Bethel Grace Abbey Mission

This is the online outreach for Bethel Grace Abbey Mission. May our efforts to serve the hurting and homeless souls of Southern California reach to the level He has set for us. May His Glory shine through the darkness and be evident in all we do at Bethel Grace Abbey. These are only our humble beginnings, but through His love, we can move mountains. Thank you for joining us on our mission. May your life be as blessed as mine has become.
In His Loving Grace,
Jennifer Joy

Monday, December 16, 2013

Personal Best: Part One: Reliability

I have spoken several times in the past few months about raising the bar and having higher personal standards. It is very important that we have honorable values and morals. It is important for our dealings with society and within our own family. It is important for our employment and financial future. Having maturity in these areas just plain helps us function in life. Today, I would like to share about some of the best qualities we can exhibit. If we strive for these, we can achieve the things we wish to achieve in life. It’s not a long list, only four characteristics to work toward. I believe that if you master one, then the other three will automatically follow. This I will explain more in the fourth and last post in this series.

  • Reliable
  • Committed 
  • Trustworthy
  • Well Grounded

Being unreliable, nowadays, seems to be part and parcel with being young. Somehow, we have managed to not teach the younger generations how to be upstanding citizens. We yell and scream at the younger generations, that they should be more respectful and such, and yet we forget that we, the older generations, neglected our duties as the younger were growing up. However, I am not here to lay blame or make excuses. I am here to help bring harmony to our communities and families. As such, being unreliable begets disharmony, and reliable people bring harmony to the table.

As an example,  when we regularly call in sick, (in those times when we know darn well we aren’t really sick), we portray our unreliability. The fact that we are not reliable can be seen like a big neon sign around our necks. Everyone soon discovers this about us, upon meeting us or hiring us. We cannot hide this character flaw for long. Once in this habit, it is difficult to break. I know this from personal experience. There were jobs I hated and there were plenty of times I believed what I had to do at home was more important. No matter what was going on at home, if it wasn’t a life-threatening emergency, then I had no business placing my priorities ahead of my boss’ priorities for my time. It is not about who is more important in the situation. When we accept employment, we make a commitment to be there and to do our assigned tasks. Yes, we are putting our boss and coworkers in a bind by not being there, but the bottom line is that we disgrace our own good name; our reputation suffers when we flake out by calling in sick all the time (or however else we show our unreliability). When we flake out at work, we also have a tendency to flake out in our relationships.

Friendships, relationships, intimacies, work, they all suffer when we are unreliable. If you do not believe it, just have an honest conversation with someone you spend a lot of time with, someone you can trust to be honest with you. Or, if you are in a self-punishment mood, ask your boss what he honestly thinks about your absenteeism.

You can ask what others think about you, you can even ask their advice on the subject, but no one can fix this issue for you. You must do the work for yourself, to reset your own bar above what people now expect from you (having lived with an unreliable you for some time now). I cannot tell you how to be more reliable. I can tell you that the most obvious way to be more reliable is to act reliably from here on out.

One thing that worked for me was taking every word out of my own mouth seriously. I made a vow a long time ago that I would not make promises, because promises have a tendency to be broken. Life has a habit of getting in the way of things. By not making idle promises, I know I won’t be what gets in my own way so often.

So many times, we jump to say yes to everything asked of us. Before our brains have even engaged on the subject, our mouths commit us to it. If you have an inability to say no, commit the following phrases to memory: “I need to check my schedule.” “I need to think about it.” “Can I give you my decision tomorrow.”

Those simple words will give you the time you need to make sure you can commit, or it can give you the time to decide if you really want to commit or not.

But sometimes our best option is to just learn how to say no. Work is work and has priority. If social or family requests are getting in the way, maybe its time to sit down your friends and relations and have a serious talk about your commitment to your employer and that being able to feed and house your family is more important than the drama being pushed in front of you. I’ll talk more about drama another day.

I must caution, however, that when it comes to accepting change in us, people can be gun shy. If they know us one way and one way only, they may have trouble believing we have changed. In this situation, it is best to just keep plugging along, doing the right thing, making better choices, demonstrating our new, reliable self, and eventually our relations and friends will see the new pattern emerging, and the more they see of it, the more they will be able to believe.

Remember that change takes time. Change is possible, and once it truly occurs, it is amazing, but it takes patience to get there. Hang in there.

My prayer for you today is that you can see more clearly the person you can be, and that your steps to become her/him is made easier by the love in your relationships.

In His Grace,

Jennifer Joy

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