitment is that I am going to do X (or Y, something different, if you need to change it to stay in integrity) by this time/every day/week, etc.” So you clean up your mess. Apologize if you have to. You let the person or people whom you promised initially know that you broke that promise, and you are making a new promise. Or you can clean up your mess by letting people know that you are NOT going to make that promise again. That’s living in integrity, living in reality.
When people say, “I feel so guilty that I did/didn’t do X.”, that’s a way of trying to look good, when you broke a promise or commitment. Your feelings don’t really matter in a world where you want things to work, and people to trust you. There’s your word, your promise, who you say you are and what people can count on from you, and your results. They are two different things. You either create the results and manage your integrity, or you make excuses.
Think of that way you feel, when someone makes you a promise, and they don’t make it happen by when they said they would. Now think of the way you feel when they say, “I feel so guilty.” and then they make an excuse. If it’s someone who breaks promises and makes excuses often, you think, “Yeah. Mm Hmm. Whatever.” Do you want people to think of you that way? I don’t want people to think that way about me. I don’t want people to think that way about you. Our life works better when people can trust us. People can trust us, when we keep our word.
Look, there are things that happen in life that have us break promises. Life happens. But we are powerful in life, we are respected and trusted in life, when we manage our integrity. We honor our word. We do what we can to fulfill on our commitments and our promises, and when we don’t, we clean up our messes and make new promises and commitments. When a powerful person breaks a promise, they apologize and make a new promise to that person or people, and then they do everything they can to fulfill on that new promise. We keep our excuses to a minimum, which brings me to a couple other sayings.
“Everything that comes after “because” is BS.”
When we break a promise, such as if we promised to be somewhere by a certain time, and we are late, very often, people say, “I was late BECAUSE ( Fill in the excuse.)”. If you REALLY look at most of the times we were late, it’s because we let something else distract us, or we didn’t take charge of the people involved with getting you to the place you needed to be by the time you were supposed to. “I was late for school BECAUSE……” and usually we lie and blame traffic, when in reality it was that you didn’t get your butt out of bed, out of the shower, off the computer, phone or whatever distraction kept us from leaving on time to get you there on time. So MOST of the time, whatever we say kept us from keeping our promise is BS. We were late, because we didn’t manage it. We were late, because we were late! Everything else we say after that “because” is BS. The more you can catch yourself saying that and stop it, the more you can keep your word. The more you honor your word, the more you show up on time. It’s the simplest level of integrity, but it’s a foundation on which you can build trust. You trust people who keep their word. You admire people who when they break their word, they clean up any mess that happened from that broken promise, they don’t make excuses and they apologize. We can’t be perfect, but when we aren’t, we can clean up our mess and get back in integrity by making a new promise and keeping it.
“Everything that comes before BUT is BS.” It’s similar to the saying above. “I want to go BUT….(you ultimately aren’t going to, because you really don’t want to.)”. “I would do that BUT….” and then you do what you really want to do. The more you can avoid using BUT, the more you can keep your word.
So now, having said that, I commit to writing here to you at LEAST once a month. So to manage that promise, manage that commitment, I’ll put steps in place to assist me in keeping my word. I’ll set alarms to remind me, if it’s been a month and I haven’t written anything. It’s important to me, because YOU are the most important person in my life. How you have people believe that, when you say it, is you keep your word to them.
Our Life 