Change this ONE thing and everything will be different!

I realized something over the past year that I want to share with you:

We become unhappy, frustrated, disappointed with ourselves when we break these promises.

We tell ourselves we’re going to go to the gym.

We don’t go.

We tell ourselves we’re going to get up early.

We sleep in.

We tell ourselves we’re going to complete the tasks on our to-do list.

We leave it untouched.

When we start breaking the promises we make to ourselves, we lose the ability to trust ourselves, and when we lose the ability to trust ourselves, our self-esteem plummets. Because how can we improve anything in our lives if we can’t trust our own word?

I have struggled with this for far too long and far too often, so I know the effects it can have on your life. But if feeling disappointed, frustrated, and annoyed were enough to help us change our behavior, life would become a lot easier. What often happens instead is that we simply get used to feeling this way and continue our behavior accordingly.

The way to change your behavior is to examine WHY you’re breaking your word. And from my own experiences, I’ve come up with a few reasons:

1. You don’t want it badly enough. It’s so easy to SAY we’re going to do something. And yet, while it may take only a few seconds for the words to come out of your mouth, the corresponding actions that are meant to follow can be significantly more effortful. Your life right now, whether you like how it is or not, reflects what works for you most. If you say you’re going to go to the gym in the morning, but you sleep late, sleeping is more of a priority for you than working out.

2. You don’t plan ahead. Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re going to do something and we may really want to do it, but we don’t plan ahead. For example, we want to eat healthier but we don’t go food shopping over the weekend and instead end up ordering in unhealthy food. Or we say that we want to go to the gym, but we only set one alarm (as opposed to a few), or we go to bed really late the night before, instead of making it a PRIORITY to get into bed earlier.

3. You’re avoiding feeling uncomfortable. No one likes feeling uncomfortable. If we did, we would be able to change our lives for the better at a far faster pace than we do now. A lot of the time, we haven’t done something yet – as much as we may say we WANT to – because we know that doing that one thing won’t feel good AT FIRST. Essentially we’re focusing more on the short-term rather than the long term. You may prefer to sleep in and not go to the gym because you don’t want your body to hurt while you lift heavy weights or you don’t want to experience feeling out of breath in spin class. And I get that completely. It’s a matter of re-shifting your focus to the long-term effects of this behavior to realize that the discomfort you feel will only be temporary.

4. You’re not being real with yourself. Sometimes we set ourselves up for disappointment by telling ourselves that we’re going to do something that simply isn’t realistic. There are only 24 hours in the day, and if we tell ourselves that we’re going to cram in 30 hours of stuff, it just won’t happen. Give yourself a challenge, but remember to be reasonable at the same time.

Start keeping your word with yourself and your life will change dramatically. This week, make a note of the promises you’re making to yourself and see which ones you’re keeping. For the ones that you’re not, make a note of the way breaking the promise makes you feel and think about the reasons as to why you broke it in the first place.

Remember, you can do this!