ONE QUESTION

What is your reputation with yourself?

ONE THING TO PONDER

We have a tiny amount of control over what happens, yet what we have control over is significantly important.

ONE PERSPECTIVE

If you want to trust yourself more, keep the promises you make to yourself.

Do you trust yourself? The one that moves away from this question the quickest is likely the one that have a chink in their armor.

Do you believe the things you say to yourself, about who you are, about what you're going to do?

• We make commitments because we are following the crowd, only to find ourselves more lonely in a sea of people around us.

• There is a lot of external pressure to say yes to things that aren’t for us to say yes to.

• We compare ourselves to where other people are and then set goals to ‘be like them’.

Those three things are recipes for misguided commitments and a lack of direction.

What concerns me the most is that there is a process we go through when we commit to things that we aren’t really committed to:

1. We set a goal and are “committed” to it (believe we are committed but aren’t)

2. We struggle to stay disciplined, so we try harder and harder - more out of force.

3. We are far from consistent so we start judging ourselves.

4. When we judge ourselves, we believe we aren’t strong enough, good enough, disciplined enough…etc. These things damage our confidence.

5. We spiral downward all because of one reason - we made a ‘half-pregnant’ decision to something we said we were committed to.

6. And the cycle repeats itself because we haven’t identified that it’s our lack of direction that is causing us not to follow through.

This is what breaks our self trust and self worth.

When we make promises to ourselves and don't follow through, I don't think we realize the damage that does when we compound that pattern. You start not believing yourself, which is a scary place to be, I've been there!

Trusting yourself is the gateway to so many great things.

Pay attention to that little voice that when you make a promise it says "you're not really going to do that."

Do you have that voice, or is it just me? That voice needs to take a walk, and we need to follow through.

It's a great gift in life when we make hard promises (health, relationships. business, alcohol, you name it) and follow through. It's something we have 100% control over, we just need to dive into it with belief and conviction.

Questions to Stress Test Your Goals:

1. If you don’t hit your goal, will it bother you? It doesn’t have to derail your life, but it should matter if you don’t hit it. Focus on giving your best effort.

2. Is the goal you’ve set connected to anything longer term?

3. Does the goal align with the version of the person you want to grow into?

4. Are you willing to sacrifice something now on following through? Life is about decisions. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

5. How long am I willing to go all in on this goal?

The truth…most big goals take more time, effort and resilience than we anticipate when setting it. Is it important enough that you’ll stick with it?

My suggestion is to do less, but do those things more. That is the compound effect of building momentum.  

Go make some promises to yourself and follow through...see what happens.

Onward and upward.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

The Infinite Game
by Simon Sinek