Ever since I made a promise to myself to refresh my business, I have been waking up every morning at 6:30 am – every morning without fail. The alarm goes off and I open my eyes, and I get up and I grind (completely ignoring the snooze button).
I spend the next 2.5 hours focusing on me. Focusing on WHATEVER I WANT (it’s sheer heaven)! This is the only dedicated time that I spend on me without anyone else’s needs overshadowing what I want.
For the first time in a long time, I’ve been keeping a long-overdue promise to myself, consistently, and it feels great. It beats the alternative of not keeping promises to myself.
What happens when you don’t keep promises to yourself?
You teach yourself that you don’t have to take yourself seriously. You are the first one to know that you broke a promise to yourself and it is a sign to you that your goals or aspirations are not important. Unknowingly, you’re teaching yourself that it’s okay to let yourself down. Think about how you would feel if someone you were dating or called a close friend constantly broke promises to you. You probably wouldn’t stay in any type of relationship with them long, or probably think a lot less of them. In the same way, you think less of yourself when you break promises you make to yourself. Learning to keep promises to yourself will add integrity to every part of your life.
Why don’t we keep promises to ourselves?
Because doing the thing is more uncomfortable than not doing it. And if you don’t like being uncomfortable, you will more than likely pick comfort over the opposite. When you’re feeling uncomfortable, choose to work through it, with a focus on a greater outcome. Your dreams have to be stronger than your excuses.
Keeping promises to yourself is more important than keeping promises to others, yet we tend to approach life from the opposite perspective. The damage you do to your relationship with yourself affects every part of your life whether you acknowledge it or not. You are associating value to yourself by how you treat yourself, and ultimately you are teaching others how to treat you as well. If you want to be respected and taken seriously by others, you should respect yourself and take yourself seriously.
The integrity you build with yourself will make you better at keeping all of the promises you make. It will expand into everything you do.
What are some ways that you can keep promises to yourself?
- Only make promises that you can realistically keep. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be ambitious. This means that you want to be able to feel like you are making progress, and your success will not happen overnight. If you keep setting unrealistic goals and consistently break them, then you are subconsciously telling yourself that you can’t accomplish the goals anyway, and it’s easier to break them.
- Write it down and tell others. Be vocal about your goals so that yourself and others can hold you accountable. Especially if you’re better at keeping promises to others than you are to yourself, this should be an easy way to keep yourself honest – it’s almost as if you’re keeping a promise to someone else in the process.
- Reward yourself! Celebrate the successes of your goals met. When you achieve goals by keeping promises to yourself, show up for yourself with recognition. This is my favorite part! I love to celebrate in general, so being able to celebrate successes (big or small) comes natural to me. And being able to have this to look forward to makes me even more likely to keep these promises to myself.
Whether big or small, your promises are important to you and the future that you are intending to create. You should keep them!
Watch my full IG LIVE video on how to keep promises to yourself!