Episode Transcript

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys.

So today I want to talk about keeping promises, and I want to talk about why it’s important to keep promises. So a couple reasons.

First and foremost, when you say you’re going to do something, and this is in business, in life in general, if you’re saying you’re going to do something, you’re going to deliver something, you’re going to deliver on a service or a product or things, right? Or if you’re just out running in life and saying, hey, yeah, I’ll do that for you. I’ll do you a favor, right? That is a promise, and you’ve now made a promise to do something. You’ve now made a promise to deliver something. You’ve now made a promise and you include other parties expectations of you.

And when you make a promise like that, it is horrible when you break it, it feels horrible, and it feels really bad when you say you’re going to do something, but you do not follow through for a couple reasons. One, the moment you do not follow through, you broken trust with others, but also with yourself when I first started getting up early, and this was a long time ago in the journey, but just getting up early and then beginning to make my bed. One of the most profound things about that that occurred and I was taught was that when I make my bed and when I get up early after I’ve told myself, I’ll get up early and I’ll make my bed, it wasn’t so much about the making the bed that mattered, but it was about saying I will do something, then keeping my promise to myself that I was going to do it.

It wasn’t so much about getting up early and saying, Hey, I’m going to get up early, and then being getting up early is amazing, but it was more about me keeping the promise to myself to get up. And I’m saying this because oftentimes it’s so easy for us to commit to something, for us to make a promise, for us to set expectations with another party, and then it’s out of that flippancy and out of that easiness that we just break those promises and we break the expectations.

And oftentimes you’ll break relationships over this, right? You do it enough times in a row, the relationship becomes broken trust in yourself, and then other people who trust you is such a core piece of relationship, and such a core piece of how this world operates. Everything we do in this world really boils back down to relationship, and it’s so important to know that this is a key to actually having good relationships and having healthy relationships.

That’s essentially too at what business is at the heart is, I promise I’m going to do something if you promise to pay me. And it’s two promises that are made, right? I promise this, and you promise that, and we both agree to keep our word and to do the things that we’ve committed to each other to do. And then the moment that business begins to break, or the moment that a service breaks, or we say, Hey, I had a really bad experience here. It’s normally because promises were not kept and expectations were not kept.

And if you think about it this way, doing business this way, if you think about relationships this way, it’s going to help you really change what you say yes to. Most of us say yes to absolutely everything, and what we need to do is really say no to way more than what we say yes to. No. Is such an important word to have no is such an important word to be able to use, not just to set boundaries between you and other people, but to also set boundaries within yourself based on your capabilities. And it’s so interesting how we’ll say yes to most things, and very rarely say no, but saying no is actually oftentimes really safe and actually oftentimes way more healthier in the long term.

I’ve listened to Mark Cuban forever ago. This was years ago, but one things that he said listening to some of the stuff he was talking about with business. One things he said that will actually kill a business is too much opportunity saying yes to everything, and actually kills you. And the more successful you are at business, the more the more you actually say no, and they’re directly related to each other. And what I’m talking about right now is why? Because the moment you start doing more things, the moment it is easier to break promises, the moment you start doing more and you start becoming spread thin, the moment things begin to break relationships, promises, what you said you’re going to do and deliver, and then everything begins to deteriorate from there.

It’s interesting how we want the grandiose so we do way more than we should in the moment, and we’re out of time when, when those things should happen. And all of this is really about saying no and really, actually staying within your lane, how you need to stay within your lane.

And there’s an old proverb that talks about how you can’t help anybody else, if you’re too broken to help, and that’s really true. So that being said, Guys, I’m out of time, and I’ll catch you later. Peace.