The power of a promise

December 2017     No Comments

When Alex Sheen addressed the students, faculty, and staff of SUNY Poly at the Utica Campus Center Gym in November, he wanted them to understand one thing – the power of keeping a promise, something he learned from his father. His father, Sheen says, was a man of his word.

“When he said he was going to be there for you, he showed up. When it came to keeping promises, there are a lot of people in this world who don’t do that.”

When his father was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually completed chemotherapy, they celebrated with Chinese food from the same restaurant his father often got food from.

“It was the type of day I wish had one more of.”

Despite making it through chemotherapy, the cancer had spread from the lungs to liver, pancreas, and brain. On a bright morning September 4, 2012, Alex went to his father’s bedside along with other family, and held his father’s hand, doing his best to comfort him as he died. The loss of his father and the memory his father left behind would project Alex onto a brand new path of life, one far from the well-paid tech job he had been working.

“In this life, too many people say I’ll get to it, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Inspired by his father’s character as person who saw things through, Alex handed out what he calls a promise card – a small card to write down a promise. That card is then handed to the person you’re fulfilling the promise to. When that promise is fulfilled, the card is given back, earning it as a person of your word, like Alex’s father.

Wanting to spread that message taught to him by his father, Alex posted online that he would send out ten promise cards to anyone in the world, at no cost to anyone.

“That was the dumbest financial decision of my life. Lesson of the day – don’t offer free stuff to people on the internet.”

His online post went viral and since the day his dad died he has sent out more than 4.7 million promise cards throughout the world.

“No matter what language you speak, the color of your skin, how much money you make, or how old you are, we all understand the power of a promise.”

The promise cards started getting shared on social media, many that touched Alex in profound ways he could never fathom. One was from a man named Garth who was given a fatal diagnosis and began thinking about the time he had left to spend on the planet. Since his daughter was very little, Garth wrote a note on a napkin to send with her to school. Inspired by Alex’s promise cards, Garth made his promise, despite how much time he would have left, to write 826 napkin notes for his daughter, one for every day she had left at that point of school.

“This is about doing what you can with what you’ve got. It becomes when I graduate, which becomes when I get that first job, which becomes when I retired. But when does that day come?”

Alex’s job at a software company paid well, but seeing the napkin notes from the father inspired by his promise cards, Alex began to see that money was only a means to an end. But it would take another profound moment of impact to set Alex on what he considers his destiny of helping others see things through.

Alex Sheen, founder of Because I Said I Would, poses with SUNY Poly students after a November 2017 speaking event.

He was at work when he received a letter with no postmark. It was from someone who had been keeping up with his blog and thought that life was no longer worth living. In the letter, they told Alex that despite this, they found strength in his promise cards, thanking him, and saying that because of his inspiration, they would not give up. When Alex took the letter to his boss, he was shocked to discover the letter came from his boss’ 14 year old daughter, who had been suffering through depression. Picked on at school for being overweight, she was unsure how to deal and began cutting herself. But she found inspiration in the message Alex had been trying to put out to the world.

The moment was the tipping point for Alex, who then left his job and decided to start a non-profit organization called Because I Said I Would, a social movement and nonprofit dedicated to the betterment of humanity by encouraging and supporting the making and keeping of promises. Today, Alex travels the world sharing this message and hoping to change the world, one promise at a time.

“We all have a responsibility. Somewhere along the way, we as Americans lost culpability. It became a lot easier to point and blame at a group of individuals who look different instead of looking in the mirror and think of how we can make the world better. I’m all for miracles but sometimes what we need is for people to do what they said they would do in the first place. And to be kind to each other. If we don’t teach our children to be decent human beings, what point is there in society at all?”