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Making and keeping promises to ourselves is equally important as making and keeping promises to others.   We have discussed in class with our students that making a promise to others carries with it a responsibility to do everything we can to complete our promise.  So if we promise to meet someone at a given time, or to pick some one up or teach them a skill – keeping the promise builds trust in each other.

All of us are willing to go to great means to be sure that our word is good with others.  We should however consider the effects of keeping promises to ourselves.  Our commitment to keep our word and promises to ourselves also builds trust.  We may make a promise to ourselves to be on time for an event or in general.  Breaking a promise to ourselves can begin to break down the trust we have in ourselves and damage our own self-respect.  If we are a student in school and we promise ourselves to try our hardest or study our best – if we keep the promise we are feeling very good about ourselves – this builds self esteem, even if we did not score as high as we wanted to on a test.  Think though how we feel about ourselves if deep down inside we know we did not keep that promise of giving our best.

In time we may even stop making promises to ourselves and begin living our lives without goals or aspirations.  How sad to take the possibility of our great life that we have and allow it to become just mediocre.  Even sadder if we are a parent for our children to watch us not keep promises to ourselves and for them to lose respect for our parenting.

We can do all of this by being careful about the promises we make with ourselves and be sure they are realistic and attainable.  We should think about the trustworthy factor both in ourselves and that of others in us.  Making and keeping promises will tend to grow our trust in our own abilities and motives.  Keeping our promises will build our self esteem.

A promise is a contract and is important to keep with others and ourselves.

We parents, for the most part, all want the same things for our kids. Yes we want them to grow up healthy, happy and resilient; but even more so we want them to be good people.  Having integrity is a huge part of being a person with strong character, thus the reason why we strive so hard to teach our kids right from wrong. But the reality is our children cannot develop integrity unless they see what integrity looks like first. That is where you, the parent, come in! If we want our kids to grow up honest and truthful, then we need to model that behavior. Most of time we do just that too, but sometimes…

It’s 5:30pm and you are in the middle of making dinner when the phone rings. Your hands are covered in ground meat and breadcrumbs and you need to get this meatloaf in the oven if you are ever going to eat tonight so you ask your daughter to grab the phone. You look over her shoulder and notice on the caller ID that it is your Great Aunt Betty who loves to chat endlessly and gets her feelings hurt when you try to cut her off before she is through. In a moment of desperation you mouth the words to your daughter, “Tell her I’m not here!”

Children are smart, real smart and they know that telling Great Aunt Betty that you are not home, when you obviously are, is a flat out lie! Perhaps a justifiable little white lie because you need to make dinner and you were trying to spare her feelings. None the less, to your child that white lie is the same as if they said they didn’t eat a cookie even though the crumbs on their shirt say something else.

Being honest all the time is hard, but if we are demanding that our children be truthful shouldn’t they see us at least attempting to do the same thing? If we want our kids to be able to come to us when they have problems, to trust us, to seek and accept our advice; they need to know that we mean what we say.

So the next time you are busy when Great Aunt Betty calls, stop for a second and remember who is watching. Modify the old “She’s not home” routine, and perhaps use the “She’s unable to come to the phone,” or “I’m sorry, she’s busy right now” one instead; both of which are truthful alternative responses that will send the message of what integrity looks like to your child.

Each month we will discuss a life skill with all of our students. This month the word is Integrity.  This word will be defined in the following ways for our students.

 

 

Young students: Integrity means: “I mean what I say and I say what I mean!”

Older students: Integrity means:  Being true to yourself, your values and your word.

Each age group has a worksheet that parents can use to continue the discussion at home with their children, and one for adults to allow them to think more deeply about the skill and how it applies to them. Would you like to receive the worksheet? Stop by our studio at 133 Gibralter Avenue in Annapolis, MD and tell us the age of your child. We will give you a worksheet and invite you to watch Mr. Joe discuss the word with the students in class.  You can also follow our discussions here on this website.

If you would like to become a member of Balanced Life Skills, come TRY CLASSES FOR FREE.   We are not your typical martial arts school, in fact we are an education center, working with our students on physical skills along with empowering families with compassion, awareness and respect – creating a culture of peace. We believe in every child and build their self – confidence.  Balanced Life Skills takes part in community service and encourages each student to do the same.

Come in and talk to the parents that are here and watch the class for the age group you are interested in.  Learn about the Balanced Life Skills Way.