Keep Your Agreements

This next article is part of an ongoing series here at TSB Magazine called The Success Principles. The series is based on the 64 principles laid out by Jack Canfield in his course of the same name. If you’re new, I always suggest starting any series from the beginning.

Principle 54:  Keep Your Agreements

It is known that our integrity and self esteem is highly linked with our ability to keep agreements with ourselves and others.  Once you realize how important keeping your word is, you realize that you have the ability to do it.

Jack Canfield lays out some good tips for Making and Keeping Agreements:

1.  Make only agreements that you intend to keep.  Take a few seconds before making an agreement to see if it is really what you want to do.  Check with yourself.  How does your body feel about it?  Don’t make an agreement just because you are looking for someone’s approval.  If you do, you’ll find yourself breaking these commitments.

2.  Write down all the agreements you make.  Use a calendar, daily planning book, or computer to record all of your agreements.  In the course of a week, you might enter into dozens of agreements.  One of the big reasons we don’t keep our agreements is that we simply forget many of the agreements that we have made.  Write them down and review that list every day.

3.  Communicate any broken agreement at the first appropriate time.  As soon as you know you are going to have a broken agreement- your car won’t start, you are caught in traffic, your child is sick- notify the other person as soon as possible, and then renegotiate the agreement.  This demonstrates respect for the other person’s time.  It also gives them time to reschedule, re plan, make other arrangements and limit any potential damage.

4.  Learn to say no more often.  Give yourself time to think it over before making a new agreement.  I write the word no in yellow highlighter on all my calendar pages as a way to remind myself to really consider what else I have to give up.  It makes me pause before I add another commitment to my life