Tuesday’s Promise is Accountability

Each day this week I am writing about that day’s promise from The Self Empowerment Pledge.

In yesterday’s column I said that we’ve seen people use the seven promises of The Self Empowerment Pledge to help them accomplish important and long-postponed goals and dreams. I mentioned that the story of someone who’d finally broken a tenacious drug addiction was one of the stories included in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Nurses.

Kyle is a registered nurse. When the manager of his unit told the team that they would start their daily staff huddles by reciting The Pickle Pledge and that day’s promise from The Self Empowerment Pledge as a group, he didn’t want to do it. At first he was just saying the words.

But eventually the words started to sink in. He would catch himself sneaking into the medication room to steal unused narcotics for his own personal use knowing that he was breaking the promises he’d been verbally making each day.

He finally said that he couldn’t live with himself. He turned himself in. To the eternal credit of the hospital where he worked, instead of having him terminated and arrested they sent him to a drug treatment program. Today, Kyle is three years drug-free.

Had his manager not had the courage to insist that he participate with the rest of the team, and had he not (eventually) had the humility to admit to himself that he needed to make the effort to be personally responsible, accountable and determined, it was just a matter of time before he was caught and arrested, or overdosed and died.

I hope that you are not struggling with a tenacious drug addiction, but I’m certain that you are struggling with something. And I’m certain that the people you work with, and your loved ones at home, are struggling with something.

These promises might be simple but living them is not always easy. Make the commitment anyway. The longer you repeat the words, the more they will sink in. And at some point you will look in the mirror and see the person you could be looking back at you.

You see, the truth is that no one can empower you but you. It’s an inside job. But once you have empowered yourself – once you’ve seen the lion in your mirror – no one can take that power away from you.

By the way, I myself am challenged to live these promises each and every day. Many days I fall short – though I do a lot better now than when I started. I personally find that Tuesday’s promise on personal accountability is the most challenging. I also find that to the extent I can keep that promise, it makes keeping the other six much easier. I suspect that you will find the same thing to be true for yourself.

You can download both the poster pictured above and each of the seven individual promises (in either PDF or JPEG format) at this link.

At Values Coach our purpose is transforming people through the power of values and transforming organizations through the power of people. We do that by helping leaders build a stronger Culture of Ownership on a Foundation of Values. Learn more at www.ValuesCoach.com.