“The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments,

is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.”

~ Stephen R. Covey

from “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”

Do you honor your commitments?

Are you making commitments you don’t want to make or have no intention of following thru on?

Pay attention to what you’re committing to and to whom you’re making those commitments.

As Covey says, your integrity to the commitments you make is one of, and perhaps THE, most important factors in living with Areté and achieving a consistent level of joy and happiness.

Although you may not be aware of it consciously, if you have a bunch of (or a string of hundreds of) broken commitments over the last day/week/month/year/decade, you’re energetically drowning in the weight of that lack of integrity.

You know you know when you’re not doing the stuff you say you’re going to do—whether it was getting up at a certain time this morning, working out or following a certain routine, whatever.

To the extent you’re not honoring those commitments, you are, to state it bluntly, screwed. Simple as that.

Good news: the solution is simple as well.

Start honoring your commitments.

…

Make an inventory of the commitments you have outstanding right now.

Decide which ones you will re-commit to honoring. Get completion with these. Finish them.

Decide which ones you are no longer committed to honoring. For the record: No, just b/c you said you were going to do something in the past does not mean you absolutely must do it now. It DOES, however, mean that you need to make a NEW commitment. So, although you don’t need to do it, you DO need to communicate the new commitment.

Enough talk.

Are you committed to taking an inventory of your commitments today? (Right now perhaps? Is there really something more important you need to do?)

Let’s rock our commitments, guys.