Self-Love – Day 11 – Promises

Have you checked your email today?

How many times?

How early in the day?

Brendon Burchard says (roughly) that email is just a collection of other people’s requests. He advises that checking email be scheduled late in your morning, after you have completed the things that you promised yourself. 

We know that we are more prone to do something for someone else rather than choose a ‘selfish’ pursuit. That’s why, our challenge today is to focus on the opposite. Let’s look at those promises we make to ourselves that we sometimes push to the side in deference to someone else’s requests.

Why? 

Well, from an energetic perspective, each promise that we make takes energy. When it is met and crossed off the list, we get the energy back. Any unfulfilled promises sit like outstanding debts (to us). They are places where we have given money (energy) that has yet to come back to us. In the financial world, this leads to financial collapse. In the energetic world, this leads to exhaustion. 

The thing with promises made to yourself is that they are often hidden. We may not make them out loud. Noone else may hold us accountable. They aren’t glowingly displayed on our calendars with pop up notices to remind us. Sometimes, they are unconscious even to ourselves. 

What do we do with that? How do we get our energy back when we aren’t even too sure where it went?

Luckily, there are ways. 

Steps: 

1. Go For The Obvious – What are the promises you know you have made to yourself? Goals you have set, things in your schedule, things that you already have in motion like studies or jobs or relationships.
2. Look Deeper – What are your life goals, perhaps the ideas that you have about how your life will go? Family, Career, Monetary ideals, Possessions you want to have, Places you want to travel, Skills you want to learn. 
3. Look Outside – what are the promises you have made to yourself that involve others? Like you want to succeed so that your mom is proud. Or you want to travel to your country of origin to see your grandparents because that would make them happy. 
4. Did you write them down? If not, it might be a good idea to do that now. Even if your memory is photographic, it’s nice to be able to see them and it will be helpful 
5. Prioritize – Once you have them in your mind, and hopefully down on a piece of paper, then you can make decisions. You have pulled them from your subconscious into your now, where you can affect change. Move them around until you are happy with the order of importance. You can delete the ones that are no longer important or even that you think you will never complete. (You can always put them back on.)
6. Recommit – To those promises that you have decided to keep, what actions are you going to take? Think about the energy that is tied up in them. You have chosen to keep it there. Now is the time to take steps to get it back. Make a plan. Put dates to it. Let’s get it done!
7. Remember – Cross it off your list. When you do it….celebrate it. 

It is good to check out the different ways that you make promises to yourself. This keeps us aware of what we are doing.

As you work with your promises, you will be able to feel the energy returning to you. Energy is a hot commodity. How much we have at any given moment determines how much power we have behind our actions. Putting this power into the things that really matter to us means that we will be able to create a straight path to our goals. 

Honoring your promises to yourself honors you which is just another way we show our self-love.