I’m still working on my writing style and how I share content. Part of the purpose of this blog is to present myself as a respectable engineer. But there are times when I shouldn’t sugar-coat my experiences, and instead should seek to share a valuable lesson at the expense of my own vanity. This is one of those times.
Not Who I Thought I Was
Last month I had a rude awakening when I got lambasted (well-deservingly) for failing to follow through on a commitment to a friend. I had actually done two out of the three things I had promised to do for him that Friday, but the one I failed to do was far more important for him. The Saturday morning after my self-imposed deadline, I awoke to read a text message from this friend knocking away my past, present and future:
“…If you don’t keep small commitments, you won’t keep big commitments. If you’re not responsible in one area, you won’t be responsible in other areas…”
Yes, he was completely correct. No arguments there. I needed to take all of my commitments more seriously. There really was no problem in doing the thing today or the following, but I had given my word that it would get done on Friday.
What I didn’t see coming (and shame on me for not recognizing it) was a similar conversation with my girlfriend. After telling her about my blunder and the sternness of my friend’s words, she fell completely silent. And her silence said everything to me. When you’ve been with someone for seven years, there are a lot of opportunities to make commitments, and equally many opportunities to break them. Seven years of failed commitments, large and small, came rushing back to me (and to her as well).
That silence took me on one of those symbolic journeys to the underworld: “Oh no….I’m not the person I thought I was. The people around me don’t take me seriously because my word doesn’t mean anything to them anymore.”
The Receiving End
Almost as if God himself had ordained it, the day after this ego-bruising experience, I found myself on the other side of the commitment problem, the receiving end.
My soccer team was scheduled to play for 3rd place in our Sunday league. Morale was low because of a crushing 5-0 loss in our semifinal game, the week before, we had been favored to win. There was no communication that week and no proper headcount until I kicked things off the night before the game.
Commitment to communicate: Many of my teammates failed to even respond to the call to arms. There is always an implicit commitment that gets extended to us to appropriately respond and communicate with others, especially when one is in a long term relationship or team commitment. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that no response is ever an appropriate response.
Commitment to show up: Of the players that committed to show up via text the night before, four of them didn’t make it. No text, no call, just didn’t show up.
Commitment to play: Because we were lacking numbers approaching game time, the players who showed up weren’t getting ready because they no longer wanted to play.
After scrambling to find some guest players at the field and urging my teammates to get their boots on, we played. And we played well for that first half all things considered, up 2-0 by halftime (coincidentally, the worst score in soccer). The wheels fell off the wagon in the second half and we lost 3-2. Some of our players quite literally stormed off the field without saying a word…or paying their referee fees
Commitment to pay: The players that showed up and played, no longer felt the need to pay referee fees. The very equivalent of shoplifting, my teammates had accepted the services of an organized soccer game and now were going to leave the league manager empty handed.
After being told that this had been all my fault: I handed in my jersey, paid the entirety of the team’s bill, and left the field teamless for the second season in a row. (The first time has a life lesson in and of itself.)
The Cost of Breaking Commitments
My ex-team immediately scheduled a game the following weekend (in a different league naturally). But they didn’t see what I had seen. They didn’t fix the commitment problem.
They didn’t communicate, they didn’t get a head count, they showed up late, they lacked the numbers, and they got burned.
Being an observer in their group-chat, I’ve read painful messages from guys in the last few weeks that showed they had lost all confidence in their teammates. Some players would even text the morning of a game that they were just going to stay in bed because it didn’t seem worth it to go.
Some of us have known each other for ten years, and some more. But it only took a few weeks of broken commitments for the team to completely fall apart.
Commitment Problems Everywhere
When I learn a valuable life lesson, I often share it with my Toastmasters International club. I posed to them a simple question at the beginning of the meeting: “In 30 seconds or less, tell us about a promise that you plan on keeping in your life.”
HALF!!! Half of my club members didn’t answer the question. Half of my club members gave the same evasive response: “I try not to make any promises anymore.”
The members of my Toastmasters club are not 20-something-year-old knuckleheads lacking proper judgment. They are retired accountants, leaders at universities, marketing directors, and well respected individuals in their families and communities. They are also members of Toastmasters International, where every week they voluntarily practice their ability to communicate with others and be leaders.
And HALF of them shared the same emotional response to my very simple question: “I’ve promised things in the past and burned myself too many times. It’s better that I promise nothing to anybody. That way I don’t disappoint anyone.”
Now it is time for my confession. My exact response to my friend Saturday morning upon reading his text was: “You are not the first [person I’ve hurt], and you won’t be the last. Though it’d be nice to think you could be. I just won’t make any more promises.” I have also said the same thing to my girlfriend on more than one occasion in our relationship.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
What are we to do then? Honestly, I think it is actually very practical advice to cut back on what we promise, but only so that we have the resources and capacity to follow through on the promises we do keep.
The gut reaction that my club members and I experienced is a very Cain-like response. It’s one that originates out of resentment. Resentment that our good intentions in making the promise could have landed us in such a bad state. Resentment that the good deeds of our past are meaningless in the presence of this mistake.
Cain, for all his efforts and labors, is not blessed with good fortune by God as his brother Able is. Instead of carrying his burdens with dignity and faith, he kills the ideal that he is called upon to embody.
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We can choose the route of Cain, to live in resentment and kill our ideals. We can never make promises again to our friends and loved ones, thereby stopping the suffering. But it leaves us in a place of stagnation with those around us and with ourselves. It reinforces the story that we are the kind of person that does not follow through on commitments and that people should no longer count on us to help move life forward.
We should instead choose to work daily at how we can keep our promises. It might be a simple case of a needed organizational system, or it could be that we are plagued by escapism that chokes our time away from responsibilities. But the story should always be:
“I am the kind of person that people can count on. I am the kind of person that can bear his responsibilities and those of others. I am the kind of person that can ‘transform chaos into order’ (Jordan Peterson).”
The more we practice this (yes, by making promises and following through on them), the more this story will become our realities.