365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success

Day 122: On Making Agreements With Yourself

Agreements you make with yourself: When you make an agreement and

you don’t keep it, you undermine your own self-trust.

—Roy Baumeister

 

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I  strive  to  value  the  agreements  I  make  with  myself  as  much  as  the

ones  I  make  with  other  people.  The  reason  is  simple:  just  like  when  you

lose the trust of another person when you fail to keep your promise, so you

lose your trust of yourself when you don’t keep an agreement that you made

with yourself.

Without self-trust, it’s impossible to have the self-discipline and self-

confidence to achieve big goals and change your life. Your doubts will nag

at you and you’ll sabotage yourself because, deep down, you’ll believe that

you can’t trust yourself anyway.

Whenever you make commitments with yourself, honor them just like

you honor the word you give to other people, if not more. If you frequently

betray  yourself,  you’ll  make  it  harder  and  harder  to  rebuild  trust  with

yourself, and soon, it will take many months of consistent wins before you

get to regain self-trust.

Your brain rewires itself according to your repeated actions, and if you

teach it to expect that you go back on your word, it will get better at exactly

that skill: backing out of your agreements.

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