{"id":7765,"date":"2018-08-14T10:41:39","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T17:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=7765"},"modified":"2020-03-16T03:06:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T11:06:24","slug":"on-keeping-your-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/14\/on-keeping-your-word\/","title":{"rendered":"On Keeping Your Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Most people are pretty good at keeping promises to others.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When I make an appointment with a busy person, even just for something as simple as a call, they almost never cancel on me. If they do have to, they almost always apologize and work to reschedule. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This is true even if I don\u2019t know the person. Even if the call was just a friendly chat, not something incredibly important.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There are exceptions, of course. But the fact that they feel so rude is evidence itself that broken promises to other people are quite rare. If they happened often, they would just feel normal, not like an insult.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1 wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"s1\">Promises to Yourself<\/span><\/h3>\n<div class=\"inline-podcast\">\n<small>Listen to this article<\/small><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"20\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/773630740&#038;color=%23219895&#038;inverse=false&#038;auto_play=false&#038;show_user=true\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Yet, how often do you break promises to yourself?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You tell yourself you\u2019ll stick to a new diet\u2026 and give up after one week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You tell yourself you\u2019ll start a business and never get past printing the cards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You tell yourself you\u2019ll make a change, but nothing ever comes from it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We break promises to ourselves all the time. Unlike when others break their commitments to us, these are so common, that, for most of us, they don\u2019t even feel disappointing. They\u2019re just \u201cpart of life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1 wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"s1\">The Value of Promises<\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe the reason we break our own promises is that it doesn\u2019t feel like it has a cost. If I break a promise with you, you\u2019ll be mad at me and trust me less. If I break a promise with myself, there\u2019s nobody to get mad at.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But this is just an illusion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Breaking promises to yourself has the same costs as breaking it to other people. Except the person you trust less is you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When you trust yourself less, you treat the future-you as being inherently less reliable, less responsible, less likely to commit to the things current-you says you\u2019ll do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Without trust, you take your own plans less seriously. Take your own plans less seriously, and you\u2019ll be less likely to commit to them in the future. A dangerous circle develops where you fail at your goals not because they were impossible, but because you simply didn\u2019t think <i>somebody like you would be able to stick to them<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1 wp-block-heading\"><span class=\"s1\">Make Fewer Promises; Keep All of Them.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I don\u2019t make many promises. Reality can change, so if I\u2019m not sure I can make a party, or have time for a call, or help with a chore, I won\u2019t commit. Better to disappoint someone early, than betray a trust later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the promises I do make, I keep. Sometimes they cost more than I had expected. Sometimes plans change and the reasons I promised them no longer make sense. But I keep them because, if I didn\u2019t keep my promises, what kind of colleague, friend or husband would I be?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In the same way, I don\u2019t make many promises to myself. I make few commitments, but I stick with them. I don\u2019t always expect to be successful, or that life will always go according to plan, but I trust that the failure won\u2019t be because I didn\u2019t decide it was worth sticking with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you haven\u2019t kept your promises in the past, rebuilding that trust takes time. It starts with small promises and keeping them even if they don\u2019t feel like they matter. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people are pretty good at keeping promises to others. When I make an appointment with a busy person, even just for something as simple as a call, they almost never cancel on me. If they do have to, they almost always apologize and work to reschedule. This is true even if I don\u2019t know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[679],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-nc-habits","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>On Keeping Your Word - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/14\/on-keeping-your-word\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Keeping Your Word - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most people are pretty good at keeping promises to others. 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