Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Keeping Your Word Means Making Happen What You Said Is Going To Happen

Mutualpark, Pinelands, South Africa

April 26, 1983



This essay, Keeping Your Word Means Making Happen What You Said Is Going To Happen, is the first in this Conversations For Transformation internet series.

It is also the first essay in the quadrilogy Keeping Your Word:
  1. Keeping Your Word Means Making Happen What You Said Is Going To Happen
  2. Keeping Your Word Is A Black And White Issue
  3. Three Distinctions Of Word
  4. Six Definitions Of Word
in that order.

It is also the first in a group of twelve adapted from my thesis BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING: It is also the prequel to
  1. Honoring Your Word
  2. The Disappointment Of The Word Breakers
in that order.




Everyone at some time or other has been kept waiting. You make an agreement to meet someone at a specific time and place, you are there and they don't show up. Your time is wasted and you begin to feel something akin to skepticism with regard to any further agreements you may make with that person. Eventually, when that person finally does contact you, he or she has what seems to be a perfectly valid reason, excuse or justification (and profuse apology) for not being where they said they would be. And yet, it never seems to make any difference. Your wasted time is never recovered and you still wonder whether or not that person is really dependable.

Keeping your word is a black and white issue. You either make happen what you said is going to happen, or you don't. If you said you're going to produce some result by a certain time and you don't, no amount of reasons, excuses, justifications or apologies alters that fact. Reasons are one thing. Results are something completely different.

We're all on the same team. The degree you can be counted on to make happen exactly what you said is going to happen is the degree of success for all of us. Keeping your word has consequences for those who depend on you doing what you said you would do. If you don't keep your word, that has consequences too.

While it's true that you always have the choice not to make agreements that are impossible to keep, it's in your best interests to become known as someone who can be depended on to keep their word and simply produce the result, rather that someone who knows all the reasons why what they said is going to happen, doesn't.

Keeping your word makes a difference.


This essay, Keeping Your Word Means Making Happen What You Said Is Going To Happen, originally appeared in my thesis BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING which is available at

http://www.laurenceplatt.com/breakthrough

The essay BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING introduces the thesis.


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