207 Turning Goals into Self-Agreements

Welcome to Playing With Fire, the podcast for people who are ready to custom build their love. We're talking about non-monogamy, however you design it, as an individuation opportunity. Want to leave the default and make your life spectacularly you? You're in the right place. We have a listener question today that we're going to talk about. You know how much I love questions. Absolutely. And this listener was spending time and energy thinking about how to make agreements.

Want to make agreements. Want to make relationship agreements. And then they discovered that a lot of the agreements they wanted to make were with themselves. Oh, sure. Great. That's great. Awesome first step. Absolutely. It is. They, um, so they're like, okay, I'm going to make agreements and all right, well about what? Okay. So I have these goals for myself. These are the things that I want. How do I turn these goals into agreements?

There's our question. This is a great question for me because there is not much I like more than operationalizing psychological growth. You do love that. Well, because... it can feel so doing our growth work. What does it even mean to do the work? In fact, we have a whole episode on what does it mean to do the work? It can be very nebulous, very just like.

I don't know if I'm reading books and listening to podcasts. Does that count? If I'm making agreements with other people, is that the work? What is it? What is the work?

I think that's a great question. I also really appreciate the underlying premise that I'm hearing that this person wants to be in alignment. They want their goals to be in alignment with the actions they're taking. by making agreements with themselves, which means they're also thinking about accountability and bringing this into their day-to-day mundane experience. And that tells me that also...

They have goals, which means they likely want their values to be aligned with their day-to-day actions, right? Because our goals tend to come from our values. And side note to this listener. If you haven't done a values check-in for a while, it might be a good time to do a values exercise. It can be a really easy thing to do. In fact, there are online tools to do values exercises. We can throw one into the show notes.

identifying your core values and then identifying what your goals are and just making sure like, does this goal look like it lines up with these values? That's just a good, it's a good background check. But then when we get into the, okay, but seriously. How do I make this goal into an actionable agreement that I can hold myself to? That then truly feeds the goal. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I.

I have a set of steps that I use when I'm helping people make solo agreements. And so let's just go back also to the beginning of all agreements are with yourself at core. All agreements are with yourself. If you are in agreement solely for another person or to meet their standards, and it is not also in alignment with your standards and your needs, I have questions.

Because unless this is a consensual power dynamic, I'm very concerned. So let's assume that you want these solo agreements because you also want to practice.

making agreements with yourself because that's the core of all your agreements. The first thing that comes to mind that we need to take action on is getting super explicit about what this goal is. Sometimes people will state a goal without really digging in and without trying to write it down. If I can't write my goal down, again, I'm… I'm curious because probably this is more of a, I want to live this value. Is your goal integrity or is your goal to do the things you say you'll do?

One's more of a value and it just kind of floats out there in the ether and the other... is something you could measure. It's something you could look at and say, I am doing that or I'm not doing that. And this isn't about anybody else measuring you. This is about you. Could you do a self-check? Could you have a relationship check in with yourself and say,

Yeah, I am doing this. So I want you to get explicit. Yeah. And for myself, I find my agreements much, much stronger and easier to work with when they have a lot of verbs in them. Oh, say more. Yeah. So I used to, I mean, it started with my task list. I would write down my tasks and then I'd look at them. It's like, there's no verbs. It doesn't say check the thing. It doesn't say do the, like, it just says.

Like, I don't know, pet food, for example. This is hysterical because I have my own task list right in front of me. And the first word on every list is a verb. And like on every single item, this whole page down, the first word is a verb. I don't even think about it. Thank you for bringing that in. I started building my tasks list that way explicitly.

And I'm still working on it because I'll write them, then I'll have to go back and rewrite them to have the verb in them. Because then I know what to do and when it's done. So you're getting clear already in the action that you want to take.

If you have a goal, Yeah, you might. We are going to need to dig into the actions. I want you first, though, to get really explicit about the thing. What is this thing? Do you actually want it or do you just think this is a good thing that you should want? Ooh. Those are not the same thing. No, they're not. If you believe that this is a good thing that you should want, who in you believes that you should want this? You know, what part of you?

thinks you should want this, is this thing that you're moving toward, is it actually just part, is it part of a larger vision? Do you believe that you should move in this direction or is it good as in, I don't know, I feel aimless and I should just do good things, but it's always subjective. So if you don't know whether you want it, then my question would be.

where are you going to get the life force to pull this off if you don't even have, if there's no desire, there's no want, there's no impulse. So I would want to do that first. So for that, I might do some. desire excavation work. I might do a little, and that could look like doing like a seven minute free write of where you set a timer and you just keep writing. I want.

Fill in the blank. I wish I could have fill in the blank. I long to be like fill in the blank. I secretly want fill in the blank. If no one found out, I would. Fill in the blank. Just do that for seven minutes until you fill up a couple pages and all of a sudden, your actual wants will pop to the surface. It's just a technique to get past the...

The surface level, the things that you think you should want into, oh, this is just what keeps popping up. And that can get us in touch with deeper layers of our desire. And desire. is our motivating force. So yeah, so that's helpful. So first off, be explicit and make sure that you actually have some want here, not just aligning to... Like supposedly objective good things. A should. A should. Yeah. Stop shouldn't on yourself. Yeah. Okay. So.

Let's imagine that that is check. Okay, we're good. We know that this goal is actually, it's for me, it's in alignment with my values, and it has some impulse attached to it. Now I want to think about my action plans. So there's a list of questions that I'll ask myself and start setting myself up so that I can have some...

there can be some scaffolding around me, some consequences and some support in place, right? So if I want to turn this into an agreement, the agreement comes to me from asking a bunch of questions. First off, What is the consequence of not following through? What's the action? What's the action I want to put in place? Like you said, it needs to be a verb. There needs to be something I can do. So if mine is...

drink 100 ounces of water a day. I'm going to make this super simple. Drink 100 ounces of water a day. Drink is the verb. What's the consequence of not following through? For me, the consequence of not following through is migraines. I don't like that I have to drink 100 ounces of water a day, but if I don't, I get more migraines. I go from like one a week to like five a week. Not good, right?

Simply making like transparent to yourself, like actually getting clear what happens if you don't follow through. So this could be the natural consequences. happen and also the ones that you impose if you want. So we could also ask what's the, what's ha what happens? Do you have any sort of.

Are you going to use a stick at all? Like if we're talking about stick and carrot, are you going to use a stick? There are lots of things. You and I used to have one that we used all the time in the gym, which is you had to be on time to start a class with us. And if you weren't on time, then you had to do burpees. And nobody wants to do burpees.

But you just have to. And you know that's the price of admission. So you walk in the door and you're four minutes late for the warm-up. And instead of dropping into the warm-up with everybody else, first you do 10 burpees. It's completely manufactured. You don't need to do that. Right, it's not a natural consequence. It's not a natural consequence. But it is designed to motivate. It's designed to guide actions into the goal.

Right. And my favorite thing about that with you was you were constantly late. for every class, even though you ran the place. Yeah. You were late for your own, like your own fitness class, not for teaching classes. Not for teaching, but when it was my turn to work out, I would be late. I don't think I ever didn't give you burpees. I believe you started every warmup.

with burpees because some part of you enjoys paying a consequence. That's right. Somebody hold me to a standard, please. How do you feel about submission, Ken? I mean. It definitely has its place. I feel very good about service, that's for sure. Yeah, but burpees aren't about that. Being assigned burpees. No, that's a good point. Nobody else particularly benefits from someone else doing burpees. No, though I do think you look pretty when you do them.

Oh, thanks. So, right, consequences. What are the natural consequences and are you going to have any manufactured consequences for not following through? And then what sort of reward or reinforcement is there? What are the natural... upshots. What's the good stuff? With drinking water, I can manufacture some feedback for myself. I can give myself a little gold star on a chart every time I finish 40 ounces because that's what fits in my water cup. I can go to you and

ask for a high five for doing it. Like I can build things in. And then there's the natural rewards of. actually writing down like what will happen? Oh, I will feel better. I will feel better in my body. I will literally feel better. I'll sleep better at night. I'll have to take less medication. Straightforward. And so what I hear you saying is you're making visible the actual benefits of it. Right.

As well as being intentional about whatever you manufacture around it. Right. And this is about making it visible because we're taking these steps. I know for some people who are listening, actually, I'm guessing they're not even listening anymore. Some people just do this. You just do it automatically. This is a process that happens almost reflexively for me. But for you, making these things visible is the difference between success and not at upholding your own solo agreements.

There's no moral judgment to that. That's just different ways to be. Right, because I'm also too hard on myself and almost a brutalist with myself. And it makes me judgmental. These aren't good and bad things. So if you're a person who's like, why do I have to have all these steps? It's okay. It's fine. It is okay. We just want to give you some tools so that you can get there easier. And the benefit of writing down manufactured consequences.

ahead of time is that when the time comes and the consequences triggered, you're not making it up on the spot. Because you might be particularly hard on yourself. If you're the kind of person who is hard on yourself, you might be unnecessarily hard on yourself in the consequence. Or if you're someone like me.

You might be just too mild and it won't actually have the effect. But if you do it ahead of time, you know, like a relatively cool state, thinking about what you want and what it's worth to you, you'll probably write down something that hits the sweet spot. And we are all, humans are expert rationalizers. Right? So it also, consequence, the word consequence is being used here very specifically. What happens next?

If I don't meet this goal, what happens next? Next thing happens in the sequence is this. For me, one of the, I'm coming back to this drinking water because it is so blatant and obvious. When I don't drink my first 40 ounces by, you know, 10 a.m., well, the consequence is I need to go drink it right now, like before I do my next thing that always starts at 1030.

Now I have to, now I have to drink it in half an hour and that's not very comfortable. Like it's, it's just what I have to do in order to then get to the next thing. Well, we could take this into the relational realm and talk about. You know, recently I was working with someone who really needed to cut down on, they were doing so much of their communication via text.

And it's getting in the way of their relating. They're finding that they're compulsively checking their phone because there's this sort of constant desire for getting a message back. But also there's just like a... misunderstandings are coming up over and over and over again. And they realize they really need to move to more intentional conversations that happen in person and on the phone. And so they need to drop back their texting.

So making some consequences and some reinforcement for themselves around this is a perfectly, like it's healthy and helpful. And we do have to manufacture some things. There are no. You know, the natural consequences of not following through are, well, you'll maintain the pattern and it doesn't feel good. Right. But you've already been maintaining the pattern. So we'll probably have to invent some. Yeah.

and these don't have to be punitive right you don't have to punish yourself it could just be oh like do you have an accountability buddy that you're going to check in with about this so Actually, my next question is what support scaffolding can you build in to assist you? Who can help you with this? Some people are really good accountability partners. I am an awesome accountability partner. Yes, you are.

It's really, really easy for me to hold lots of people's important stuff in my head and to remind them and to check in with them. So you're looking for someone who will... Who will do that, who will remember that you asked, for example, and who will actually hold you accountable. Right. In other words, they are willing to...

understand and know what your consequences are and just remind you and help you hold that. There are also apps that can do this, right? We can set ourselves up with their great habit apps and things like that. But also the scaffolding around me, when I'm thinking about creating a solo agreement, often I'll take on this individualistic approach. and act like, well, it's my agreement with myself, so it all needs to happen in here.

But we're social creatures. Just because my agreement is something I'm making with myself doesn't mean I don't deserve to be witnessed, to be part of my community, to have this be a thing that matters to the people who matter to me. You know, a lot of times I hear people in the year of opening be really shy about sharing their solo agreements. They're shy. They feel like, well.

This is just my stuff. I should just have my shit together. I should just do this. And then if you share and you're witnessed and you see someone be proud of you and you see someone, you know, like just. Just witnessing you, seeing the work you're putting in to make the life you want. That's the move out of our hyper-individualistic socialization into Right. We're social beings. We want to be seen. We want to be witnessed. This is how we deepen our connections, even with people who aren't.

our, on our innermost circle, right? This doesn't have to be just the people who you are like, like fucking. Let this be for a broader circle. I love that use of my, of my broader community. Hey, I want, I'm doing this. It also lets us build mundane friendship. Like, like, like just to be able to say, I did this thing.

That I wanted to do. And to be celebrated for it. That's huge. That's connection. That's intimacy building. I just had a friend that I haven't talked to for a while reach out to me. And I realized that. Like he would be awesome at this. He would love it and he would cheerlead when things went well and he would be clear and direct when they, you know, when the.

when it was missed. I can see why you haven't brought it up with him. So I don't really talk to him about that. I hope you send this episode to him. I definitely will. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing to join each other in our strengths. It is. You certainly have something to offer him. This is not a one-way street. When I do this, when I say I'm an accountability buddy with people,

Yeah. And I ask them for things and it might not be accountability. I often just want someplace to celebrate. I don't necessarily need somebody to, to be my check-in about like, oh, you know, I I'm out of alignment. I'm out of integrity here. Can you. Can you remind me? I just need somebody to be able to high five. I just need somebody to say, I did my taxes. Yay. I just need that. And it feels so good. And I feel so seen.

And that's enough. That feels like friendship to me, but it also feels like being myself and not trying to hide and be like... perfect and unto myself and all like a self-perpetuating unit. For me, it helps me feel actually alive and part of the human community. It's points of connection that matter. It's not just talking about football or whatever people do. I guess they do those things.

But it's actual, like, soul-level stuff. This is what I'm working on. Yeah. So for scaffolding, you're meaning, like, what's around you? And you've mentioned people and apps. There's people, there's apps. Things outside yourself designed to help. And then, of course, there's the concept of the habit loop. Like how can I establish a habit loop? What is, what, what thing could trigger me? So, you know, if you're going to, if you're, if this is going to be about.

Well, we could make it again about like taking medication. You know, we're all told like take your medication at the same time. Better yet, take your medication at the same time every day and do it at the same time as you feed your cat because your cat will never forget.

Ever. If your cat knows you have to take that medication, no problem. He will let you know. But we can also allow ourselves to... have all sorts of relational things be trigger events right like how do i so can my relationship meeting be tied to Can it be tied to other pieces of my life so that I know, so that I am reminded to be in this practice, right?

There are so many different things we could add in here around habit loops, around bundling tasks we don't like with tasks we do like. You and I often hold relationship check-ins at our favorite coffee shops because... Well, the latte is worth it, even though I don't really feel like checking in. Right. Yeah. You know, habit bundling can help. There are so many tools you can use there. So all of that can provide scaffolding for you.

And then I just have two more pieces. Okay. What you got? Well, one is what flexibility can you build in, in order to like meet this goal? If you have a goal. One of the big things that will get in your way is needing to be perfect. And resilience to imperfection will be super, super helpful. It's hard. Most of us have perfectionistic tendencies. And so...

What can you do to build in flexibility? You and I, we were just both reading the Oliver Berkman book, Meditations for Mortals. I was just thinking about that. Yeah. Doing things daily-ish. Daily-ish. I really appreciated how Berkman put like, it seems like being rigid about I will do this every day would be more effective. But if you zoom out and look at your whole life, in fact.

holding yourself with your whole humanity and treating yourself as a person who's going to have things that come up and stuff that happens and a life that needs rearranging, but still striving for daily-ish. I think this way about relationship meetings all the time. Like, okay, I want to promise to show up for my relationship meeting every time. If I have a relationship meeting and you and I used to have...

daily check-ins and then weekly check-ins that we needed to have both of them. We've actually lengthened that out a little bit recently, but it wasn't reasonable to have them have to be daily. And I knew that when I started to see you come into every meeting with like a guilt trip on yourself. Because you'd missed the one before or because you were late to it or something, right? And holding that, what kind of flexibility? So when we started shooting for, let's aim for having five a week. Great.

That was approachable. It gave both of us grace. It also actually fed into our actual goal, which was connection and resilience and consistency of check-in was about connection and resilience. So it all made sense to shift into daily-ish. And I didn't have that word. I love it. I think it's really helpful. Yeah, I like it too. And it helps me stop being so rigid. Like I have this rigidity problem that I needed to relax. Conceptually and even from an engineering perspective, rigidity.

And resilience are essentially opposites. You can't be rigid and resilient. Right. And if you're resilient. Rigid is brittle. Rigid is brittle, not resilient. Exactly. Okay. So.

One last piece. Yeah. And that is look for the friction. Where's the friction? Oh, plan for it? Like look for it? Yeah. Actually, like look for it. So I had a – I'm going back to the drinking water thing. I had a 20 ounce water bottle and I needed to drink a hundred ounces of water or more a day. I actually, I aim for like 120, 140 now. And so.

I had a logistical problem. I had this 20 ounce water bottle and I would finish it and then I'd be in a session and I couldn't get up for an hour because I needed, and it was such a solvable problem. Solvable by having. two water bottles on my desk or by getting a bigger water bottle. It was so solvable. And I've been carrying a water bottle around for the last 20 years.

I know 25 since Sage was a baby. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. That's a long time. Yeah. Okay. Since I was pregnant the first time, 26 years. Why didn't I have a bigger water bottle? This is silly. Yeah. So solvable. When you're friction to adherence around relationship meetings, so many people don't have relationship meetings because they've only...

They only know how to have these big meetings. Yeah, right. Things that don't fit everywhere. You need a specific setup. Or they have them so infrequently that it feels overwhelming. Or they have... connected relationship meeting to negativity, to bringing up problems. There are so many things. We could shift to having a check-in that's inherently positive. We could build, let's have a check-in where we each send each other a song.

about how we're, that sums up how we're feeling right now. And then we'll, so we'll, we'll just do that throughout the day. And then the check-in will be at night to just spend five minutes talking about why you picked that song. Like there, like. shift the energy around the idea did you just make that up yeah why thought so i love it it's a great one yeah the um the ability to to see friction points and then, and then like get creative, right? Like just.

Where can we loosen up that friction? Where can we be either gentler around our approach? Where can we remove obstacles? If I remove an obstacle to keeping an agreement with myself. I have just increased my resilience. I have increased my chances of keeping my word to myself. Now all of a sudden I'm in integrity. And I feel better about myself as well. So you put yourself on a wheel of, you get that flywheel moving of, oh, I can do this.

I do do this. Removing obstacles is very hard, right? So that friction comes from obstacles. Some of them are just like little friction points that slow down the flywheel. Some of them are brick walls. It doesn't actually matter, in my experience, how big the friction is if we have a perfectionist tendency.

we often will think it doesn't matter what the obstacle is. I'm supposed to want to do this no matter what. It doesn't freaking matter. And so then we get hard on ourselves rather than looking for, well, how? how can I reduce the friction? What can I do? Can I change the time of this thing? Can I change the mode? Can I change what the, if I understand the action I want to take?

Can I increase my motivation by tying it to something else that I care about? There are so many ways to remove obstacles, but it often takes a creative... Creativity. That's what was coming up. You might need a thought partner for that, right? Just someone else who can look at it and help you look and see like, what is getting in my way here? What's the thing? It's really hard to see that stuff from the inside. And just having someone who can hear you.

state, like here's my goal, here's what's going on. Somebody who could say like, so what's getting in your way? And literally hearing somebody ask you the question, what's getting in your way? What's stopping you? Even just that, it's magic. And if you don't have a thought partner, I like to write this down. If I don't have a thought partner, I will write it down and I'll write the question to myself. What's in my way?

I start listening to the best of my ability. I actually do better talking, so I usually do this kind of thing in voice note if I'm needing to problem solve this way.

the removing obstacles can become incredibly fun right now i'm bringing myself into like now my Creating the agreement isn't just about creating the agreement. It's also about creating an ecosystem that supports me upholding the agreement, which now builds my... self-esteem builds my resilience and if you've yeah build your self-esteem your resilience and if you've built this this one off of your values it builds your your sense

Well, I guess it comes back to self-esteem, but yeah, I know that when I'm doing things that are in line with my values, it feels very different than if I'm just doing things. Right.

I really appreciate this question. I think it was stated in such a heartfelt way. I can hear that this person really wants... wants to live a life that matters to them and wants to use a little bit of structure to hold that up. And that's what self-agreements are for. Self-agreements are just structure to support you living the life you want. They're not about being rigid or hyper-focused or making everything into an achievement.

Yeah. It's just about giving you enough container so that you can do what you want to do and live the life you want to live. So for anybody who's listened to all of this and is thinking like, why can't I just live? The answer? You can. Go ahead. That's fine. And some of us really do want to use some structure to help us feel like, okay, okay.

This, this is not actually just a winding road that I have no idea. This is actually an experience that I'm going to craft for myself and it'll go places I don't expect. And also I. get to be a creator in my life. Well, I knew you would have a practical answer to this question, a practical response. And if anybody has follow-up questions, join us at our Ask Me Anything. Yes, absolutely.

You can go to joliehamilton.com forward slash AMA. And we have like once a month, small group. About once a month. Yeah. And it's just us. It's a lot of fun. talking, answering your questions. And yeah, I totally love that. Thanks for bringing me this question, Ken. Thank you. This has been great. There's no one right way to design your relationship. And lots of people, actually about 25%, according to a recent national survey,

are interested in some type of open relationship. But how do you know if you are ready to open up happily? Not everyone is, and that's no problem. I've got a 60 second quiz that will give you the answer. And even better, you'll walk away with your next step, whether you're good to go or not so much when it comes to opening up. And this is no BuzzFeed nonsense. I personally designed this quiz from my years of academic research. Go to JolieQuiz.com. That's J-O-L-I.

and find out if you're ready to open up happily and what to do if you are or if you're not.