Happy Sunday Everyone. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
A friend of mine sent me a book, The Four Agreements, after reading Sunday Thoughts last week. It’s a first for me although I think I’m late to the party. Many of you may have already read this book, and for those that haven’t, I’d highly recommend it. I’ll skip the book report but its starts with the first agreement and the cornerstone for the other 3 as “be impeccable with your word”. It goes on to state impeccable, comes from the Latin word pecatus, which means sin, and the im means without, so your word is without sin. This is not a religious book.
The book talks about the words you choose to use, to build yourself up, to build up others, to knock yourself down, to knock down others. Some of those words are impeccable, many are not. For me, it’s not just about the words we choose to believe but it’s our own word i.e. what does our word mean to the world, and to understand that, we first have to know what our word means to us. The author probably wouldn’t appreciate me making some tweaks to his overall message but for me, based on recent events, my word to myself has changed and I believe it will change my future for the better. This probably sounds way too deep. I’m hopeful a couple of examples will help.
I’d like to think people can rely on me. I’d like to think if I tell someone “you have my word”, that you’d have the confidence that it would get done. What’s a little nuts is if I’m needing to rely on myself to deliver on my word, I don’t have the same level of confidence in myself to deliver. Why? too many starts and stops, too many examples of times where I started but didn’t finish something. Could be super small i.e. clean the garage, could be super big, something I promise my kids and didn’t do….after time this affects my word to myself, which affects my confidence to execute on the little and big things in my life, which undoubtedly affects my belief in myself, which then impacts everything I do. So why is this on mind right now, so pronounced….because I’m experiencing the opposite side of what I’m talking about above….why? because I’m 9 days away from executing on not eating a piece of meat in 6 months. I lost a bet with my family, the penalty was to not eat meat, and I’m doing it. I never cheated. When they were out of town, never did I sneak a burger, a taco, pepperoni pizza…nothing. Truth be told, I’m really proud of myself. More so than being proud of myself, and something that is really hard to explain, is my belief system has changed inside of me, for how serious I take my word to myself, my commitment to my own word. It may be a silly example, I’m not sure, but I believe anything I say I’m going to do now, I will do. I take my own word more serious.
A coaching student of mine stated at the beginning of the semester he wanted to accomplish two goals, and his penalty to himself if he didn’t hit these goals was to sell his Porsche (a car he cherishes). He wanted to make serious changes, and he wanted to be held accountable. He didn’t hit his goals. On Thursday I asked if he was going to actually sell the car, he said “NO”. He then tried to make excuses, of which I wasn’t having. I am not judging him at all. The amount of times I have verbally committed to something without truly living up to my word is embarrassingly large. I’m also slightly embarrassed at 44 years old I’m learning how important this is in my heart/soul, and it’s all coming from a bet not to eat meat for 6 months. I feel free, I feel confident in myself. I wish my friend would sell the Porsche because he didn’t deliver on what he committed to. It would change the rest of his life because he would take his own word to himself more serious. When you take your word to yourself more serious everything else becomes so much more clear. What I’m experiencing right now is something I’ve never experienced before and I love it.
Many of the people on this email I know well, and I know have probably taken their own word to themselves more serious than me, up to this point. For those that haven’t, its liberating and something I hope you’ll experience, sooner than later.
Thanks for reading this one. I do understand it’s probably a little deep but for me personally, it’s the best thing that happened this year!!