You have to become a better promise keeper.
You’re very good at the promise part, but you have to become better at the keeper part.
Words can truly become something when you mean them. Thoughts become things when you act on them. It’s not enough to just say it, wish it, or dream it. There has to be a conscious and deliberate action. You need purposeful and diligent effort.
And so you should keep some of the important promises you have made to yourself.
It’s not so easy.
It’s not easy because it takes less effort to give than to receive. It’s a lot easier to offer to help someone than it is to accept the help yourself. You’re fine. Everything is good. You don’t need anything, as you cry yourself to sleep.
It’s a lot easier to forgive someone else too, a lot easier than it is to forgive yourself.
But you are a promise keeper.
So act like it.
First. Don’t make them too hastily.
Try not to please people by making promises you will not keep, because you will inevitably run out of time. So learn to say no. Learn to be firm. Stop being a haggard doormat. Bolt the door shut. Don’t let them in.
The fear of disappointing or losing your friends is irrational. If they don’t know you or haven’t evolved to grow a thicker skin, they’re not worth your efforts anyhow.
Second. Don’t make them too general.
What the hell does I want to lose weight mean anyway? I want to have a boyfriend? I want to be rich? I want to travel?
Whatever.
Yes. I just whatevered you. Deal with it.
Be specific.
You need to know what you are promising. Otherwise, how could you hope to see to deliver? You have to know what it will take, and how long it will be. You need to anticipate the cost, and prepare for it. You need to know what, when, how, where, when, and why. You need to be as specific as you can or you will get what you’ll get, and you’ll settle for being unsatisfied.
Third. Keep your promise.
You may be a mother or a father, but your life is no less important than your children. Your life and happiness is no more or any less important than your husband’s or wife’s. Everything is interconnected. Your relationships yearn to be synergistic. You need to become a better whole, because things don’t go as smoothly when you live as individual parts.
How do you expect your children to have dreams, if you don’t have any of your own?
Why do you pressure them to do their homework, when you avoid doing yours? And bringing work home is not homework. That’s grunt work. Your kids have plenty of that as well.
Be a promise keeper.
Keep your promises.
Start with promises you made yesterday and than dig through your past. Go back as far as you can remember. Go back to your childhood. Comb through all your memories. It may take some time, but that’s ok. Look for all the things you said you would do. Look for promises that come up again and again.
Find them and give them life again.
Your childhood dreams are not childish. You are acting like a child by refusing to see them through.
Be a promise keeper.
The promises you keep will inspire others as well.
They are promise keepers too.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Javarts via unsplash.com
