Keeping Promises to Yourself I was recently teaching a class about Being More Present in my Enjoy Coaching membership and I mentioned the importance of keeping promises to yourself. It brought up a bunch of questions and a really great discussion. So today, I want to share a little bit about keeping promises to yourself and why it is so important. As moms, we often put our own needs last in the name of taking care of our families. We think it makes us a better mom, but it actually damages our self-confidence and sets a terrible example for our kids. If you want your kids to be confident, know their worth and not be so worried about what other people might think, this is a skill they need to develop. It will also help them learn to be reliable, be more successful in school and achieve whatever goals they set. And the best way you can teach them, is to practice this skill so you can model it yourself. Have you ever made plans with someone that you were really excited about. You were planning toward it and then the day of the plans came and you were just not in the mood? But you knew this other person was counting on you to be there so you showed up, even though you weren’t really feeling it and you ended up having a great time. Has this ever happened to you? Did you know that just like you have a relationship with the people in your life, you have a Relationship with yourself. Let’s do a little self-evaluation of your relationship with yourself. How do you treat you? How do you talk to you? Do you encourage you? How do you treat you when you fail or mess up? How do you take care of you when you are struggling or having a hard time. Do you do the things you tell you you are going to do? Do you ghost you? Do you no-show you? Do you bail on you? Do you lie to you? Do you make excuses to you? Do you bring out the best in you? Do you bring out the worst in you? If you had a friend who treated you the way you treat you, would you want to stay friends with them? So many of us are constantly breaking promises or commitments to ourselves. We tell ourselves: - I am going to eat healthy - I am going to exercise - I am not going to yell at my kids anymore - I am going to go to bed earlier -I am not going to spend so much time on my phone - I am quitting soda - I am not going to buy stuff - I am going to listen to my kids and not tell them all the things I think they should do A few weeks ago we were visiting family and my kids were playing headbanz. In that game, you have a card on your head that everyone can see except you and you have to ask yes or no questions to try and figure out what is on your card before your time runs out. There were a lot of people playing and some of the clues were really challenging. One of my nine-year-olds got frustrated because he couldn’t figure his out, so he caught a glimpse of the card in a reflection and this became a strategy. He pretended he was just really good at the game. My brother called him out for cheating and he angrily quit the game and came inside. He was embarrassed that they caught him, and frustrated about the game, but after we chatted for a minute he decided to go back out and play. His first turn back in someone asked, “did you look at the card?” and it got him upset all over again. He was frustrated that nobody trusted him. But he had not been trustworthy enough to earn their trust. Even though he wasn’t being dishonest this time, the people playing the game had experienced him being dishonest enough times that they expected that from him. What have you trained yourself to expect from YOU? If you have been breaking promises to yourself, what do you do to change the expectations? How do you repair your trust? The answer is really simple and it is only three steps: 1. You stop making promises you won’t keep 2. You only make promises you know you can keep 3. You keep your promises…no matter what Sounds pretty obvious right? Just because it is obvious doesn’t mean it is easy to do. Let’s go into a little more detail. 1. STOP MAKING PROMISES YOU WON’T KEEP Stop telling yourself you are going to do things that you don’t have the capacity for right now. If you have been drinking soda every day for years, stop thinking you are going to just magically stop and never touch soda again. If you haven’t exercised in years, don’t tell yourself that starting tomorrow you are going to hit the gym every day for an hour. If you normally go to bed at midnight, don’t tell yourself your new bedtime is 9 PM. Now I am not saying you can never set a hard goal that stretches you to do something drastically different in your life. BUT, I am saying that now is not the time for those kind of goals. In order to repair your trust with yourself, you need to show YOU how reliable you are. Every time you break a promise to yourself, you reinforce your belief that you are not trustworthy and it becomes harder and harder to repair that trust. That goes for your goals and it goes for your time commitments. You have to stop making to do lists for the two free hours of your day that would take you at least 32 hours to complete. And you have to stop beating yourself up for not getting it all done. Making commitments to yourself that you are not likely to keep is damaging your trust and destroying your relationship with yourself. If you have not been keeping promises to yourself, repairing that trust has to be your number one goal. To do that, you have to stop making promises that you won’t keep. 2. ONLY MAKE PROMISES YOU KNOW YOU CAN KEEP I know all the overachievers out there are going to be really uncomfortable with this, but discomfort is the price of growth and I promise it will be worth it! I want you to start small. Only commit to the things you know without a shadow of a doubt you will be able to follow through with. Yes, this means you are going to have to say NO to some things. And it means you are going to have to put some of your goals on the back burner for a bit. It also means you are going to feel like the commitments you make are too easy or not enough. Your brain is probably going to offer you a whole bunch of drama about it, and that is totally normal. So, if it does, I want you to go to the link in the show notes and schedule a free coaching call with me and I will help you work through it. Err on the side of undercommitting. You can always do more if you have the capacity. But commit to less than you think you can do. And watch out for your sneaky brain “pretend committing” to less, but telling yourself you will actually get more done. Commit to less. Period. And have a list of stuff you can do once your commitments are done. Another way to approach this is to commit to what you are already doing now plus one percent. What can you do that is 1% better than what you are doing right now? If you want to stop drinking soda, each time you open a can, pour one tablespoon down the sink. If you want to eat healthier, commit to eat one vegetable before each meal. If you want to go to bed earlier, move your bedtime 10 minutes earlier. You can expect that you are going to feel like everything you commit to is inconsequential, but I promise that repairing your trust with yourself is 100% worth it. 3. KEEP YOUR PROMISES…NO MATTER WHAT Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, break your commitments to yourself, NO MATTER WHAT! Plan on having zero motivation to do the things you committed to when it comes time to do them…and then do them anyway. You do things all day long that you don’t want to do. I know many moms who don’t enjoy making dinner for their family, and yet, they make dinner most nights. Nobody loves changing diapers, but I bet you did it all the time when your kids were babies. Keep commitments to yourself as if your relationship depends on it…because it does. If it helps to tell your commitments to someone else for accountability at first, you can do that, but your goal is to be able to keep your commitments to yourself just because you told yourself you would. Keeping your commitments may take some planning. If you are eating a vegetable before each meal, you probably need to prep some veggies and have them ready to go in the fridge. If you are going to bed earlier, you might need to set an alarm in your phone to remind you to start getting ready for bed a little earlier. But what if something comes up? What if you get sick? Or you end up taking your kids to the emergency room with a broken arm? I encourage you to try and find a way to keep the commitment to yourself anyway…a lot of times we let ourselves off the hook when we really could still make it work. Yes, you might be in the emergency room, but if you have committed to moving your body every day, you can do some hip dips or lunges or just walk around the waiting room while you wait. But, if you absolutely can’t do it, I want you to treat your relationship with yourself like you would treat a relationship with a dear friend. If you couldn’t keep a commitment to a friend, you would apologize. You would offer to make it up to them. You would commit to doing it as soon as possible. Do the same for yourself. AS you start keeping commitments to yourself, you will teach yourself that you are trustworthy. Just like you have to practice any other skill you want to improve, you will get better at keeping promises to yourself the more you practice doing it. I know it sounds simple, and it is. But I also know that it is much more difficult to actually do it, so give yourself grace. You don’t expect to sit down at the piano and be able to sight read Mozart without ever having practiced playing the piano before. Just like someone learning to play the piano, You are going to struggle and sometimes you are going to fail. Apologize to yourself, make it right and recommit. Keep practicing…I promise the relationship you will develop with yourself will be worth it and you will be able to reach for goals you never imagined!
