Loyalty is usually woven into the dynamics when the conversation comes up around trust and commitment. I’m going to ask you to take a minute and actually think about it to assess what it means to you. What is loyalty?
“A strong feeling of support or allegiance.””A devotion to and faithfulness to a nation, cause, philosophy, country, group, or person.”
All over in our lives we have relationships that we support and form allegiances to. Friends, lovers, coworker, businesses, employers, and companies to name a few.
There are varying levels of loyalty and allegiance.
We have the absolute die hard style that is loyal no matter what and for virtually forever.
This level of loyalty with a friend will let people off the hook for bad behavior or ruptures in trust.
This level of loyalty with a boss will make excuses for why a company will provide market statistics why they can’t give you a raise even though there’s a 50K gap between you and some of your colleagues.
When we’re loyal to a fault with a company or organization we continue to patronize a place that has bad service, subpar products, and/or inconsistent delivery of promises.
Then there’s the other side of the coin…
This is where the wind blows and we drift off to some other situational desire. We might be in an intimate relationship but we have a coworker that’s attractive and turns us on so we pursue flirting and entertain mental fantasies of hooking up or creating a deeper connection outside the parameters of our commitments.
This is the level of loyalty where we feel like our job isn’t fulfilling after three to six months so we start putting our resume out. We do this every year and fail to build any seniority at our place of employment.
Here’s the deal, you get it. There are faults on both sides of the spectrum when it comes to what you’re loyal to and the depth of your devotions. In this world things fail and things don’t always work. Sometimes they don’t work every once and a while and we bail rather than give them a chance. And sometimes we stick it out when things are bad and have been bad for way too long. We make excuses because we’re codependent.
The opportunity;
What/who do you complain about more than anything in your life?
How will YOU have to change in order for to stop complaining?
Where do you hold too high of a standard on something but it’s because you lack commitment?
What is the number one thing you need to let go of that you keep sticking out?