One of life's truths that I keep forgetting and relearning is the power of our lives as examples of behavior as opposed to what we say. Bad sentence. Let me start again.
What we do speaks much louder to those around us than what we say. Trite, you say. Yes, it's been said many ways and you've heard it over and over again. We teach by example, especially when it comes to our children. But this applies to all our relationships. We let people know how they can treat us by how we behave in response to them.
It is more apparent when it comes to raising children. We know that they learn about much that is important in life by watching what we do. They learn how to treat others who look different than us. They learn whether or not it is important to tell the truth. They learn what is more important...stuff or people. They learn how to manipulate us and others to get their way. They learn what the boundaries of acceptable behavior are and usually push and test us all the way. And when our verbal directions to them don't jibe with our own behavior they learn to disregard what we say.
Happens to all of us who are parents. The person whose integrity is so spotless that their words and actions always match is a paragon and those don't really exist.
I think it's harder for us to realize that we teach the people in our lives what we will accept in a relationship more by our behavior than by our words too. We are always sending signals about how much we will accept from someone else and how much we will give.
It's not what you say that counts; it's what you do. Words are cheap. Action speaks louder than words.
We've heard all the cliches, but I'm betting we haven't looked at our own behavior very often and applied that truth. Think back to a relationship that went sour and ask yourself if you behaved the way you said you wanted the other person to behave.
I know; I said I have to keep relearning this!
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