I love being able to help other people. Its is a calling that I feel I get to fulfilled every time I get to help someone figure out how to pay bills a bit better and just in general make their home life a bit easier. But even I am guilt for taking on too many projects and not filtering my obligations around my why . (This is something that I caught my self doing again just today! It’s also what inspired this post. eek) This is just one of the reasons why we break promises. Putting too many pressures, obligations and just filling up our schedule makes keeping all those goals and commitments hard. This can range from a bunch of different things, such as volunteering for a group that doesn’t inspire us, to letting a friend move in with us when instead they need a swift kick in the ass and need to be told to be responsible. Or this can be a simple thing that we are doing because we are avoiding doing something else. This can be going back to school to avoid student loans. Or it can be staying busy so that we don’t feel alone. I believe that break promises because we are initially afraid of saying no. This might even mean saying no to our self’s and our bad habits. This can become even more complicated because saying no means that we might offend someone when we have always said yes before. Instead of being afraid of telling someone no and hurting their feelings we are letting people down and breaking our word all over the place.
I know that once I learned how to say no with compassion that this made the world of the difference for me. And yes this meant that I needed to have compassion for my self as well. If i needed to break a promise to my self, i needed to make sure that I examined why first?
Some of the Soulful Questions I have been asking my self
*What this a bad goal to begin with? (fast cash, quick success, ect?)
*Did my opinion change once i had real world experience to back up my ideas?
*Am I using this as an avoidance tactic?
*What was my original goal to begin with and will this help me get there?
*What am i getting out of this by staying in my commitment?
Since this is all coming from a place of love here is real world example to deal with breaking promises.
Broken Promise (Committing to Bi Weekly Yard Sales)
What this a bad goal to begin with? (fast cash, quick success, ect?) I wanted to get rid of items that I no longer have a need for and generate cash for a vacation.
*Did my opinion change once i had real world experience to back up my ideas? My options definitely changed. I got rid of items i don’t need anymore and there is no need to try to make yard selling into something it is not aka an enjoyable side business.
*Am I using this as an avoidance tactic? Yes!!!! This is much easier to do then to write more blog post, create more udemy courses and enjoy some down time to try to generate passive income.
*What was my original goal to begin with and will this help me get there? See the first answer. AKA quick cash for a vacation.
*What am i getting out of this by staying in my commitment? I am appeasing my fear. I don’t believe that I can write items that inspire others and create courses that others will enjoy. It’s easy to have this poof by not doing to work then to have failures under my belt.
This lead to a conversation with my yard selling buddy, my dad. I told him that I have met my goals from the yard selling we have done in the past few weeks and that i wont be joining him anymore. I feel like i am breaking a promise to him and felt guilty as hell. When in reality it was not that big of a deal and I need to make sure I keep promises to my self as well as others.
I hope that my real world example helped you. Let me know how you handle breaking promises? What are others reactions when you say no?
