Lesson Info
11. How to Keep Your Promises
Lessons
Class Introduction
03:56 2The 3 Sets of Conclusions
05:37 3Personal Conclusions
05:48 4Social Conclusions
08:40 5Life Conclusions
07:19 6Life Perspective
04:38 7How Your Conclusions Shape Your Personality
08:32 8You Are the Saboteur
07:37Lesson Info
How to Keep Your Promises
I wanted to give you this little bonus piece here. It stands on its own. It's very distinct from the work that we did in the other segments, but I've often been asked by people, you know, what does it take to produce out-of-the-box kinda phenomenal results that you aren't typically used to in life? And it always comes back to the same thing. It always comes back to the degree to which you can keep your promises to yourself. Haven't you ever noticed in your own life you're way more likely to keep promises to other people than you do to yourself? Even if you are someone who's pretty disciplined, or you have a real sense of fortitude where you've been pretty good at keeping promises, I think you'll find, if you examine a little closer, that there are those places in your life where you're less likely to keep a promise to yourself. You see, for most of us in life, we make promises to ourselves, and then life happens. That is, some reason or excuse comes up that we are able to buy ourselves...
off with. See, when life becomes too challenging, too overwhelming, too much, then we'll take the first excuse that comes our way, but the reality is, to produce outstanding results in life, you must be someone who can produce those kinda results in the face of all kinds of life happening. That is, you're someone who, when it comes time to produce a result, you will keep your promise to yourself. So in this little segment I'm gonna show you a way to keep your promises to yourself. Haven't you ever noticed that you have a certain relationship to what you tell yourself you're gonna do? Like, I'm gonna give up this kinda food, or I'm gonna give up this kind of habit of mine. Like I'm gonna give up biting my nails or smoking cigarettes or, you know, drinking alcohol. I'm gonna give it up. The problem with that kind of promise is it exists in a vacuum, so you actually can't get a human being to stop anything, because anytime you become pressed by or overwhelmed by the thing you're trying to stop, you'll more than likely just resort to the old behavior. See, human beings are more like a space for things to happen so if you have been drinking more than you should, in that same time when you would typically drink, if you're not doing anything in that time, it's likely you're gonna go back to that behavior. So this is a little bit more like replacing. See, you can't get a human being to stop something, but you can get a human being to start something. Now, there's a little caveat to this. You can't start something to stop something. How come? If you're not authentically interested in this thing you're starting, the old behavior will win. So you literally must come up with new things that you're authentically interested in and that you wanna engage in. So if you wanna start smoking and you think, you know, I'd really love to take up cycling, or surfing, or riding, or any one of a number of things, then you would throw yourself wholeheartedly into that new thing, and then occasionally, if you stop and notice, you're way doing less of that old thing than you used to. And the other thing that's really challenging about our promises, if for instance, you wanna change your eating habits, people live with the illusion like, oh, I've been thinking about eating all day long. That's not actually accurate. Again, if you examine the day, you'll see there were peak moments when you were really challenged and you wanted to eat something, and then other times when you were focused on something else. Now, that's because that's how your brain works. Your brain works with one series of thoughts at a time, and then you get reminded of others ones, and you follow that pattern for a while. So the real key here is to continue to develop yourself in those moments of being challenged. So in the moments when you least feel like keeping your promise to yourself, those are the moments where you actually have to develop your relationship to your promises. What's my relationship to my promises? They're non-negotiable, under any circumstances. When I say to myself I'm gonna do something, I do it. I give my word to things and then I deal with life that's in-between here and my realizing on that promise. And there's a lot of life that can happen between here and realizing on a new promise. So if your promise is I wanna lose 30 pounds. If your promise is I wanna save $500. If your promise is I wanna date more people. There's a lot of obstacles between here and the realizing of that promise. When you give yourself to a promise, you're not only giving yourself to the outcome, you're giving yourself to deal with whatever comes up between here and there. It's in the gap between here and there that your relationship to your promises gets developed. Now when you're someone who starts making those kind of promises, and who is open to handling everything that's in the gap between here and the realizing of that promise, you're unstoppable.
Ratings and Reviews
Merrily Bjerkestrand
Gary, thank you for sharing your insights and building our understanding by "connecting the dots" of life and living as human beings. Your message and words are powerful and thought-provoking. More importantly, life-changing for those who wish to get out of their box, over their barriers, and live an authentic and genuinely free life beyond the velvet rope. These lessons were paced well and I appreciated the flow of connected thoughts and reasoning. Your message and points are both simple and complex at the same time. They create knowledge and understanding but are only useful if applied and put into action. Just like most of philosophy! You did a great job of identifying steps needed for personal change without reducing the need for individual action. Your bonus message of keeping one's promises to oneself sealed the deal. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
a Creativelive Student
I loved this talk! Much to ponder about our conclusions driving our lives. Our choices. How we can end up on autopilot. And how we start out with so much possibility and by bringing in awareness to our patterns we can begin to open up to operating from possibility instead narrow minded repetition. The multi universe perspective! Love that! I would love a longer more in depth class with Gary. Would be great! Thank you!
Glenys Morgan
I love that Gary is straight to the point and didn't delve into who screwed us up before we reached mid-20's - each of us has a distinct personality and challenges to deal with in our present life. The shortest course on behaviour change but I got so much out of each short segment, read the transcript as well and spent time in self-analysis. Life is one long lesson and often difficult to work through. Staying stuck in a rut is far more difficult. Thanks Gary, excellent class. And thanks to Creative Live for all the amazing classes that expand my gray matter!