Doing the right thing
We all know people who say one thing and do something different. Most of us have experienced leaders whose words don’t match their actions. Maybe they talk about having integrity or treating people with respect, then you see them behaving without integrity, or being disrespectful. The result? We don’t respect them.
We expect others to be congruent; that their words match their behaviour. However building self-esteem requires us to also be congruent about our words and our actions. If we don’t live up to our own principles and values, we can undermine our self-esteem. If we make a commitment or promise and then don’t keep it, we can end up not feeling good about ourselves. We all sometimes fail to honour commitments. This is not a crime, it’s part of being human! However, how we respond to our ‘failings’ is important. If we do slip up, we have a number of choices regarding what happens next:
1. Beating ourselves up about not keeping the commitment. This isn’t very helpful, but a lot of people do this, and they do it well. Actually, beating ourselves up can be self indulgent, as it stops us from addressing the issues that prevented us from delivering on our commitments, and taking corrective action.
2. Telling ourselves that it doesn’t matter. It is said that you can fool some people some of the time, but you can’t fool all people all of the time. There is one person who ultimately we can’t fool any of the time. Ourselves. We may think that we got away with it; no-one noticed that we didn’t keep a commitment. We may be able to kid ourselves that it doesn’t matter, but deep down we know when we are being dishonest. We cannot lie to ourselves.
3. Playing the blame game. We either blame ourselves, followed by beating ourselves up, or we blame others or circumstances. We all know people who are never at fault in their own eyes.
4. Coming clean. There may be times when we can choose to say “ok, I cant keep that commitment, sorry”, or “Sorry, I made that promise, and I didn’t keep it”.
5. Accepting that we are fallible and treating ourselves with compassion, and moving on to the next step.
6. Learning from the experience and thinking about how we may do things differently in order to keep a commitment.
Case in point. I recently made a commitment to blog weekly. This very blog post that you are reading should have been posted last week. I didn’t achieve that goal. I could come up with all sorts of reasons why I didn’t achieve it. It’s not a matter of life and death, and I’m not sure if anyone will notice, but having made the commitment, I either have the choice of acknowledging that I didn’t keep that commitment or not.
There is a sense of dissatisfaction about not having done it, but as already stated, beating myself up about it isn’t fruitful. Reflecting on whether I am giving myself too much to do might be valid. If I decide that I still want to blog weekly, then looking at how I use my time, and looking for opportunities to improve efficiency would be a useful exercise.
Conclusion
Ultimately, living in a way that is aligned with our values makes us feel good. It is easy for us to like ourselves when we don’t compromise on our values. So standing up to someone who is being disrespectful boosts our sense of self. Conversely, violating our principles can eat away at our self-esteem. Most of us are lucky enough to know the difference between right and wrong. The more we practice doing the right thing, the less we are inclined to do the wrong thing, and this can massively boost our sense of self. Living by our principles is a hugely courageous act.
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SIMON PIMENTA is a hypnotherapist, coach and trainer working with people to boost resilience and performance, and minimise stress.
After working in a demanding job as the Director of a Housing Trust, he went off sick and remained unable to work for the next 8 years.
He discovered a pioneering approach to resolving health issues and quickly got back his health, and now trains others using these same techniques, to help them become happier, healthier and achieve their goals.