3 Ideas To Contemplate When You Break Your Own Promise
We don’t always follow through on our goals.
We say we’re going to meet someone new, but we don’t.
We tell ourselves we’re going to spend more time on our career or schoolwork, but we can’t get ourselves to do it.
We say we’re going to give ourselves more time to relax and rejuvenate, but we continue to spend our time caught up in the drama of others.
I’m sure you’ve gone through this at some point in your life. You have big goals and amazing dreams, but you can’t get yourself to take the actions necessary to get there.
A lot of us believe we lack self-discipline in our lives and it leads us to consciously and unconsciously beat ourselves up. While we think our high standards will help create this self-discipline, we let ourselves get distracted from our goal, causing us to miss out more and more on the things we want to do.
If you’ve broken a promise to yourself and you’re unsure of how to move on, here are a few ideas that might help:
1. It’s Okay, Other Opportunities Will Arise
How often do we break a small promise to ourselves and proceed to think we’ve squandered the day?
I know I do it all the time. I tell myself I’m going to talk to someone new and then I fall back on my promise. Now, this was a promise I wanted to keep so a little frustration is warranted.
It shouldn’t, however, ruin the next hour of my day. A single day has so many opportunities, and I wouldn’t want to miss those moments because I was focused on something that already happened. That moment is part of the past, I want to shift my focus to the present.
2. How Did It Make You Feel?
After acknowledging that you will get other opportunities, you can start to look at how missing this opportunity made you feel. Just like every opportunity holds valuable insights, every missed opportunity contains equally valuable insights. While analyzing how you feel, you will realize one of two things:
- You really wish you had held yourself accountable and followed through, or
- What you thought you wanted isn’t as important as you perceived it
If you don’t follow through and you find you still have this great desire, then you get to focus on the next time. Use this failure to improve your willpower to follow through and you’ll be that much more likely to take the next opportunity and run with it. While this failure wasn’t ideal, it will have reaffirmed your desire and strengthened commitment.
Occasionally though, you might realize that you didn’t want what you originally thought you wanted. Maybe, the missed opportunity showed you that you actually enjoy a different path more.
In this scenario, if it’s what you truly want, then you can be appreciative of how your life path turned in a direction you didn’t plan on. Your missed opportunity led you to a new and better solution, and there is no need to fret over your mistake, feeling like you need to fix it.
3. Time Will Always Heal
This sentiment might be overstated, but that’s because it’s as close to universally true as we can get in our personal experiences. Everyone has their own methods and techniques for getting through the rough patches, but almost all of us need the help of time.
As much as we’d like to force ourselves to feel good in the current moment, it isn’t always possible. Recognizing some time might be necessary, allows us to quell some of our biggest anxieties in these situations. By recognizing the role of time, we avoid attaching any momentary hurt or despair to our identity. We may be this way for the moment, but we won’t always be this way. Everything about us will change eventually.
Don’t worry, time has your back.
Conclusion
Mistakes are a part of our life. You’ve made them. I’ve made them. We’ve all made our fair share of mistakes. So there is no need to worry, we’re all in the same boat.
Allow yourself to accept these mistakes and move on because you’ve got so much to give the world. As you keep moving toward your goals, the mistakes become less and less relevant. We get to choose whether we avoid our mistakes or appreciate them for what they are. And who knows? Sometimes, missed opportunities lead to even better opportunities down the road.
