The other day I told myself I was going to get up at 6:30 am so I could exercise before my kids woke up.  But when 6:30 am rolled around, I was tired. I rationalized to myself that sleep is important so I pressed snooze.  Sound familiar?

The Danger of Breaking Commitments to Ourselves

Most of us break commitments to ourselves many times a day.  We say that we won’t eat sugar, but we see a cookie and eat it. We promise ourselves we won’t raise our voice with our kids but when they don’t obey for the 4th time, we do. We promise ourselves to go to bed on time, but then we get sucked into a show.

In our brains it seems like breaking these commitments isn’t hurting anyone. But that is a lie. It hurts us.

Not following through on promises to ourselves has significant ramifications. We hurt ourselves, because we lose trust in ourselves. These small “betrayals” begin to erode our relationship with ourselves.

Comparing It to A Relationship with Someone Else

Think about if you had agreed to meet a friend for lunch and the friend never showed up.  If this happened a few times, you’d lose confidence in your friend—you’d probably even start to expect that she wouldn’t show up. 

The same happens with our relationship with ourselves.  When we can’t depend on ourselves to follow through with what we plan to do, we diminish our confidence in ourselves. 

We even come to expect that we won’t follow through.

Expecting Failure = Lack of Confidence

When we expect ourselves to not follow through we become much less able to accomplish what we hope to.  We either stop making commitments to ourselves and live a life far beneath our potential. Or we keep making commitments and not keeping them. This is the perfect recipe for discouragement.

Recipe for Confidence

Want more confidence? Start keeping the promises you make to yourself. And if you can’t keep them—don’t make them. 

One way to start building trust in yourself is to start by promising to do something you will follow through on. Even if the goal you set is lower than the goal you’d like to set–it’s better to start with something you KNOW you’ll follow through on to begin to build trust. Then you can begin to build from there.

Treat your commitments with yourself like you would treat a commitment to someone else. They matter just as much–or more.

Of Course You Won’t Want to Follow Through

You can expect that most of the time you won’t feel like following through when the time rolls around.  The brain loves safety, pleasure and convenience. Anything that requires effort or discomfort or going outside of our comfort zone is not going to be appealing to the brain. The brain is sneaky about rationalizing reasons why we shouldn’t.

Do what you committed to do anyway. 

It’s ironic because we think we’re avoiding the discomfort when we don’t follow through on something. I thought I was avoiding feeling tired when I slept in. But ironically I felt uncomfortable later when I didn’t get to exercise or feel ready for the day before my kids woke up.

If we’re going to feel uncomfortable either way–why not accomplish what we want out of the discomfort. Being willing to tolerate discomfort is the key to progressing. And, it’s also the key confidence.

Confidence and Self-Trust

When you know that you can depend on yourself to follow through you begin to feel more certain you can accomplish things. You are more careful about what you promise to do. But you have more certainty around how things will go, because you know you’ll follow through on what you promise yourself you will do.

I know if I commit to wake up early and I can depend on myself to do it, I don’t have to worry about if I’ll get to exercise. I KNOW it will get done. I can then plan my day with confidence, not wondering if I’ll have to fit in in somewhere else.

When you know you can depend on yourself, you have confidence that you know how you will act and what you will do because you have built up trust.

How to Increase Confidence

1. Start noticing small self-betrayals during the day
2. Commit to keep commitments to yourself
3. Start by setting commitments you KNOW you will keep
4. As you build trust, work up to setting commitments that are more challenging