To What Are You *Really* Reliable?

Reliability, self sabotage, and taking ownership of our patterns.

This post was originally featured by the author on www.RachaelYahne.com

“How are you most reliable in your life? To what? To whom? When? List the top four.” **

Before you read my responses, answer for yourself. Do the answers come easily? Quickly? Did your heart race, afraid that the truth might not be entirely self respecting?

Normally I chomp at the bit for questions like this, or any opportunity for self assessment that brings me greater clarity, or closer to the self esteem I’ve been clawing to regain since I forfeited it in adolescence. Meyers Briggs, star charts, Attachment styles — you name it, I’ve quizzed it. But this question was different, for its use of the words ‘to what’. To what have I been reliable?

My own undoing.

The definition of reliable is: consistently good in quality or performance; able to be trusted. In grander schemes, I am definitively reliable: I finish what I start, I pay bills on time. But to what am I reliable — I don’t do these things for the tasks themselves, I do them out of fear for what will happen if I don’t. That fear was sacrificing people I love, including myself. Last week I canceled a…