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One of the most unpleasant things I've learned from my participation in Landmark Education programs is that agreements and promises are the way in which we are known by our friends, co-workers, family and so forth.
When I would casually cancel plans, show up to events late or not at all, commit to something and not see it through or any of a hundred ways in which I was not behaving consistent with how I said I would behave, my relationship with those directly involved suffered in ways I could never imagine.
Now I pay attention to what I promise or agree to. I consider it a breakdown of personal integrity when I fail to keep my word even if it is circumstances rather than volition.
One of the ways that it shows up for me is that I notice when people aren't trustworthy. I notice the damage it does to our relationship.
So I have a new commitment in my life. I will not let it slide by. I will not condone it with a wink. I will call people on their promise breaking and I request that others call me on mine. When I am being coached, I would appreciate hearing the specific effects that my promise breaking caused.
As a part of my commitment, I am completely NOT interested in why someone breaks their word with me. I don't want the excuse or reason. All excuses are "the dog ate my homework" stories.
Saying one thing and doing another in big or little things will create a climate of uncertainty and mistrust around you that will be difficult to overcome.
The possibility I am creating for my life is the possibility of trust, love and freedom.
Love you,
Lynn
When I would casually cancel plans, show up to events late or not at all, commit to something and not see it through or any of a hundred ways in which I was not behaving consistent with how I said I would behave, my relationship with those directly involved suffered in ways I could never imagine.
Now I pay attention to what I promise or agree to. I consider it a breakdown of personal integrity when I fail to keep my word even if it is circumstances rather than volition.
One of the ways that it shows up for me is that I notice when people aren't trustworthy. I notice the damage it does to our relationship.
So I have a new commitment in my life. I will not let it slide by. I will not condone it with a wink. I will call people on their promise breaking and I request that others call me on mine. When I am being coached, I would appreciate hearing the specific effects that my promise breaking caused.
As a part of my commitment, I am completely NOT interested in why someone breaks their word with me. I don't want the excuse or reason. All excuses are "the dog ate my homework" stories.
Saying one thing and doing another in big or little things will create a climate of uncertainty and mistrust around you that will be difficult to overcome.
The possibility I am creating for my life is the possibility of trust, love and freedom.
Love you,
Lynn
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i think this is overly stringent and inflexible. is it a breakdown of personal integrity when you get a flat tire? when it snows? when a child get sick? when someone else needs you more? part of being trustworthy is having a set of priorities that are evident and consistent. people knowing where you stand and how you will respond is more important than showing up every time or making every engagement. being genuinely considerate at all times is invaluable, if you don't show up and don't call when you are expected, people should be concerned about you. people want to know that they are important and that you respect and value them, but i also find that people take comfort in the consistency of a person's priorities.
i said i would meet a friend online to discuss non-urgent server issues. i showed up when it was time but informed him that i was having a hard time thinking and wasn't going to be able to process our discussion. he found other things to do. i don't consider that to be a breakdown of my integrity. if i'd been sick in bed and unable to come to the computer, i wouldn't consider it a breakdown of my integrity.
i just wonder how well your philosophy on integrity holds up in the face of real life, especially from the point of view of a parent or caregiver or a person with an emotional/mental/physical disability.
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But "Breakdown of personal integrity" isn't a bad thing. This isn't a matter of right/wrong or moral/immoral. It is a matter of the value of my word.
Breakdowns will happen. What I do in the face of breakdowns is important -- maybe all important -- in my relationships with others and their opinions of me.
It holds up extremely well in day to day life. It is where I apply my philosophy. And it matters if I want to be the one who defines my life or if I want to react to what ever circumstance come along. I am cause in the matter of my life. Being coachable and having agreements with people to be coached and coachable has been working in my life for quite awhile. I'm just upping the ante.
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Where does this fit in: Knowing that someone has a tendency to promise more than they can deliver, and installing an expectations-filter for that person, in order to help one let go of the expectation that they will deliver what they promised next time?
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or stopping the process before it begins by openly and lovingly refusing to expect anything from them until they are better able to make commitments that they can meet?
many people are caught in a state of "bankruptcy" because they are strangled by their own limitations and their script that says that they must say yes at all times to be loved and loving. it's a release for both people involved when one renegotiates on behalf of the other in advance to help them regain their integrity while assuring them that they are still loved.
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Letting go of anger/expectation is a given within my philosophy. What one does when one brakes an agreement is what becomes important.
Knowing that someone has a tendency to promise more than they can deliver, and installing an expectations-filter for that person, in order to help one let go of the expectation that they will deliver what they promised next time?
In both cases, coaching agreements and a framework or system can be created to help one deliver on their commitments.
No one can deliver everytime. Breakdowns happen. We learn. We see what was missing.
What I don't want to do (and what I don't do very often) is make someone wrong for failing to deliver on a promise. I don't treat it as a moral failure.
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I agree that's important. But I wonder whether you meant "what one does" or "what
Which of these statements do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? Why?
When other people fail to live up to their commitments to
Your initial posts on this subject said both things, at least that is how I interpreted them. But I think that policing other people's commitment behavior is incompatible with a philosophy that suggests "I am responsible for how I show up in the world." It's trying to pass one's own responsibility to others.
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Your first statement is spot on.
Your second statement has qualifications. It is a true statement for those who have agreed to coaching and frameworks for meeting their commitments.
This is all a big game. People who haven't agreed to the rules aren't playing. So they aren't failing their personal integrity.
Not keeping their promises will create a certain amount of havoc in their lives. It depends how well they do with the circumstances they have and what resources show up for them with things go south.
All and all, human beings do a really great job of working together. But there is a bigger game to play. It's out on the skinny branches.
I have created a game I can't win by myself. I need the support of my friends, family and community. But that game keeps me in contact with friends, family and community. The game has me playing in my life rather than wathcing it go by.
Creating the game of "always keepng my word" is inside my commitment for trust, love and freedom for the entie world.
There is a point at which this isn't really discussable by me. I am still working on that. :) I am creating and playing a game that is bigger than me. A game that scares me. It is philosophical "edge play." It is where the juice is for me.
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Not to say I don't GET what you're saying, but you posted it to the public as part of a "who I am" statement -- and it looks very hyperstrict from out here listening.
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Are you sure? Because if it is, you're saying that you get to decide whether someone else (who has agreed to coaching, etc.) has lived up to their personal commitments. Is that always true? If not, in what circumstances is it true? And in what circumstances is it their decision whether they lived up to their commitments, and not yours?
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What is going on in someone's head is beyond my knowing.
I know only if what they do matches what they said they would do. If they have said they will play the same game I play (and many people I know are playing that game), then I know when they have not been their word. If we have coaching agreements about this, I will coach. I will not coach in the absense of agreements. I may try to negotiate an agreement on the spot, though.
For people with whom I have no agreements, all I can do is point out that their exists an unfulilled commitment or promise and ask the person how they intend to fulfill. Whether they do or not is up to them. Whether they think they have done wrong to not is up to them. Whether they think they have violated their personal philosophy is up to them.
Coaching agreements, in my life, give me and my friends a mirror to see how we are actually being that might be different than the way we think we are being.
As an example. a friend of mine used to be regularly late. Lots of really good rational, reasonable, reasons. He never just sloughed off an obligation. He even noticed that he was late a lot. No matter what he did, the tardiness continued. Get up earlier, prepare the night before, etc. There was something else going on that he couldn't see. It was like the water in his fishbowl. With coaching, he figured out what was up. The incidents of tardiness dropped to practically nothing immediately.
At no time is coaching a process in which we try to assign fault or blame. In the fame of "living true to what we say," missing the mark is a function of something missing, not something wrong. It is an ongoing creative process rather than a post mortem.
In coaching we are looking for the stuff that isn't obvious to the coached person, but the one being coached gets to name the element that is missing or what they are pretending or what ever is in the way of acting in accordance with our word.
It is about spotting the patterns in our lives, being responsible for them, and creating a new way of being.
It is how I went from the terrified, psychological bully that once was, to the person I am now. And the Ah-ha's are coming faster and with deeper cuts all the time.
From a life of cowering in the corner, to openly watching the game, to playing right in the middle.
It's what has me play with the Human Awareness Institute, Landmark Educatioin, and a couple of other groups. Anything that gives us another point of view with which to examine/dismantle/create the meaning of our lives.
In my case, Landmark's promise was fulfilled. I completed their Curriculum for Living and came out with a life I love that I live powerfully.
How is it working? Well, I went from having/noticing one or two people at a time loving me and whom I loved (in any snese of the word) to hundreds who have expressed appriciation for my having affected their lives. People who tell me that they love me. Crushes going on for dozens at a time. :) For a created family of seven. For jumping into a Rocky Horror Picture Show cast. For telling people I love them and having them get what I mean. I may possibly gotten here on my own. I have some great friends. But I was not coachable at all. HAI gave me the grace necessary to be coachable and Landmark gave me the structure in which it works.
I went from the realative and desired safety of "tomorrow will be like today which is like yesterday and then I'll die" to a passionate adventures into the unknown.
From mostly hiding and getting by to being up to something in life. I am being more powerful than my fears.
Taking a much deeper cut on being my word and completely responsible the results is just moving up the ranks of the game -- maybe I'm at the brown belt level now. :)
Love
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I am tempted to nitpick about whether you know there is a match to what they said, or only to what you thought they said. But that's not really relevant to your point any more.
Whether they think they have done wrong to not is up to them.
Boy do I disagree with this. Did you mean "Whether I think they did wrong is not up to them?" I would agree with that. But I definitely think that a person defines zir own wrongdoing. I would agree other people also define it, and they can't stop that, but they can certainly define it for themselves also.
Anyway, I'm happy that coaching improves your happiness. :)
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The other sentence was one of my familiar typos. Sometimes I leave out the "not" sometimes I add it incorrectly. This is one of those cases. I have no say in the matter of someone thinks they did "wrong." It is up to them. There is another game called social rules and laws. Inside that game some folks like to point as say, "Evil!" Not a game I like to play. :)
I was whining about my disfunction with negatives to a friend recently. Some really interesting research has been done and replicated that shows that people tend to not hear negatives in sentences. I can remember creating tests in which the question or question stem was stated as a negative. People would routinely get the wrong answer because they didn't read the word NOT even when it was in bold face and all caps.
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I don't like to play "paste the evil on the donkey" either. :)
The research you mention reminds me of the anecdote / urban legend I tell about the hotel that had problems with people fishing off the balcony into the pond below. The problems stopped when they took down the sign that said "Don't fish off the balcony."