MAKING & KEEPING PROMISES

Everyday, we tend to make a lot of promises. During working hours, we have to promise our clients on the services or products delivery due date. Even in our personal life, we have to promise our loved one, family members and friends to help them to do whatever things requested. However, how often we can keep our promises and make our clients, friends or whoever concern happy and satisfy with the realization of our promise? I believe that, sometime we keep our promises and sometime tends to broke our promises because certain circumtances. For instance, you may promise to help your wife on the gardening works in your house's garden. She will definitely feels happy if you really can make it. On the other hand, if you can't keep your promise and delay your work again and again, the amount of trust on you will decrease from time to time. Do you have the same experience on this? I think it should be normal life experience :) Do you have any idea to increase other's confidence and trust on us by keeping promises?

In my opinion, how about we start it by making and keeping promises to ourselves ??? When we really can make and keep a promise to ourself first, then only we can promises others people and make it happen all the time. Are you agree on this??

Stephen Covey said in "First Things First"....

Making and keeping promises is one of the best ways to strengthen our independent will. Each time we do, we make deposits in our Personal Integrity Account. This is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust we have in ourselves, in our ability to walk our talk.

It is important to start small, make and keep a promise, even if it means you're going to get up in the morning a little earlier and exercise. Be sure you don't violate that commitment and be sure you don't overpromise and underdeliver. Don't risk making a withdrawal from the Personal Integrity Account. Build slowly until yoursense of honor becomes greater than your moods.

Our lives are the results of our choices. We choose either to live our lives or to let others live them for us. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and to others, little by little we increase our strength until our ability to act is more powerful than any of the factors that act upon us.

Just look back on some of our personal experience, we promises to..
a) wake up a bit earlier for morning jog...
b) finish some houseworks after a tiring working days...
c) and so on...

TO some of us, we really can't keep our promises even it is just a small matter. So learn to make and keep small promises by today before going for the big one..

Have a nice day :)

IT'S NOT A SPRINT, IT’S A MARATHON !!!!

If you’d never run a mile and I told you to run a marathon today, that would seem impossible, wouldn’t it?

But you know how all long-distance runners start?

They start by running just a block or two their first day of training. Actually, most don’t run. They just jog. And some don’t even jog. They just sort of walk first.

The point is, they start off going maybe two blocks, then three blocks, then a half-mile, then a mile, then a couple of miles.

And before they know it, several months have passed and they’ve gone from being out of shape to being able to run a marathon. (Source: Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach)

“I have run in marathons. To prepare for a marathon, I would practice running 8 km daily for three months before the event. Two weeks before the marathon, I would practice at least one 21 km trial run.”

“During the actual marathon, I remember that after the first half of the run, that is, the first 21 km, I would be exhausted. I would ask myself at that point: Why am I doing this? Still, if I had given up the race then and walked back, I would still have to travel 21 km to the starting point, just as if I continued, I would have 21 km ahead of me to the finish line. I had no choice but to complete the whole 42 km run.”

“The second half of the run is harder; it took all of my mind to push my tired legs to move forward one step at a time. Life is a lot like running a marathon. You can achieve anything extraordinary by firstly, being prepared for it, and secondly, by persisting at it”, said Dr. Peter Yee ( author of The Certain Way to Life’s Riches).

The Clock And The Compass In Our Life....

What is the CLOCK AND COMPASS in our life???? I started to read The First Things First by Stephen Covey recently and read about the clock and compass in life.

The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities - what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction - what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass - when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in our lives.

For some of us, the pain of the gap is intense. We can't seem to walk our talk. We feel trapped, controlled by other people or situations. We're always responding to crises. We're constantly caught up in "the thick of thin things" - putting out fires and never making time to do what we know would make a difference. We feel as though our lives are being lived for us.

For others of us, the pain is vague discomfort. We just can't get what we feel we should do, what we want to do, and what we actually do all together. We're caught in dilemmas. We feel so guilty over what we're not doing. We can't enjoy what we do.

Some of us feel empty. We've defined happiness solely in terms of professional or financial achievement, and we find that our "success" did not bring us the satisfaction we thought it would. We've painstakingly climbed the "ladder of success" rung by rung - the diploma, the late nights, the promotions - only to discover as we reached the top rung that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Absorbed in the ascent, we've left a trail of shattered relationships or missed moments of deep, rich living in the wake of the intense, overfocused effort. In our race up the rungs, we simply did not take the time to do what really mattered most.

Others of us feel disoriented or confused. We have no real sense of what "first things" are. We move from one activitiy to another on automatic. Life is mechanical. Once in a while, we wonder if there's any meaning in our doing.

Some of us know we're out of balance, but we don't have confidence in other alternatives. Or we feel the cost of change is too high. Or we're afraid to try. It's easier to just live with the imbalance.

(Source: First Things First by Stephen R. Covey)

So, are you falling in one of the dillemas as stated??? How to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our life?? If you have any opinions, please leave a comments here :)