Our objective in this series is to ultimately learn how we can achieve and maintain a one hundred percent fulfillment rate of our promises. We want to get to the point where everyone in our lives, from family, friends to business associates and acquittances, has complete and unreserved faith in our word. Last week, we discussed the benefits of keeping our word. Today, we want to understand why many people don’t always keep their word. Some of the reasons are:
We never had the intention to keep our word! Ab initio, we may not have had the sincere intention to fulfill what we said we were going to do. Once we do not have that initial intention, we can hardly get to discharge our pledges at the right time, the right way and the right place as we promised. Even if we do, it would likely be only half-hearted and incomplete.
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We do not want to renegotiate: Sometimes, we are just averse to requesting for a renegotiation of the terms we sincerely agreed to at first but which, for, possibly, legitimate reasons need to be reconsidered by all parties. We may ‘feel bad’ having to call for renegotiation even when that is the right and sensible thing to do in the circumstance. Unfortunately, reluctance to renegotiate may lead to complete failure to fulfil the promise.
We are not alert: Often, we simply are not alert to the implications of what we say to others. In such situations, we may make statements without appreciating the fact that they are commitments to which we should be bound.
On our way out to work, our child could ask us, “Dad/mum, would you buy me a bicycle?” Not a few parents would be tempted to respond affirmatively, just to ‘dismiss’ the child but not actually meaning to buy the bicycle. However, our affirmation is a pledge to buy a bicycle and our failure to deliver on that has several untoward consequences. First, the child cannot process that we didn’t do what we promised. Second, the child will not take our word seriously at other times when we may ‘mean to be earnest’. Thirdly and grievously, we are unwittingly teaching the child not to take their own word purposefully either.
We forget what we have committed to: Other times, we forget what we committed to. This is not necessarily because we did not have the intention to do what we promised but because we have failed to be sufficiently organised to remember what we covenanted. We may, for instance, have been sincere about buying the bicycle for the child, but we just failed to mentally register it in our minds amongst the activities of the day, thereby letting it slip through the cracks. Unfortunately, our sincere intentions are not always sufficient. In addition, we must be committed, organised and executory about what we averred to.
We over-commit: In this situation, we are simply unrealistic about the limited time we have to do all the things we committed to over a specific period of time. Like the previous cause of failure, this is usually not because we were not sincere but because we may not be sufficiently realistic and organised about how much time and effort we need to get the things on our plate done.
It is ‘nothing’: In our national environment, we have, sadly, come to take certain commitments we make as being ‘nothing’. We take such pledges for granted and have neither problem nor remorse in breaking them. It doesn’t even occur to us! This should be repulsive as there is absolutely nothing like ‘nothing’ in a promise. As it is said, a promise is a debt unpaid.
If we promise to revert back to our customer ‘before close of business’ on an issue, it is not good enough to revert back to them the following morning! We promised to revert back ‘before close business’, the good and honourable thing is to revert back ‘before close of business’ that day. Simple.
We promised what we know was ‘impossible’: When we suggest or accept to do what we know is not realistic or possible, we are setting ourselves to fail. For instance, an entrepreneur running an import clearing agency might pledge to clear some consignment from the port and deliver same to a client within a week. But from experience, the entrepreneur probably knows that given the procedural requirements, the clearing of the consignment within a week is close to an impossibility. Such a promise is very unlikely to be kept.
We didn’t believe: In this case, we promise what we don’t believe. Now even if what we promised is achievable, our unbelief will make it very difficult for us to deliver on it. A subtle but highly dominating feature of the human mind is its capacity to make the body successfully ‘work’ towards what it believes no matter how difficult or inconvenient. The corollary of the that is also the capacity of the mind to undermine what the body does if it (the mind) doesn’t believe in it. The moment we don’t believe in what we are promising, we are very unlikely to carry it out fully and satisfactorily.
We think that we can compartmentalise: Sometimes we think we can compartmentalise keeping our promises in one situation but be nonchalant about it in others. For instance, we may think that we can always keep our promise to our spouse but can get away with a standard lower than that at work. However, the tendency of human behaviour is to always be reinforced in a particular direction. This means failing to keep our promise at our place of work will ultimately hurt our selective desire to always fulfil our promise to our spouse.
These are basically some of the reasons why we fail to deliver on our word. Next week we will take up how we can improve our willingness and capacity to always keep our word.
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