Welcome to Episode 388 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast. I would like to tell everyone I think things will calm down soon but I really think this is probably gonna be the norm for a little while, especially with an election year coming up. So, my recent episodes have been about making sense of your own world and keeping your head in the game even when it seems overwhelming. Because your life doesn’t stop just because there’s a war or a major crisis somewhere else or even if there’s a crisis right here in America. That’s why it is so important to focus on the things you do control.
We all want to thrive and we all CAN thrive even though bad stuff happens, there’s a way for us to still be able to be the best that WE can be. We don’t control the things happening in the world, but we DO control A WHOLE LOT more than we think we do about our own world.
We were recently in Florida with our dear friends, Eddie and Donna. It was a lovely time. They have a 4 year old grandson who was very excited that they were going to the beach and made his BIBI promise that she would build a sandcastle just for him and send him pictures, so she promised she would. The first day we spent on the beach, it was a little cloudy and it rained a little too so it wasn’t the best day to build a sand castle, but we also had kind of forgotten about it, so needless to say, we didn’t build it that day. Well later that night, we were on the patio looking at the ocean when their daughter called on FaceTime with the grandkids. They are cuties, but a few minutes into the call after talking about being on the beach and how nice it was, Donna’s grandson walker who is 4 years old, asked if she had made the sandcastle, to which she said UHHHH NO we didn’t. She was giving him all the reasons why we didn’t which in our minds sounded very valid. But he was having none of it. He finally just said Bibi, Don’t say it and not do it. This from a 4 year old. So we were rightly admonished and assured him it wouldn’t happen again. So the first thing we did the next day was send pictures of a big beautiful sandcastle, we had a little help but we decided that was ok. He was happy and all was well. Big lesson for us though, we said it many times the rest of the weekend “Don’t say it and not do it”
So come Sunday morning, it’s time for us to come home but I had told myself Im going to walk one more time on the beach so I get up early and before coffee I get out on the beach to walk, now it was very chilly and my friend Donna was already up having coffee and I love to just sit and have coffee with her, it’s so fun to do. but I promised myself I would walk, not just walk down and turn around I promised myself I would walk to the end of where the buildings stopped at least. It’s maybe a mile and a half, which on the beach is quite a ways. So I found myself saying oh it’s just so cold and Donna’s up already and it would be so nice to have coffee one more morning with her….I was justifying a million different ways for why I didn’t have to keep my word to myself and then I remembered about little Walker and his admonishment of Bibi “Don’t say it and not do it, Bibi”. So I picked up my pace, I walked to the edge of the buildings, turned around and still got back in time to have coffee with our friends before we headed out.
When we think about keeping our word, we often think about it in the context of keeping our word to someone else. When we tell a friend we will meet them for lunch, we keep our word. If we didn’t and we kept not keeping our word to them, it wouldn’t be long before they would lose faith in us.
But we don’t often think of how that applies to our own word to ourself. I haven’t always been good at doing what I tell myself Im going to do. But, Through all of my self development over the years, I have found that probably one of the best tools I’ve given to me is being able to trust myself when I say I’m going to do something, I know I’m going to do it. If I think there’s a chance I won’t, I don’t commit to it. I also notice when Im talking myself out of keeping a commitment to myself and shut it down. The key is to not commit to things that are unsustainable or that you think you MAY not follow through on. So I don’t promise myself Im going to run 5 miles a day, Im not gonna do that and I know it. So I come up with things I know I’ll do. It gives me a really good sense of control. I also make it very known that I keep my promises to myself. I am a person that keeps her promises to herself, that’s just how it is. That’s who I am. That’s how I see myself. That’s a powerful thing to be able to say. And just remember, it doesn’t make me superhuman because It’s not gonna make me go out and run 10 miles or never eat sugar or never drink alcohol because those are not things I would ever commit to, not right now anyway because I know I couldn’t keep that promise and that feels awful and it’s not how I want to feel.
We don’t need more reasons in this world to feel bad, there’s enough out there to do that, when you promise yourself you’re going to do something and then you don’t do it, your mind then beats you up for it. But you control what you commit to and that includes what you commit to yourself.
So, How do you see yourself? Can you keep the promises you make to yourself?
My challenge to you today is to show yourself you can. It could be as easy as refusing to commit to something you know you’re not gonna do. And as easy as committing to something you know you will do Don’t say it and not do it, especially to yourself. Share this with 3 people who make commitments, I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in few days!
