Commitment pt2

We say things like: my word is my bond or my word is my honor and without it I am nothing. While it is true that your word is an extreme source of power it is more accurate to say that the value others place on your word is what matters.

Does that not make sense to you? Well, think about it for a minute. Let's say you are an employer looking for someone who can speak English, French and Spanish and can fluently translate from one to the other for the purposes of writing up technical documents. When asked about my ability to do the job, I am free to say that my skin is made of tadpoles, I had four trillion chickens for breakfast, I am only one second old and I am fluent in three different languages. If I share all four of those different claims in the same sentence(especially in that order), you are not likely to believe any of them, even though at least one of them may be absolutely true. If it is important to me that you believe the things that I am saying, what I say needs to not stretch the bounds of credulity, unless I can back up my verbiage with proof.

In this example, you are not going to hire me because you place no value on my word and my word is all you have to rely on.  A person's word alone is often  what gets them in the door when starting a new relationship, be it business or personal. Let's back up and say that during the interview, I don't say a bunch of "crazy stuff" when asked about my qualifications. I let you know that I speak Spanish, English and French and enjoy translating from one to another on a somewhat regular basis just to keep in practice. You give me a short quiz which I of course totally ace and voila! I am hired.

As time goes on though you start to compare my words to my actions and you judge for yourself how good my word is, what it's value is and whether or not you can really trust me.  Many of these judgements are done solely on the basis of how I handle my commitments. You decide whether or not I want to keep my job based on how frequently I show up on time. You decide how dependable I am based on how often I call out "sick" . You decide how trustworthy I am based on how often I meet deadlines. My worth as a person and the value of my word, go up and down in your eyes based on these metrics. My word itself eventually has no meaning at all except for how it relates to my actions. If my actions and my words are in harmony my word is good. If they are not in harmony my word is useless.

Commitment really is the marriage of word and deed. It is you giving your word that an action will occur. You are declaring that a thing will be and that you will be making it so. A commitment really is a pretty bold statement and by its very nature invites others to judge you and your word. If you don't want to be judged, wouldn't it be easier to just not commit to anything? Not necessarily.

Tune in next time when we will talk about how commitments or the  lack of them is likely to affect you personally.