How often do you keep promises you make to yourself?

As women leaders, we usually go out of our way to keep promises that we make to others. I know I do. If I tell someone I’m going to do something, I make every effort to fulfill that promise. Keeping my commitments is extremely important to me because integrity is one of my core values.

But. . . when it comes to keeping promises I make to myself. . . well, that becomes a little trickier. I used to be much more diligent about keeping my commitments to others than I was about keeping them with myself. Until I learned just how harmful that is to me!

The reality is that “being impeccable with your word” to yourself is as important—if not more important—than keeping your promises to others.

Agreement number one in The Four Agreements is “Be Impeccable with Your Word”. Author Don Miguel Ruiz reminds us: “How much you love yourself and how your feel about yourself are directly proportional to the quality and integrity of your word.”*

How often do you say the following kind of things to yourself?

I swear I’m going to lose five pounds before the summer.
The next time my best friend says “that” to me, I’m going to call her on it.
I’m going to clean out my closets and get organized before _____ starts/stops.
I’m going to start eating better tomorrow/Monday/next week.
I promise that I’m going to make more time to read/meditate/exercise…

And now, how often do you follow through? How often do you really do those things? Are you consistent about them?

It’s easy to make promises to ourselves. It’s equally easy to break them because something always seems to come up. Someone else needs us. “It” can wait another day. Maybe we really didn’t need to do it anyway.

One of my biggest barriers to keeping my word to myself was putting too many things on my “to-do” list, being overly optimistic about what I could get done in a day. And I’ll admit that I still fall into that trap from time to time, especially as I’m learning what I can and can’t do as a solopreneur. I’ve also been known to procrastinate. (Whoops! Don’t tell anyone.)

The problem is that when we break our promises to ourselves, we are telling ourselves that we aren’t important, that we don’t mean what we say, that everyone else is more important than we are. And it eats away at our self-esteem. . . And our willpower.

Once we break one or two promises to ourselves, we kind of expect to break future ones. Right? So, we lose even more incentive to keep them.

To paraphrase “The Four Agreements”, you can’t love yourself if you’re breaking your word to yourself. And if you don’t love yourself, well, you know it, you’re not going to love anyone else either.

I coach people about risk-taking, but risk-taking requires good self-esteem. It requires believing in yourself and BELIEVING yourself. After all, if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

Here are some things I’ve discovered that help me, and my clients, do a better job of keeping promises to themselves:

Pay attention to what you tell yourself, especially what you promise yourself or say you are going to do.
Observe how often you do what you say/promise.
When you don’t, notice why you don’t follow through. Do you make excuses? Decide it wasn’t that important anyway? Or simply run out of time?
Stop making promises to yourself that you’re not 100% sure that you won’t do. Do say it. Don’t think it. Just stop.
When you consider making a promise to yourself, write it down. Weigh it. Think about it twice or three times. Then decide. Consciously. Carefully. Am I really going to do this? If the answer is yes, make the promise. If the answer is maybe, DON’T DO IT! Wait until you’re ready to say a firm “yes”.
Finally, notice how you feel when you make a promise and keep it. It feels good, doesn’t it? Write that down too! Remember it.

Our words are so powerful. When we own our words, we do own our lives. Making self-promises and keeping them is a fantastic way to boost our self-esteem, our confidence, and our happiness and well-being!

How good are you at keeping promises to yourself? What’s the biggest obstacle to doing that consistently?

*Ruiz, D.M., The Four Agreements, Amber-Allen Publishing, San Raphael, CA. 1997. Page 44.