{"id":131341,"date":"2024-04-12T08:48:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T12:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/?p=131341"},"modified":"2024-04-12T13:22:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T17:22:19","slug":"honoring-your-word-to-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/12\/honoring-your-word-to-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Your Word to Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">By <a href=\"http:\/\/leobabauta.com\/\">Leo Babauta<\/a><\/h4>\n<p>There is a power to our word that is very often underdeveloped \u2014 words are magic, and can create the world around us. But most of us use this magic as if it weren\u2019t powerful.<\/p>\n<p>The first way we see this is that we often don\u2019t honor our word to ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>In his wonderful book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz puts \u201cBe impeccable with your word\u201d as the first and most important of the four agreements that can change your life. There\u2019s a lot more depth to this agreement, \u201cBe impeccable with your word,\u201d than you might first realize \u2026 but I\u2019m only going to cover one aspect of that: honoring your word to yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Some ways we don\u2019t honor our word to ourselves:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We say we\u2019re going to exercise today, but then put it off because we\u2019re busy.<\/li>\n<li>We vow to stop eating so many sweets, only to give in the next day and eat a bunch of ice cream and cookies.<\/li>\n<li>We say we\u2019re going to work on a meaningful project, but that keeps getting pushed back another day, and another, until months have gone by.<\/li>\n<li>We say we\u2019re going to meditate, but instead check our phones or email.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of this is \u201cbad,\u201d and it would be a misuse of our word to harshly criticize ourselves for any of this. But what if we could start to honor our word to ourselves?<\/p>\n<p>What if, when we tell ourselves we\u2019re going to do something, we actually follow through and do it?<\/p>\n<p>What would that change for you, in your life?<\/p>\n<p>If you could 100% trust yourself to honor your word to yourself \u2026 this could change everything.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s look at how to develop the power of our word to ourselves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Practice of Honoring Our Word to Ourselves<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Start by committing yourself to take your word to yourself as sacred. It\u2019s a vow, and when you say it, you\u2019re fully committed to it.<\/p>\n<p>Remind yourself of this each time you\u2019re about to break your vow to yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Then start by only making small promises to yourself \u2014 things you know you can definitely do. And follow through on every single promise, over and over, with full commitment.<\/p>\n<p>For example: promise to go and drink a glass of water, and then do it. Promise to answer this one email, then do it. Promise to go for a walk around the block, then do it. Small promises, and then take them as sacred.<\/p>\n<p>Remove the possibility of not doing it. My coach says if you\u2019re a parent, you don\u2019t even question whether you\u2019re going to feed your kids or not \u2014 it\u2019s a commitment you don\u2019t question. Treat your commitments to yourself in the same way \u2014 unquestionable.<\/p>\n<p>When you do it, acknowledge yourself for honoring your word to yourself. This is a victory to be celebrated. Even if it\u2019s a tiny victory, it\u2019s important.<\/p>\n<p>If you mess up, honor your word by acknowledging the mistake, and apologizing. Take responsibility, without blame or shame. And then commit yourself to growing from this mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Only once you\u2019ve gotten good at the easy promises should you go to harder ones. Instead of promising to write for an hour, promise to write for 5 or 10 minutes. Instead of trying to meditate for an hour, just meditate for 5 minutes. Same with exercise, or anything that requires focus. Small promises, executed impeccably.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t make indefinite promises \u2014 like that you\u2019ll never touch another drop of alcohol. Make small promises, like you\u2019re not going to eat a cookie for the next hour. Then make the promises easier to fulfill \u2014 get rid of the cookies, or remove yourself from the vicinity of the cookies.<\/p>\n<p>Over time, if you work on developing the power of your word, it will become something you don\u2019t question. And then your word will be like a powerful magic spell you can cast anytime you need to make magic happen.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/zenhabits.net\/honoring-your-word\/\">Honoring Your Word to Yourself<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/zenhabits.net\">zen habits<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Leo Babauta There is a power to our word that is very often underdeveloped \u2014 words are magic, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,176,192],"tags":[178,179,193],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131342,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131341\/revisions\/131342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}