The Power of Promises-Constructive and Negative

I was struck the other day, by something seemingly so simple, and yet it has a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves.  This thing that I believe has a large impact on us, is our commitment to keep our word, not only to others, but too our self.

We must keep the promises we make to others and to ourselves.  If we don’t, we can easily come up with an excuse as to why we didn’t follow through, but we can never really fool or deceive ourselves.  We may try, but it is impossible.

If we make a promise/commitment to our self, but don’t follow through we begin to lose our self-esteem and we begin to think less of our self.  Think about how often you do this, and what chain of thoughts it causes.  Maybe you said you were going to go for a jog today, but then you didn’t feel like it and you convinced yourself it was okay because a TV show you like was on.  Or maybe you said you were not going to eat that bag of chips, but then did anyway.  You have just proven to yourself that you can’t trust yourself to do something.  Just like if someone else didn’t do something they said they would, you would not trust them as much.  This is a slippery slope and when we start not meeting our promises, even to ourselves, it becomes easier to keep not honoring on those commitments, and we feel worse and worse.

And since we make up excuses and back out of promises we have made to our self all the time, eventually we lose respect for our self.  Just as when someone else continually lets you down, you lose respect for them.

We must learn to be much more vigilant with the promises we make.  If we make a promise to our self or to others, we must keep it.  This may mean making far less promises, which is fine.  To not make a promise and be honest will leave you feeling better than if you make a promise and then don’t deliver. If you make a lot of promises but only deliver on a half, the part you don’t deliver will on will counteract the respect for yourself you might have achieved for the promises you did deliver on.

So when you are ready to actually follow through, make a commitment to commit to less if needed, but to complete everything you tell yourself and others you will do.  When we do this, we can fully respect our self.  If we fail to deliver on our promises it is impossible to respect our self.

To follow through on what you say you will is to be able to respect and trust yourself.  A good feeling indeed.

~Cory Mitchell