Either commit or don’t.
I want you to promise yourself to stop making commitments that you are not 100% committed to making.
What is a commitment? A commitment could also mean dedicated, obligated, promised, duty, pledge, or responsibility. Do any of those words sound debatable? Do they seem like they are optional?
When you fail to make your commitments, what happens? The client or customer you committed to could be upset. You might lose the client. But perhaps it’s a just minor thing, and they don’t say anything. But they will file that in their mind like a broken promise. How much emphasis will they place on your next commitment? Less, than if you had kept it. How many times before they stop calling you at all?
Regardless of what happens with a client, the biggest problem is to yourself. What is the opposite of keeping a commitment; a break, breach, denial, broken promise, irresponsibility? What do you think this does to your self confidence? How about your belief in yourself? Not keeping a single promise leads to a habit of not sticking to more of them. It becomes a habit because you’ve allowed yourself to say it’s okay. As soon as it gets inconvenient or hard, what do you think is going to happen? Then you’re in the position of decided what commitments to keep and what commitments you won’t keep.
If you can’t keep relatively minor commitments, how are you going to keep bigger ones?
100% is easy. If you keep every commitment you make, then it’s easy. If you’re at 98%, then what’s prevents you from going to 97%, of 95%. It’s a slippery slope and over time you end up at 62%
If you always keep your commitments, no matter what, you’ll stop making as many of them because you’ll only commit to what you will do. It becomes simpler because there will be less of them.
100% is easy. 99% is hard.
For your success,