I declared to myself and a friend that I was going to post a blog post every Friday. I have been late on a few and for the past few weeks I haven't posted any at all. His suggestion? Write about it!
Imagine you're getting on a train to New York City. You are excited! Big city, here you come! You have your plans, you're empowered, you feel alive! All of a sudden, as you're settled into your seat and you're watching out the window as the train gets ready to pull out of the station, the conductor comes on and in a crackly voice, he welcomes you to your direct route to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Now, there's nothing wrong with Tuscaloosa, I'm sure Tuscaloosa is lovely, but you want to go to The Big Apple!
What feelings and emotions do you experience?
I bet there's a fair bit of panic, annoyance, and probably a lot of self-criticism. "How was I so stupid?" or some other version of that. Even when you get on the right train, you can't shake those feelings. Even when you're on the New York bound train for real, you're definitely not as excited as you were when you first got on the train (not knowing it was the wrong one).
That's been my past two weeks. I forget my reasons for not posting two weeks ago. Last week my reason was taxes and that my friend didn't come to our work session (like his being on Zoom with me makes a difference as to whether my fingers are on the keyboard). Still, no matter how good the reasons are, they don't take care of the fact that you made the promise. Even if you only made it to yourself. Even if you didn't use the word promise.
Integrity is the state of being whole, you know, like nothing is missing or left out. When we make promises we don't keep, it erodes our integrity and thus our view of ourselves. We're usually far better at keeping our word to others than we are to ourselves. That's because we're sooooo concerned about what others think. Why aren't we just as worried about what we think about ourselves? We think it doesn't matter.
IT DOES. It sucks the life out of you. It lowers your bar for yourself.
So, how can you restore yourself? How do you get your train going where you want? How do you put the integrity back in?
It's actually really easy: Tell someone! Acknowledging it in the listening of someone else really makes a difference.
So, dear readers, I promised I would post a blog post every Friday and I haven't done that in July. That leaves me feeling disappointed, doubting myself, criticizing myself and noticing all the OTHER places I haven't been consistent, further spiraling and expanding my disempowerment. The impact on you, dear readers, is you haven't gotten a blog post. I don't know the impact they have on you, but I definitely know that no blog post = no positive impact. I promise to post every Friday from here on out.
So, in your listening (after I first talked about this in the listening of my friend David) I have restored my integrity. I feel lighter and free.
What did I do?
1) I acknowledged the promise I made that I broke
2) I stated the impact that broken promise had on me and you
3) I made a new promise
If you notice that something's off, start looking at your integrity to yourself or others. Get curious. Go in a scavenger hunt. I have only recently started restoring myself in the listening of someone else for promises I made to myself. It never occurred to me before, but that's probably because I was still focusing on what other people thought of me. Restoring your integrity is for you. Your wholeness. Your power.
I invite you to make a list of all the promises you've made to yourself and others that you didn't keep. Then take on restoring one from each list, one to yourself and one to others, every day. Notice how much lighter and empowered you feel with each conversation. Share below in the comments, we'd love to hear!
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| Photo by Derek Story on Unsplash |
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