Attitude is built on consistency and discipline; you must create this in yourself before you can display it to others. Inconsistent behaviors – not following through on commitments, being unreliable – reveal to those around you that you are untrustworthy and don’t care. By learning to keep your promises to yourself, you build confidence and change how you and others perceive you.
Do What You Say You Will Do
Ask yourself this question, and then give yourself an honest answer – Do you do what you say you will do? Do you show up late when you say you will be somewhere at a specific time? When you tell your team you will meet a deadline, do you meet it on time? When you say you will take care of something, do you do it – or tend to forget? These are the type of things that will determine if people can rely on you and say you are a dependable person. When you fail to follow through with your commitments, then it leaves others feeling frustrated and unimportant. Inconsistent behaviors create an atmosphere of distrust, damaging all types of relationships, so if you are presenting this way, it is time to make a change.
Follow Through = Confidence
Making plans, committing to them, and following through on your commitments is the secret to building confidence. If you lack confidence, you likely continue breaking promises to yourself. It is so easy to slip down the slope of excuses–I’m too tired; I want to watch this TV show; I want to talk to my friend–whatever you choose to be distracted by becomes your barrier to seeing results. Anyone can make a list or give lip service to a commitment, but it takes discipline to create follow-through and confidence.
Whatever it is in your life that you want to move forward with- your job, career, self-development, family, a relationship- it takes an intentional commitment to carry out your goals. When you say you are going to build your business, grow your authority and scale your impact, impact the world, crush sales, or build a million-dollar business, and you don’t make your best effort to accomplish these goals, then you erode your trust in yourself. This matters because your relationship with yourself is the building block for relationships with others. You must believe that your word matters and it is worth something.
Plan With The Daily Five
The most important step you can take toward increasing your productivity actually occurs before the work for the day begins. Being productive starts with having a “self” planning meeting to determine the essential task that has to happen today. Once you isolate the most critical goal, list four more items you need to accomplish. I use a psychological productivity tool called the Daily Five with my clients, where they make a master list and “brain dump” everything they can think of that needs to be accomplished. From this lengthy list, they determine the top five things for the next day.
So, why five? Because long lists tend to overwhelm our brains, the list can become a distractor instead of being helpful. By creating small, achievable productivity goals, your odds of accomplishing the tasks at hand increase drastically.
Hold Yourself Accountable
No matter what five tasks you determine, they are meaningless without your commitment to doing them. Once you make this commitment, the execution of the tasks becomes non-negotiable. You are better never to commit than to commit and not follow through. By not carrying out your obligations, you train your brain that your words mean nothing, and a litany of negative processes begin to occur in your mind. Compare this to something you have committed to in the past, perhaps to stop smoking or not eat sweets–if you allow yourself to ignore your commitment just once, it becomes easier and easier to continue moving off the path.
It doesn’t matter what the commitment is; sticking with what you say you will do is crucial. By committing to accomplish your tasks, you are making a promise to yourself, and you must keep your word to yourself. Self-accountability actually creates a mindset that you can trust yourself to follow through with your obligations and see yourself as a person who holds yourself accountable for the work you said you would accomplish.
Start keeping your commitments to yourself. By doing this, it builds character, and character builds success. As the Growth Architect, I want to help you learn how to become more motivated, keep commitments, and hold yourself accountable to do what you said you would do. If you want to learn more about building your motivation, watch my video.
Let’s grow!
Beate
Beate Chelette is The Growth Architect & Founder of The Women’s Code, a training company specialized in providing companies an ROI on Balanced Leadership. She has been named one of 50 must-follow women entrepreneurs by the Huffington Post. A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, she bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly successful global business and eventually sold it to Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal.
Beate works with business leaders and supports organizations by developing and providing training the training, tools, and expertise to create and maintain a balanced, equal, and inclusive work environment that fosters creativity, employee engagement, and corporate growth.
Recent clients include Merck, Women’s Legislative Caucus of California, Cal State University Dominguez Hills, Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), NFTE, CreativeLive, the Association of Corporate Growth, and TracyLocke.
Beate is the author of the #1 International Amazon Bestseller “Happy Woman Happy World – How to Go From Overwhelmed to Awesome” a book that corporate trainer and best-selling author Brian Tracy calls “a handbook for every woman who wants health, success and a fulfilling career.
To book Beate to speak or train please connect here. Your Time Is Valuable!