inconsistent
My biggest pet peeve is unreliability and inconsistency. Please, do what you say you are going to do or don’t say anything at all.
As a parent, lack of consistency is an invitation to disaster. Toddlers excel at asking the same question repeatedly, until they get the answer they want. Backing down–even once–starts an avalanche of future nagging.
Once at our annual ice cream social, a little boy was misbehaving. His mother repeatedly threatened to take him home if he continued his behavior. After another episode of holy terror, my young daughter carried over the woman’s purse, beach towel and shoes.
“Here you go,” she said, plopping them in the woman’s lap. “You said you were going to leave if he did that again.”
I wish I had that same courage sometimes.
“Never make someone your priority, when they only make you an option.”
When a friend is consistently late, the message is clearly “you are unimportant and not worth my time.” The same people are capable of arriving to doctor appointments or work on time, so the issue is not disorganization. It is prioritization.
The same can be said for canceling for the weakest of reasons. There are always exceptions to the rule but when your word is broken, repeatedly, I will no longer trust it.
A friend mentioned this well known quote to me:
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
I’d like to think I am a person who makes promises and then keeps them. I believe my public vow to complete projects like National Novel Writing Month and the A to Z Challenge are what drives me to complete the project. I would never make a public promise and then fail to follow through.
Which is why you haven’t seen a promise from me to lose 50 lbs. I promised to help my kids eat their Easter candy–and I never break a promise.