5. Promises Made & Broken

own positivity quest. How many times have you promised yourself something? Anything? Five times 10 100. And what happens when you break those promises with yourself? guilt shame, knocking yourself for being a failure. The mind games you play with yourself can be relentless. In today's episode, we'll take a look at the agreements we make with ourselves, and how four simple modules can help us live a life free of regret. Ready?

Let's go. If you're a regular listener to this show, you know that I have a big penchant for wanting to get people to be positive about the lives they lead. No question about them. We often struggle with making promises to ourselves, breaking them, and then beating ourselves up about them. So how do we flip the switch? How do we make a change? If you go back to episode two of this show, we talked about the new year's resolution, where anytime is a

good time to make a change. And the important part of that is that any day is a good day for something new. And what happens when we do that is we make a promise to ourselves, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to be a better person, I'm going to bring joy into the world. And then when we don't hold that promise to ourselves, we beat ourselves up about it, we look at ourselves and think of ourselves as a failure. And what I'd like for us to consider is what does that do to our

mindset? When we're constantly beating ourselves up? What does that do to our mindset, and how we approach other things we may want to tackle in our lives. And when you flip over to the dictionary, and you look up the word promise, the definition is, and there's two parts, there's Part A and there's Part B, the definition is a declaration that one will do or refrain from

doing something specified. And be in this one is a little intense, a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act. Think about that, that is a weighty thing to put on ourselves. I promise to quit smoking, I promise to lose weight, I promise to be a better

person. When you put I promise in the context of a legally binding declaration that is made with a right to expect our claim the performance or forbearance of a specific act, who that's a lot of pressure to put on yourselves. So how do we go about making change with removing the barrier of the weight of that promise. Now think about all the places that promises live in our lives.

There's certainly promises in business promissory note, religion, where you ramp it up to an oath or a vow, philosophy, and its promises, politics, we saw that earlier this week, in the changing of the presidency in the vice presidency, society, psychology, there are lots of different places where promises make their way into our lives. And a lot of it has to do with this like magnitude or credibility of me as a person. And this can have both positive and negative effects on our

mindset. And we're going to get into four mantras based upon the book, The Four Agreements that I've been reading, and I find it to be super helpful in how I'm starting to re approach my life and my interactions with myself and with others. So stick around, we're gonna get to that in just a second. We'll be right back. Welcome back. And now, if you've listened to this show, for any amount of time, you know that I'm on this path, this positivity quest, I'm also on a path to become a personal and

executive coach. Working on my training right now in the organization that I'm doing that with is through Valerie Burton, and the cap Institute. When we did our first initial kind of intensive weekend, we received a list of books and I was going through the list of books, things that I might enjoy and I came across one called the Four Agreements. Which is a practical guide to personal freedom. And this book was first published back in 1997. So it's not that

old. But it's based upon ancient Indian, the toltec and their wisdom about life. For some reason, when I was listening to this book, there was something about it that resonated with me. And in particular, it's the word agreement. And what this show is about promises made and broken. But what if we started to look at promises, as agreements with ourselves, I agree to removing

that weight of a promise. We talked about this in the New Year's resolutions, where the resolve is very weighty, but an intention less weighty and still making progress. It's the same thing here with promises. If we back those down to agreements with ourselves, it doesn't have that same kind of, but we can still make progress. So in this book, that the agreements are really focused on what people say to themselves around who they are, how they believe what's possible in their lives,

and also what's impossible. And I think that's an important point. A lot of time mindset is key to how we improve ourselves. And whether you have a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset that really determines what is or is not possible in your life, I want you to think about in this particular segment, is that agreements should be made with

ourselves. And we should try and limit or remove any society imposed, or fear based agreements that we may have or put upon ourselves that may influence our behavior, our mindset. So right now, right in this moment, you have a choice. You can approach life with a positive mindset, and a growth

mindset. When negative mindset and a fixed mindset, what are you going to do, I'm going to choose the positive mindset, I'm going to have this growth mindset about improving myself, I'm 50, plus years old, and I believe I can continue to improve until the day I no longer walk this earth. And I'm glad that you're here along for that journey, because I think you can do it too. Let's take a look at the book, there are four agreements. And we'll get into those here into depth a little

bit. But the first agreement, which I feel is incredibly important, especially in today's society, in today's world, what we've seen happen through 2020, some of the issues that we've seen arise, agreement number one is, be impeccable with your word. I love that in the book, this is the first agreement that we need to make with ourselves. And it is also the most difficult agreement to keep or

to honor with ourselves. So where does the word impeccable come from, I was gonna bring a little bit of history and background into it. impeccable comes from the Latin word peccatis. peccatis means sin. And the M in the beginning of impeccable is the Latin prefix for without so impeccable means without sin. And no, this is not a religious bent. So that's not where I'm going with this. But it means to be true to yourself, though, when you're not impeccable with your actions,

words and deeds. It means you're just going against yourself, it's going against your beliefs, going against your own responsibilities or actions towards another. But I really like be impeccable with your word as the number one agreement with ourselves. because it reminds us to stop and think before we say something aloud. And it reminds me of what you know, my mom always used to say, if you don't have anything nice

to say, don't say it. And so in this particular component, be impeccable with your word focuses on the significance of speaking with integrity, and then carefully choosing your words before you say them aloud. This has lots of applications face to face conversations, phone conversations, and the dreaded email response. So many of us will craft an email and fire it off and say to ourselves, oh my goodness, I wish I didn't do that quick tip for you.

I often will write the email, remove the two person read it and delete it. Because it allows me to get off my chest what I wanted to say without breaking the promise to myself to be impeccable with my words towards somebody else. And speaking of being impeccable with your word, how about being impeccable with your word towards yourself? How many times do we just knock ourselves down over and over again, not good enough. not smart enough, not good looking enough, not skinny enough. Not

happy enough. You have to be impeccable with your word towards yourself before you can even consider being impeccable with your word towards others. So keep that in mind. Moving on agreement number two. And while they say be impeccable with your word is the most difficult to honor feel like number two is right there. Don't take anything personally. And what this really says is and it ties back into

the first one. If you're a peccable with your word towards yourself, then it's a whole lot easier not to take anything personally. Because you now have a strong sense of self. As soon as you capture having a strong sense of self, knowing who you are, what you're about what your why is what your purpose is, guess what, you don't need to rely on any buddy else's opinions of yourself to be content and satisfied with your own self image that just

disappears, it melts away. And here's an important point about that, right? Let's say you're in a conversation with somebody, and you're getting a little bit heated, a little bit fired up, because they disagree with you. Right, you may be starting to take things personally, just because they disagree with you, doesn't mean you're wrong. And it doesn't mean they're right. You have

to step out of yourself. Look at the conversation, look at what's going on from up above 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet above, like you're looking down on a conversation that you're not even a part of. And just realize that once you stop taking things to heart that other people say to you and trust me, this is not easy. I know that 100% are the journey to be more positive.

Once you remove that from yourself, to get over being angry, or envious, or jealous, or even sad, because somebody said something to you guess what? That goes away, it alleviates itself, it dissipates, it disappears. And all of a sudden you see the world more clearly. Because you're not taking things personally. And you're not internalizing those for yourself. agreement. Number three, don't make assumptions. You know the old adage, when you assume something, you often get

yourself into trouble. Because you make an ass out of you and me. So number three, don't make assumptions. And how is this important? Why is this huge as part of the Four Agreements? Well, what it does is it allows you to stop making stories up

about other people. And so once you remove the storytelling, so once you make assumptions, you're basically setting a stage, you're writing a script, you're telling a story about the situation that took place, about what you've heard from somebody else, you were a third party to it. And all of a sudden, you're building up this sadness, this drama, what the kids call today t by making an assumption about what took place. There's this old Jewish saying, and I believe it is. So if I if I have it

wrong, please forgive me. But it goes something like this. Don't speak about that, which you did not hear. Again, don't speak about that, which you did not hear. So this goes back into right into agreement. Three, don't make assumptions about other people. If you didn't see it, if you didn't have the conversation with the person, don't make assumptions. It'll free you trust me, it'll free you. Gossip is the number one thing that kills everything that you're trying to do to make

yourself a better person. And what I love about all this coming together, is that it brings me to a quote that I believe has always been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, which I don't think is true, I believe it predates her. But she put it into context. She said, Great minds, discuss ideas, average minds, discuss events. And small minds, discuss people that speaks right to the gossip, it speaks right to don't make

assumptions about anybody. And so if you can clean that up in your life, it's going to change the way that you perceive what's going on around you. It'll change how you interact with people. And it'll set you on the right path for agreement number four. And quite possibly, agreement. Number four is my favorite of all the Four Agreements. Remember, agreement one was be impeccable with your word, agreement. Two was don't take anything personally. We just talked about agreement.

Number three, don't make assumptions. But agreement four sums this all up for me and reminds us that we are human, we are not perfect. But agreement four is always do your best. It's something my mom always used to say to me, especially when I was in school, I struggled in school was not an A student didn't find school, something that resonated with me unless the subject resonated

with me. So when I had a grade that didn't come back all that great, she would say, J. As long as you're doing the best that you can possibly do, then I'll be happy with the outcome. So why agreement oh four, always do your best. Well, it's really the ribbon, if you will, that ties up agreements, one, two and three into a nice gift for yourself. So if you take the three agreements prior, and you say, you know what, I'm going to wrap that into always do my best, then that's how you live

your life. And here's what I love best about the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Reese Heba. Use that if you can avoid self judgment, and do your absolute possible best in every situation. You'll live life without any regrets. Let that sink in. If you're impeccable with your word, if you don't take anything personally, you don't make assumptions about other people and tell stories. And you always do your best, you'll live a life that has no regrets. That's something I want

to do. I'm sure it's something that you want to try and do. And it just speaks to me, if you're on a positivity quest with me, how can you not want to do these four agreements, and live your life better? And because I'm on this, this quest, this positivity quest, and on this journey and sharing with you as I'm going along, I'll tell you, I've tried to put these into practice. I try to be impeccable with my word. I try not to put anybody down if I can possibly avoid it. It's human nature to

try. But I always try and stop myself. Would I want somebody saying the same thing about me? No, absolutely not. Nobody wants somebody to be talking about themselves. So be impeccable with your word. Also do the same thing for yourself. Don't try and knock yourself. Now you've got to come up with a mantra that speaks to you that can help you move forward with them. Don't take anything personally.

Alright, well, I admit, it's a little bit easier when you get older not to really care what other people think because you've lived your life. So this one comes a little bit easier to me, however, it still stings, it still stings, when you hear something from somebody about yourself. So I'm not gonna say that I don't take things personally. But I really try not to the hardest one for me on

this list. Don't make assumptions, you're quick to jump about a situation or about something that's taking place, especially if you're a problem solver. If you're a problem solver, you're recovering person who's trying to make an attempt to not make assumptions. Because as soon as you are a problem solver, you want to know the answer, you've got the answer in your head, you want to tell somebody at that point in time, you've made assumptions about whatever it is they're trying to

tell you. So I totally get that one. That's the hardest one for me. But I always do your best I've done that my entire life. It's something my mom ingrained in me from being a little child, a little kid, always do your best. And that's stuck with me, it stuck with me for my entire life. And it's why I feel like this, I have this service to others that I want to make sure that people are happy, I want to make sure that people are taken

care of. And I want to make sure that people understand that if you go about your day, sharing positivity and kindness in the world, it's gonna make it a better place that I can guarantee you, it's gonna make it a better place for you, it's also going to make it better for the person that you're interacting with. So as this episode comes to a close, I have

three main points for you. And actually, in this episode, they're going to be four, they're going to tie right back to the Four Agreements, which are, be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best. And here I've got one last takeaway, if you would go to my Instagram feed positively underscore j got my morning reflections on that feed, and go to any one of them. And let me know how the Four Agreements

apply in your life. And then how you want to get better at acting on the Four Agreements. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to get into a dialogue and have a conversation. I think this is all something that we can do. And I really look forward to doing that with you. And in closing, thank you. Thank you for being here today. Your gift of time listening to this show. Absolutely does mean the world to me. And always remember, be well be happy, be you and until the next time. May your quest

for positivity begin today. If you liked today's episode, please go to pod chaser. com search for the show and leave a five star rating and review. For more on my positivity quest. Follow me at positively underscore Jay on Instagram and Tiktok or engage with the show on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Have an amazing day.