Do you keep promises to yourself? Big promises? Little promises?
Do you trust that you’ll do what you intend to do, or do you know – in the back of your mind – that it’s going to slip through the cracks?
The anatomy of a broken promise
When I was younger, I would constantly make big promises to myself – promises that would change my strongest habits, go against my strongest limiting beliefs, or even my nature. And then I’d feel like a failure when I couldn’t make it work, gave up, or gave into temptation.
When you constantly break promises to yourself, you let yourself down and emotionally beat yourself up. You dig yourself into a hole of self-defeat, sadness, and create a strong lack of confidence in yourself. It can be a symptom of (and worsen) low self-esteem and low self-love.
You can find yourself in this self-defeating cycle of control and rebellion.
And it’s a two-fer, because typically those promises reflect change we want to see in our lives, like eating healthy, sleeping better, and exercising more.
What to do with all those broken promises
How do we get out of this cycle?
Start small.
Make an easy and small promise to yourself. And just one of them. Don’t supersize a promise by picking something easy but then demanding that you do it every day for the rest of your life.
Buy 1 apple and eat it or take 1 short walk.
And when you’re tempted to break your promise – out of habit or rebellion – notice and try to keep it anyway. That’s why we made it an easy promise.
Each one you keep is a deposit into your personal account. A small deposit that tells yourself that you do care about you, you do deserve good things, and you can trust yourself.
It might take some time. It might take a lot of time. Your bank account might be far in the red.
But with every 1 apple eaten, 1 block walked, or 1 chapter read, you’ll make deposits. And even though they are simple things, they are significant things. Keeping promises takes practice. And just as broken promises can erode faith and love, fulfillment of (even the tiniest of) promises builds them up.
Personal victories
Besides gaining trust in yourself, you’ll learn what makes a good promise and what doesn’t. Your tiny personal victories will lead to bigger personal victories, and then to big public victories.
When once you may have privately broken every promise to run – now you are publicly crossing a marathon finish line.
But first you have to get that account out of the red and into the black.
First you have to learn to trust yourself and love yourself enough to do the things that will make your life better.
You deserve it. You just don’t know it yet.
Sometimes I need to hear this. This time it comes from a friend. Thanks.
You’re welcome, dear. I was a little nervous about broaching this topic, but I think it’s important.
He has had more cordial, more productive, meetings with US President Donald Trump since that now-notorious encounter on February 28.
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But for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, today’s meeting at the White House will surely trigger awkward memories of that very public clash with the US President almost six months ago. Navigating the treacherous waters in which he finds himself today will be no easier.
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Increasingly, it appears likely he will be told to give up land in exchange for some sort of security guarantees.
The land side of that “deal” will be obvious. It can be drawn on a map. Crimea: gone, says Trump. Donetsk: give all of it up, says Putin, apparently with Trump’s blessing.
But the security guarantees? That’s where far more challenging ideas, like credibility, come into play. Could Zelensky rely on the US to deliver on some NATO Article 5-type promise, to defend Ukraine if Russia breaches any peace agreement?
Putin himself might even see an opportunity to further weaken the West, by testing any such guarantees, confident they are a bluff he could call. But all that would be for the future.
For now, it looks like Zelensky will have to weigh up whether he could bring his country with him if he were to cede territory to Russia – some of it still in Ukrainian hands – or whether he and his people could bear the costs of potentially defying Trump a Nobel Peace Prize, and say no.
If he chose the latter, would the US President immediately end all remaining American support for Ukraine, in terms of military aid and intelligence sharing, for instance?
If that happened, to what extent could Zelensky’s European allies really step in and fill in the gaps left by any full US retreat?
It is an almost impossibly hard choice before him.
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