Page 24 - January 2019 Voices

TERRY TALKS

Counting on People

Terry Beard

Dependability is a virtue worth cultivating. hanging—wasting your precious inventory of
As Winston Churchill said, “. . . if you’d like to time. Eating up your valuable time, which you
know where you are going, take a look in the cannot replace.” We both nodded, “Yeah that’s it.”

rearview mirror.” As we turn the calendar page I began to reflect. Immediately, I thought, these
from one year to the next, I, too, look in the crappy behavior patterns are not good.
rearview mirror. When Leno and I first started my exercise
If we consciously think about what we would program, we each committed to our meeting

like to accomplish in the New Year, we must take on time, and to let one another know in advance
the time to evaluate where we are and make a with plenty of notice if we were not able to meet.
few course corrections to move towards better. Over the years, we have developed a wonderful
We need to not only think about the changes relationship, because we can count on one

that we’d like to make in the New Year, but we another.
must execute, to act on the course corrections to We communicate honestly with one another,
create a better life for ourselves and others. We and neither one of us blows the other off at the
each are responsible for our journey. last minute; because we’ve gotten a better choice

Over the last 13 years, week after week, and to do something else, or we were just too plain
month after month, I have been exercising lazy to get out of bed.
regularly with my trainer Leno Pugh. Often, How often, people say, I’m so sorry, I’m so
while I am working out with Leno, we chat. It is a busy. I have been traveling. In today’s world, these

close personal friendship as well as a professional are excuses. Almost everyone has a smartphone.
relationship which we share. The conversations Honest and forthright communication is the
which Leno and I share, are much like the freeway to building trust in any relationship.
intimate chats some have with their hairdressers. When Leno shared his quagmire about a few

In late December, I asked Leno, what are “we” of his client’s disrespectful behaviors, I told him
going to do differently in the year ahead, just that he wasn’t alone in this world. I went on to
around the corner. Leno immediately responded, share with Leno that I make every attempt, to
“I’m tired of people who do not do what they say drop these people off at the next bus stop. I do not

that they’re going to do. I am tired of them.” I have time to live my life or to spend time with
delved in to ask him, “Do you mean like people those folks who do not empower me between
who make appointments to work out with you, the guardrails on the highway of life.
and then at the last minute, they leave you We shared an all too common problem.

24 ONE COMMUNITY