Evan Renaerts

Count On It

November 30, 2007

The neighbourhood roof-tops glisten white with frost, the local mountains are covered in a fresh coat of snow and the world is full of bright sunlight.

How often do you say that you will do something when you don’t want to do it; how often do you say you will do something when you have no real intention of following through?

I was talking with a colleague about accountability and wondering about this behaviour, where a person volunteers to do something and then doesn’t, and not just once but repeatedly. My friend suggested that maybe this person was trying to guess what I wanted to hear and then offering to do that.

One of my beliefs is that everyone’s behaviour makes sense – to them. Promising to do something because you believe that is what the other person wants is an act of what the therapists call mind reading. You know what you would want or expect from others, based on the experiences of your life, and then assume that others want these very same things from you.

Most of us believe that we can “read” other people; that just by observing their facial expressions and body language we will know what they are thinking and feeling and what they want. The truth is that none of us knows what anyone else wants from us or expects from us, unless we ask them.

Perhaps none of this would be of any importance if it weren’t for the fact that whenever we promise to do something and then don’t deliver we are essentially inviting others to question our integrity. This becomes even more problematic when we fail to communicate about not doing what we said we would do and offering some explanation for our behaviour.

Most people, when they don’t have enough information to understand another’s behaviour, will make up a story about why that person acted the way they did – sometimes that story is compassionate and often it is harshly critical. Either way, people will stop relating to you as someone they can count on.

The solution to the accountability dilemma is to know yourself so well that you never promise to do something unless it is something you are really willing to do. All you’re left with then are those times when life intervenes to prevent you from delivering on your promise within the agreed upon time frame and the solution then is to immediately communicate with those who are counting on you.

This is the one area where I consistently see clients and friends struggle; they know about their business, about cars and sports and politics but not about what makes them tick. Someone said that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living but it might be better said that the unexamined life is one not fully lived.

For most of us it isn’t until about age forty that we even begin to question who we are and what it is that we authentically want and value. Up until that time we are too busy playing the roles that we identified with success (however we may have defined that).

Still, it is never too late to have a happy childhood and never too late to get to know yourself.

To be someone that people can count on doesn’t have to be onerous for the simple reason that we are never compelled to promise anything unless we are truly willing to deliver on that promise – count on it.

Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com