Honoring Your Word

What does it mean to honor your word and why is it important. No matter how hard we might try to bury the knowledge that we have not honored our word, now matter to what lengths we may go to minimize situations where this has occurred, we become less than who we are if we do not honor our word. At some level, such a transgression eats away our peace, nags our conscience and prevents life from working the way it can. Our word is what we have; there are few other measures that say who we are better than our word. While we may not be able to truly count on much in life, one thing we can count on is the rightness we feel when we honor our word.

There are ways we fail to honor our word that are clear and unequivocal. When we lie; when we fail to do something we have promised to do; when we do not live up to a standard we have set for ourselves. However, honoring our word means more than just keeping our word. Perhaps some guidelines set out by an inspired program of seminars called Landmark Education can help us be clearer about this standard that is so crucial for living a life of wholeness.

Honoring our word means:

    • Doing what we promised, and doing it when we promised to do it.
    • Doing what we promised in the way it was agreed to be done.
    • Doing what we promised in the way most others would most likely expect us to do it.
    • Doing what we promised in the way we would expect it to do it.

And, there are times when life intervenes such that it is neither possible nor desirable to follow through on what we promised. However, as soon as this becomes clear is the time to take whatever action needs to be taken to rectify the situation. This is done by acknowledging we have not honored our word, by apologizing, and, if possible, by doing what is necessary to make it right.

If we keep opening to where in our life we may not have honored our word, either to someone else or to ourselves, and take steps to clean up whatever mess was made by our action or inaction, our lives become workable.

© Copyright - Peter D Axelrod