Loyalty
Day 30
"Loyalty is the pledge of truth to oneself and others." Ada Velez-Boardley
Loyalty is often spoken of as a desired characteristic in relationships with others or things. Are you loyal to your family, your significant other, your favorite brand or restaurant? If you break this loyalty, it's like breaking a vow. How can you then stand true to your word of truly valuing that person, thing or experience? Being disloyal is almost seen as a badge of shame. And when we are disloyal, we often do feel as though we dishonored the thing that we pledged our loyalty to. It makes sense, as pledging loyalty to someone or something is a bold statement of commitment and value at the highest regard. It's a wonderful thing, however, why do we not focus more on the effects of being disloyal to ourselves?
Being loyal to yourself is not an act of selfishness. It's an act of commitment to your standards, values and self worth. Yet, so often, we break this loyalty that we do not even realize we are doing it. We choose to eat clean for a month, but then sneak in a slice of cake. Or we choose to save a certain amount of money one month, to end up spending more on things we may not have needed because we chose to let go of our budget. These small acts of disloyalty can compound and lead us to a place of then wondering why we "can't" achieve the goal we desire, or maintain the success in something we gained.
If we cannot remain loyal to ourselves - our voice, our values, our promises to ourselves - how can we be that to others? So before holding someone to the cross for being disloyal to you, why not look at where their loyalty stands to themselves? And if we see patterns of not being able to stick to or achieve something, we should look more at where we let the ball drop against ourselves.
The more loyal we are to our own truths and standards, we begin to walk through life a bit differently. We trust that what we desire for ourselves is valuable and achievable, and we enjoy the journey of being committed to our inner being to get us there. Loyalty to self allows us to stand true in who we are, and each decision we make going forward looks to that benchmark. We then embark more consciously on being the best version of ourselves firstly for ourselves. From there, we begin attract people and experiences that do the same.
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