I have this quirk in my character that causes me to get inordinately upset when someone, myself included, is unable to honour a commitment. I have often wondered why someone would give their word lightly, and worse, appear to display no remorse, when the word was proven worthless.
Looking back at the times when I have not honoured my own word, I have come to realize that this lack of compliance is due to one or both of two things. Either we do not appreciate how important the matter is to the person we make the commitment to, i.e. we take the matter as trivial and to be taken care of eventually, OR we make the commitment just to get out of the discussion, knowing fully well in some corner of our hearts that we do not really intend to do this in the promised time frame.
I find myself running afoul of these two conditions when it comes to accepting responsibility for what I consider small chores. "Sure, I will buy this stuff on my way back from work." When I get home without the stuff, this is inevitably followed by, "All right. All right. What is the big deal? I will do it tomorrow." And so begins another evening of blissful married life.
After having had my ego bruised over this, I sat down figure out a way out of this mess. Here is my simple algorithm: before I make a commitment, I take a split second to ask myself whether I truly intend to honour my commitment within the promised time frame, or am I offering to do it on a best-effort basis. Once I have the answer, that is exactly what I will commit to. If I do not intend to do it, I will not say that I will.
It is quite simple really, when you think about it.
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