Keeping your word, especially the word that you gave to yourself is a big issue… This article is digging deep for the causes and the solutions.

I am removing people from my Reclaim program, left and right, for inactivity. If you don’t have at least one written coaching conversation with me a week, you are put on the “to be removed” list. Why? Because if you are not doing the work you shouldn’t be in the program.

If you are not coming for the coaching… then I have a good idea how your life looks.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

This was probably one of the most shocking things I learned in self-development, right up there with “you think you see everything, but you only see what you have already seen”.

Both insights were upsetting, and started to break up the world-view, the mythical, magical world view, that “I can do anything I put my mind to.”

I realized that everything, for me, meant, maybe, 1% of the things…

Some of us seem to have no ability to sustain any activity without an outside have to, need to, or want to.

I, for example, cannot be trusted as far as eating habits go. There seems to be no correlation between my conscious decisions and my behavior. I may be able to sustain a desirable behavior for a day, a week, a few weeks… maybe.

Others may have a different area, where they cannot seem to sustain a behavior.

Signing up to programs with homework, assignments, seems to be an area where this disability is most noticeable.

The lack of capacity to keep your word causes untold suffering, and often causes this weakness to grow.

“Imagination creates the dream. Mental toughness creates the money”

Mental toughness is a capacity that allows winners to stay in the game, take the steps that make no sense in the moment, that are hard, or draining, or time-consuming, or menial, or inglorious, or unsuccessful.

But even with mental toughness, if the “dream” lives in your mind, it also dies in your mind…

As a preemie, I was born in a hospital that didn’t have incubators. I was also born to a mother who didn’t want me. I was born with weaknesses, and I don’t think I have ever truly overcome them

Which means: I need to eat in a certain way that is neither very enjoyable, nor very socially compatible.

But… I tend to forget the reason for the many limitations… and when I forget, the limitation doesn’t make sense… and I start doing the things that make me sick, although other people can live forever with them.

After a few weeks of that, when I am getting sick… I wake up.

Obviously I am doing what YOU are doing: keeping it in my mind… forgetting.

If I were my client, my food list would be written down in a format that I can take to the grocery store… but of course a shoe maker walks barefoot…

But, seriously, anything that isn’t appearing when you need to remember it, will never happen.

Of course, you’ll think “I’ll remember it” but you won’t.

What is missing is the ability to be with “not yet”.

OK, I am going to make that list… and get myself on the hook.