I don’t know where to start. I let myself down and broke a promise to my readers at the same time. I set out to connect once or twice each month to share insights, strategies and tools to create a successful work-from-home solopreneur routine and career. Today I am sharing a struggle, and I can only hope that perhaps sometimes commiseration can be an effective psychological tool to get past failures.
I blew it. In March I got super busy with travel, new networking groups and my upcoming charity event and didn’t find the time to squeak my DIY Career Blog out. I really love writing and sharing but for some reason I had a million excuses. April marked what would have been the 6th month anniversary of this habit and promise. Although you may not have even missed it, you have my apologies.
Why does it feel worse to let others down than it does to break promises to ourselves? Why do we sometimes, often or always put the priorities of others before our own? I did a little research on this and found a bunch of info and it seems the consensus is that it’s a lot easier to forgive yourself for breaking a promise than it is to get someone else to forgive you. That may be one of the reasons why breaking promises to ourselves is so easy. There are a bunch of articles like “Top 10…., “7 Keys…, “Four Ways to…. …keep promises to yourself” and they all suggest writing them down, putting them in front of you, and keeping them short. Ok, I’m on board so far. Then some go as far as “journaling’ and “tracking” and that is just not me.
Another author I follow MJ Durkin says this: “Keep your promises to yourself! Many of you set goals or make “to do” lists of things that you know you need to do or want to accomplish. But you don’t get to them or follow through on your intention – and then you feel bad that you didn’t do what you said you were going to do. And when you have “bad feelings” you are literally pushing away all the abundance that is continually streaming toward you. In order to feel good you need to set an intention and then follow through with action on that intention – even if it is a very small item. One of the 9 Strategies of Highly Confident People is that they keep their promises to themselves!"
I think the advice I liked the best was from an article dated back to 2015 where the author Sage B Hobbs talks about how she just stopped saying that she would run every day and drink a green smoothie because she wasn’t truly committed to it, and didn’t want to live that way…. as a promise breaker. She goes on to say “I don’t live that way not because I’m so awesome or great, but because it’s just not a powerful or fun way to live… with broken promises and things left undone all over the place. Bleh. Mojo crushing, disempowering, and just a plain downer.”
We all want to live by, model and mentor energy, eagerness, MOJO building, and empowerment. Right?! Keeping promises to yourself, in my opinion, is key to creating momentum, magnetism and my favorite thing “bringing it”. I’m working on it.
So now that I have confessed, I am letting myself off the hook and pushing send. I am feeling better already.
Brenda Ridgley
www.brendaridgley.com
P.S. I am missing my editor this edition so please forgive any grammatical errors. She is otherwise known as my MOM and I really appreciate that she shares her strength in this area with me. She and my dad are sailing the seven seas and surely having a blast. Miss you mom!