I'm Counting on My Word

Selfie with a blue Billie

Many years ago, I'd picked up Don Miguel Ruiz's book The Four Agreements. It was a recommendation from a friend, one which I deemed as a good one. The agreements were so simple and still quite powerful. Powerful enough even to write a song  melody and lyric based on the first agreement.

The agreement goes like this:

Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Lately, I've made moves to make room for the work that I want to do , as well as the collaborations that have been forming. I've decided to follow a best friend's advice, "Just Do You." That means despite certain opportunities that I may be shirking, I am turning in and focusing on the promises I have made to myself. I can't keep promises outwardly if I can't keep them with myself. I have been having a hard time consistently delivering the kind of work that the projects I love and want to support deserve and part of that is because I have not been working on consistent delivery in my own life.

I look around my little apartment and I see the writing which has been started and piled on the desk but not redrafted, let alone sent someplace or being read by anyone. It's collecting dust. The dishes are piled in the sink. The laundry is unwashed. The room is a mess. The bill collectors are calling. . . .

I was reminded then of the song I mentioned above and I imagined, for the first time since its creation, singing it to my self. I'm keeping my word because I am counting on it. How else can I be happy with myself? How else can I be a success? How else can I have plenty enough and more from which to give?