الرئيسية
Building trust based relationships, either professional or personal,
is a really big thing. It can propel your career or your life if you
can do it, and it can sink them if you can’t. I believe that one of the
most important ingredients for building these kinds of relationships is
keeping your promises.
When you consistently keep you promises, you essentially align what
you say you will do with what you truly do, and people know that they
can rely on you. This is of course, easier said than done. Here are
some of they key points I discovered can help you visibly improve the
rate of promises you keep.
1. Acknowledge your slip-ups in this area.
Counter-intuitively, most people often break their promises because
they believe they are very good at keeping their promises. This
inaccurate self-image creates a huge blind spot, which does not allow
them to notice the situations when they don’t keep their promises, so
they can’t really address them.
This is why a good starting point is to assume that you often break
you promises, and to start consciously looking at they way you relate
to other people, to notice when this is the case. As you start looking
for these slip-ups, you will start to see them. Getting awareness about
when they manifest, with whom, is the first big step in getting rid of
them.
2. Think twice before you promise.
It’s funny how a
lot of people have problems related to lack of self-confidence, but
when in comes to making promises, they have the opposite kind: they’re
over-confident in what they can do, and they promise too much. Braking
promises is usually not the result of bad intent; it is the result of
this.
It’s very important that you realize you have limited time, energy,
skills and resources, and as much as you would like to, you probably
can’t do it all. Keep this in mind every time you’re getting ready to
promise something, and ask yourself:
“Can I really keep this promise I want to make?”
If the answer is not a definite “yes”,
then don’t make that promise. Instead, promise something less, something different, or don’t promise at all.
3. Learn to say no.
One thing I’ve realized is that
often, we sort of trap ourselves into promising more than we can or we
want to do, because we have a problem with saying no. Someone asks us
for some help, we know they have high expectations of us, and we just
can’t make ourselves emotionally to betray those expectations, by
saying no.
To get this handled, there is a very important mental leap you must
take: to realize that you can’t and you don’t have to please everybody.
When you fully embrace this idea, you feel more freedom to not live to
everybody’s expectations, and to not be there for everybody. Which
makes it easier for you to resist from making promises you can’t or
don’t want to fulfill.
4. Make slip-ups meaningful for you.
When people
break a promise, even if they do realize this, they often quickly
forget about it and as a result, this experience does nothing to
enforce their tendency to keep promises. It’s easy to keep saying one
thing and doing another, when your mind thinks it’s no problem.
This is the reason why if you want to drastically increase you
promise keeping rate, you need to change this thinking. You need to
make slipups a visible moral mistake in your head, which you completely
acknowledge, to yourself and others involved. And to do this, you make
integrity and keeping your promises a top value for yourself. You decide it to be very important for you.
Keeping promises and having integrity sound like things which are
easy to master. But they are actually some of the hardest people skills
to master. As you consciously and systemically work at improving your
promise keeping skills, you will see some impressive changes in the
quality of your relationships.
is a really big thing. It can propel your career or your life if you
can do it, and it can sink them if you can’t. I believe that one of the
most important ingredients for building these kinds of relationships is
keeping your promises.
When you consistently keep you promises, you essentially align what
you say you will do with what you truly do, and people know that they
can rely on you. This is of course, easier said than done. Here are
some of they key points I discovered can help you visibly improve the
rate of promises you keep.
1. Acknowledge your slip-ups in this area.
Counter-intuitively, most people often break their promises because
they believe they are very good at keeping their promises. This
inaccurate self-image creates a huge blind spot, which does not allow
them to notice the situations when they don’t keep their promises, so
they can’t really address them.
This is why a good starting point is to assume that you often break
you promises, and to start consciously looking at they way you relate
to other people, to notice when this is the case. As you start looking
for these slip-ups, you will start to see them. Getting awareness about
when they manifest, with whom, is the first big step in getting rid of
them.
2. Think twice before you promise.
It’s funny how a
lot of people have problems related to lack of self-confidence, but
when in comes to making promises, they have the opposite kind: they’re
over-confident in what they can do, and they promise too much. Braking
promises is usually not the result of bad intent; it is the result of
this.
It’s very important that you realize you have limited time, energy,
skills and resources, and as much as you would like to, you probably
can’t do it all. Keep this in mind every time you’re getting ready to
promise something, and ask yourself:
“Can I really keep this promise I want to make?”
If the answer is not a definite “yes”,
then don’t make that promise. Instead, promise something less, something different, or don’t promise at all.
3. Learn to say no.
One thing I’ve realized is that
often, we sort of trap ourselves into promising more than we can or we
want to do, because we have a problem with saying no. Someone asks us
for some help, we know they have high expectations of us, and we just
can’t make ourselves emotionally to betray those expectations, by
saying no.
To get this handled, there is a very important mental leap you must
take: to realize that you can’t and you don’t have to please everybody.
When you fully embrace this idea, you feel more freedom to not live to
everybody’s expectations, and to not be there for everybody. Which
makes it easier for you to resist from making promises you can’t or
don’t want to fulfill.
4. Make slip-ups meaningful for you.
When people
break a promise, even if they do realize this, they often quickly
forget about it and as a result, this experience does nothing to
enforce their tendency to keep promises. It’s easy to keep saying one
thing and doing another, when your mind thinks it’s no problem.
This is the reason why if you want to drastically increase you
promise keeping rate, you need to change this thinking. You need to
make slipups a visible moral mistake in your head, which you completely
acknowledge, to yourself and others involved. And to do this, you make
integrity and keeping your promises a top value for yourself. You decide it to be very important for you.
Keeping promises and having integrity sound like things which are
easy to master. But they are actually some of the hardest people skills
to master. As you consciously and systemically work at improving your
promise keeping skills, you will see some impressive changes in the
quality of your relationships.
