my word is my bond

Something that my last boss used to always say was,

“Your word is your bond.”

She drilled this into our team in our meetings. She said that integrity is important. She said that being trustworthy is a value. That when you make a promise, you keep it. That doing so says so much about a person.

I took this to heart.

I have been guilty of this, along with you as well, I’m sure - loosely stating our promises to one another and in the end, we do not keep them. Because we weren't honest when we made the promise. We forget. We can’t keep the promise for some reason. Unfortunately, when this happens, it erodes the trust people have towards you. Do you want to live in a world where there is not trust? Where people don’t trust you? I don’t. Trust is really important to me. I’ve been burned pretty badly a few times because of the trust I’ve given others and it’s been tarnished. And I know that I’ve done the same to others.

My coach and I were talking about trust the other day, in regards to working with people. She asked what I want to bring to people’s lives when they come to me. I said that I want them to know that I will be there to help them. To support them as their coach and that I promise to do that in any way that I can (that’s ethical of course!) and that I want to represent truth and integrity with whomever I come in contact with. I told her that “I promise to leave them better than they were before they came to me and I promise to make an impact in their lives and to be the best coach that I can be. I hold true to that.” Being a coach means I’ll have some sort of influence in peoples’ lives. So keeping my word and holding myself to my word, is crucial to me. Because it’ll be important to the people that I help.

I don’t want to be someone who says one thing and does another. That doesn’t feel good to me. I want to be absolutely trustworthy. I want to live in integrity and I want to hold true to my word. That is so important to me. I want people to be able to rely on me and I want to hold myself to the highest standard. Not just for myself but for all relationships in my life.

I believe that our word should be our bond. I did not realize the importance of this before I heard it on a weekly basis from my boss. Yes, we all make mistakes. We can make promises that we ultimately can’t keep. But our intention always should be to keep our word. And I believe that we should do everything possible to honor what we promise to others and to ourselves.

Integrity matters. Trustworthiness matters. These are the values that matter to me. This is the kind of person I want to be. For myself. For my family. For my friends. For my community. And for my place in the world. xx