(continued from last week…)

Making Agreements

Along with responsibility comes agreements. In the case of an agreement you are committing to a certain goal. You agree to an event. You agree to some process or some ‘thing’ happening. This involved fulfilment is a commitment by you, and/or a commitment by another person where you’re going to take a certain action or not take a certain action. The essence of this agreement doesn’t depend on the involvement of other people. The agreement really is with you, in you.

Years ago, I was visiting at a friend’s house and we were talking about to-do’s–things needing to get done in the immediate future. And we were each making commitments about what our role was going to be in these tasks needing done. About that time, this gentleman’s four-year-old daughter wandered by. She was supposed to have been picking up her room. He said, “Hi honey is your room done?”

She said, “No.”

“How come?”

“Well I was playing”

“Hmmm. Do you think it might be time to pick it up? I asked you to pick it up a while ago.”

She said, “Okay, I promise me I’ll get it done before dinner.”

When she said “I promise me”, it was a major Ah-ha to me! The words ‘I promise me’ stopped me in my tracks.

Have you ever had someone say “I promise you I will do ______.”? I’d bet nearly countless times. But the real commitment is not to another person, it’s actually to ones’ self. When she said ‘I promise me’, I’d never thought about it from the context of a promise really is about honoring something to yourself. It’s a commitment you make to you.

Keeping agreements is a condition of your mind. Your mind wants what it wants, when it wants it. When you make an agreement, the real commitment is not to the other person, not to the situation, not to your boss, it is to yourself.

Responsibility necessitates that when I make that agreement, I am promising me. You are agreeing and promising you. Never break an agreement. Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal. Not just because those are wrong actions (and wrong is a judgement and most judgements don’t really work.)

Don’t do these things – steal, lie, cheat, etc. – because they don’t work. Ultimately they come back on you. Make agreements with yourself about what honor is and honesty and value and quality and excellence and then do those. It is just as easy to agree to do those things as it is to agree to not doing to other ones.

An Agreement Accepted

To keep your agreements you first must be in a condition of responsibility. You have to be responsible to yourself for the agreements you make. But you say you didn’t make those agreements? You say that those were conditions placed on you by someone else? That in your work they just expect you to do X? Well, if you’re there, if you have that job, and those are the policies, procedures, rules and regulations of your job and you took that job, then you agreed to those.

And if you can’t agree to those, then maybe you need to find a different job.

On some level you did agree with those or you wouldn’t be there. Certainly, you can justify breaking the agreements. But if you want to be who you thought you really were, and you were fully responsible and you were stepping up–then you will live up to the agreements that you made. Even if you weren’t the one who wrote them down, you will live up to those that are part of the commitment of that position or relationship. You keep them. You be responsible for those. You be responsible for your life working.

(to be continued…)

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