Honoring Commitments to Yourself

Are you good at Honoring Commitments to yourself? Do you trust yourself? Live in Integrity by showing up for yourself!

Honoring our commitments to others is easy, so why is honoring our commitments to ourselves so hard?  We explore how honoring your commitments to yourself will help you succeed in achieving your goals.  Taking responsibility and showing up for yourself helps you live in Integrity and increases your confidence and trust in your self.  It will also help you follow through with your action steps.  

I want you to think about the commitments that you honor in your life. How do you show up and who are the people that you show up for? So think about your family. How do you show up for your family or for your friends?

How do you show up for your project manager or your boss, for your parents or your community? When you tell someone, yes, I will do that. How often do you follow through on that commitment? I would say for most of us is probably a pretty high percentage that we can follow through with all of the commitments that we make.

In all different aspects of our lives. I know when I commit to taking a meal to someone, I totally do that. And if I commit to taking carpool on a certain day, I definitely do that or arrange for every placement. If my family needs something from me and I commit to doing it, I do my best to follow through on that commitment.

And I’m assuming that you are the same. I think most of us. Now I want you to think about how often do you honor the commitments that you make to yourself? Let me say that again. How often do you honor the commitments that you make to yourself? So if you commit to exercising more this week, when the time comes, do you honor that commitment or do you make excuses and decide that you don’t want.

Now my guess is that when your project manager gives you something to do you follow through on that commitment or do your very best in order to do so, and that when the time comes and you don’t feel like doing it, you do it anyway. So why is it when it comes to commitments to ourselves? We can so easily talk ourselves out of it.

Isn’t that so interesting that our minds too. It’s so easy to talk ourselves out of honoring our own commitments, rather than when it’s a commitment to someone else. It’s all about taking responsibility for what you say you are going to do. Right. We have to take responsibility for the commitments that we make for ourselves.

And that’s something that we’re really good at in other aspects of our lives. And somehow it doesn’t always translate over. To the other aspect of our life, which is taking care of ourselves. So we need to take responsibility for what we say that we are going to do for me. This really means living in integrity, right.

Living up to what I will say I will do. And that means for me, So if that means I’m going to make a commitment to drink more water or to exercise or move my body more, or that it is that I take some more time for me that I actually put reading in my schedule, some downtime so that I can take care of me, the things that I know that I need to do, am I taking responsibility for what I say I will do?

Am I living in integrity to my own commitments, to my. Right. It’s this aspect of, I will show up for myself. And are you someone that you can rely on? We all know the people in our lives that we can turn to if we need something, because we know that we can, we just can rely on them. They will always be there and they’ll be able to follow through for us.

And are you that person for yourself? Isn’t that interesting to think? So can you show up for yourself so that you can totally rely on you? Yeah. Self that creates confidence. So not only does it create this piece of integrity in your life, but it also creates this intense trust or confidence in yourself that I will show up for myself that I am someone I can rely on because when I make a commitment to myself, I will follow through, I will.

Right. Just like that trusted friend or that trusted spouse or family member, your support system. If there’s people that, you know, you can rely on and trust, how about you show up that same way for yourself? Isn’t that such a cool concept? So this is something that I have thought a lot about is this relationship with ourselves.

Did you know that you have a relationship with your. And your mind knows whether you can trust yourself or not. And whether you can rely on yourself or not. So in small and simple ways, you can start honoring your commitments to yourself to show yourself that you can totally trust and rely on yourself.

So you can get to the point where of course I’m going to follow through because I honor that commitment to myself. I can rely on. And the more that you honor your commitments to yourself, no matter how small they are, the stronger your self discipline will become, right? The more you honor your commitments to yourself, no matter how small they are, the stronger your self-discipline will become because you will practice over and over following through.

And your mind will know that you can rely on you. So one of the key aspects of this is actually to schedule it in first. This is something that I’ve been doing over the last year, and it has changed everything for me. So as I do my weekly planning session and I sit down to do my weekly schedule, I make a list in all different areas of my life, of the things that I need to do.

And I have about six to eight areas of my life and I make a list. And the very first list I make, I entitle it, me and I have home and family and business and all sorts of other things and errands that need to be run. But the very first list I make is what do I need this week? And then that’s what goes on my schedule first, not my commitments to my family, not my commitments to my business, not my commitments to anyone else.

Because I want to prove to myself that I can rely on me, that my needs matter and that they come first because I can’t help anyone else or be my best self if I’m not taking care of me. And this is a great way for me to show myself and, and live in integrity and increase my confidence that I come first.

And that’s not said in a selfish way. That is said in it’s my responsibility to take care of me. And so I need to make sure that my needs are met and that they come first. So I make my list of what I need. And then I schedule that in first. So if I need to move my body five days a week, then I schedule that.

And if I need to drink my gallon of water a day, then I schedule that in. And if I need to, um, have some social time with some friends, or if I need a date night with my husband, or if I need some reading and downtime, or if there’s just simply something I want to do that will feed my soul. I put that on my list and then I schedule it in.

And then I put everything else in and it all seems to work out just fine. And when I am actually doing that scheduled thing, my brain will tell me, oh, but you should, you have all these other things to be doing. You should be doing something more productive. And then I can just remind myself that no, I honor my commitments to myself.

I can rely on myself and everything else is scheduled in. This is what’s most important. So, if we learn how to plan something, then we make a decision ahead of time, right. To honor that commitment to ourselves, by putting it in our schedule, by knowing and planning ahead, then the decision is made and it makes it so much easier, like all decisions, right.

If we plan ahead and kind of make the decision ahead of time that yes, I am going to do this thing at this time. And we honor that commitment, then it makes it so much easier. Then we can quiet down that little voice in our mind that says we should be doing something else or that something else might be a better use of our time.

We can just remind ourselves, no, I, I show up for myself. I can rely on me. I have an intense trust in me and I take care of my needs and make sure that those are met one other way. That might be helpful for you. If you use affirmations, which are super powerful, um, they’re just a powerful way to redirect your mind to places where you want to.

So a powerful affirmation that you might want to try out is this. I will live each day with integrity by honoring my commitment to myself and others. Notice what order that came in, honoring my commitments to myself first and foremost. I think that so often in our lives, that our commitments to ourselves come after our commitments to other people.

Then we wonder why we feel out of alignment or why we feel resentment. And it’s because we put the needs of other people before our own, without even really realizing it. So this affirmation is I will live each day with integrity by honoring my commitments to myself and others. Isn’t that what integrity really is, is honoring our commitments, living in alignment with what we truly believe, our values and things like that. That’s what integrity is. So I want you to think of a couple of ways that you can honor your commitments to yourself. So just take one thing that you can do today that you could honor a commitment. Is it that you want to go to bed early? Have you been saying that for how long you just need to get to bed earlier?

What have you honored that commitment for yourself today? Or is it getting up earlier so that you can have a little bit of quiet time or exercising? What have you honored that commitment? Whatever it is, you have the power within you, right? To choose to take care of yourself and to honor the commitments that you have made.

And I have found that it works best. If I just put that first, I make that list first and I schedule it in first so that everything else fits around it. And it makes it so much easier than trying to fit it in, in a spare moment. When my mind’s just going to tell me that there’s much more productive things to do.

Then I can say this is the most important thing that I need to do right now. And it is because if I take care of me, then I’m so much more equipped to help others. So what are you going to do today? That you can honor a commitment to yourself? What are you going to do this week?