Self Trust Develops by Under-promising and Over-Delivering

In this video I'm going to talk about the importance of developing self-trust. How much can you trust yourself? You know, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you trust yourself? And the importance of this in terms of self-esteem and building confidence. So stay with me. The idea for this video comes from John and John has a question and I get kind of a variation in this question quite often here. But this is all about self-trust. So let's dive in. It's a short question, but we're going to answer it. We're going to talk about making promises to ourselves. So John writes, he says, you said to have a minimum amount of work to do, which was 30 minutes. Basically that comes from when I'm talking about procrastination and learning to negotiate with your nervous system to get it to cooperate, we don't make any big commitments, right? We're open to doing a lot of work we'll say, but that's not the way you talk to your nervous system. The nervous system needs to be coaxed and not made feel like it's going to be all resources are being drained from it in an effort, big effort. So yes, that's true. I do talk about this 30 minute thing. 30 minutes is like a big enough piece of time to make some progress in a goal, but short enough that it won't make your nervous system get defensive and make you feel stuck. But in activities like going to the gym, how do you find that balance where it is not too overwhelming because you have to do three hours of cardio, but then you skip and you feel really guilty? Well, just interesting there, John, it's, it's this thing of, well, I have to do three hours of cardio. Now I know what you're saying. You may have one thing you can, you can hold with where you can frame that is an openness to doing a lot or even a preference for doing a lot. But when you're talking to your nervous system, one of the phrases that makes it get very, very defensive is the word is the term have to, okay? Have to makes it feels like it has no choice. And then immediately this, a lot of this goes back to childhood when we, we didn't feel like we had a choice to do something and immediately we become resistant to it. And as adults, we still have that resistance to being forced into doing something because we feel like we have no choice. So that's just one thing to play around with. There is this idea of doing three hours of cardio. Another thing I would say is that I think it's good that you have these, these big goals for yourself like this, but notice that it is, if you're skipping this three hours, you're feeling guilty about it. Okay. Now, what way are we going to approach this? The thing I wanted to mention here for, for John is you've kind of got two options with this, right? This is the way I would put it. The first option is you can over promise things to yourself. You can make these grandiose promises and we all do this, you know, typically we, we find that it's not a great option because when we over promise things to ourselves, we invariably, we tend to under deliver, right? So it's, I over promise and I under deliver and this, you know, this feeling of guilt that you have for not going to the gym for, for three hours of cardio, this is the, you under delivered there on that big promise. Now, you know, and that can be true even if like you go to the gym for two hours and you start to feel guilty and like you under delivered instead of thinking, wow, I just did two hours of cardio today. That's pretty incredible, you know? So anytime we're over promising and we're onto this thing now about making promises to ourselves and how important it is. And by the way, we do need to make promises to ourselves. We just want to be careful about how we do with that. I mean, John, you're, you're talking about this goal you have and you're making a promise to yourself. Okay. Maybe you're not always following through on it and that's what we're talking about now. But the fact that you are making a promise to yourself is actually a very good thing because we do need to make promises to ourselves because I mean, how else would we develop self-trust if we stay in that stuck place of never committing to anything? You can't develop any self-trust because you're not promising yourself anything. So I like that part of it, but I think there's a way here. I mean, the other one is you, you under promise things to yourself and you over deliver, right? So you under promise and you over deliver. Now you are still making a promise to yourself. That is important to point out here because I don't want you to feel like you're being passive or you're dropping your standards. You can still have an openness to doing a lot, but you, the commitment you're making, whether it be 30 minutes or any other small achievable length of time, that seems doable to you. That's you making a promise, but you're under promising and anything you go beyond that now, let's say you make a promise. I'm going to go to the gym for 45 minutes and you stay there for two hours. You don't come away from the gym now with guilt the way you did when you had two hours done previously, when you were over promising. Now you're coming away from the two hour experience in the gym, feeling kind of like that's bonus territory for me. That's really, really great. And you start to feel more gratitude actually, and appreciation for yourself. And because you've met the minimum standard that you under promised, okay, I'm going to go for at least four to five minutes. Now our trust is growing, right? So I've seen this with so many people, like they'll be in a pattern where to make this big promise, like I'm going to go to the gym for, you know, even an hour or something that might say failed to follow through in that. Well I'll do it, okay, tomorrow I'm going to go for an hour to be able to follow through in that. Okay, tomorrow I'll go for an hour to be able to follow through. And instead of saying, hang on a second, there's some kind of resistance here. There's some kind of a problem with this. And also my self-trust is being eroded here with this. So we under promise and we over deliver. That's the formula. Now one final thing John asked here in his question, it was also how do you deal with emotional resistance towards working on a goal? Which we have kind of been talking about that there. But I do have something I want to say on this. How do you deal with emotional resistance towards working on a goal? Well one thing is these big grandiose plans we make for ourselves are actually a way for us to avoid, or at least we try to avoid, the difficult emotions that are going to be a part of any goal we have. So let's say January 1st comes around and I make a goal that this year now every day I'm going to go to the gym for a few hours. Well you know that is a big intention. But you know what happens if emotional resistance comes up along the way today? And by January 16th, you know, my emotions are just screaming at me not to go to the gym anymore. But I've made this commitment to myself. So the problem with that is any of these big grandiose plans we make, they're an attempt to just not deal with the emotional resistance. And I'm going to propose something here. And I'm going to mention this in other videos as well because I think it's a big big help to people. How do I handle the emotional resistance that comes up? Realize that by dealing with it is not trying to get rid of it. What we're trying to do with our emotional resistance is reconcile with it. To bring it along on the journey towards whatever it is we're working towards. To see it as an inevitability. To see it as me working towards my goal. One of the biggest tools I'm going to have in that is self-compassion for emotional resistance, not self-hatred for emotional resistance. And on a practical level, what I would say would be, let's say it is going to the gym or something. What you could do is go to the gym with an intention to do your exercise, meet your goals. And if you're feeling good, you're feeling good, you go about it. But what happens if you go there and there is just such strong emotional resistance? Or even before you go, you just can't leave the house. What I would do is I would say, okay, I'm having an emotionally resistant day here. Now, does that mean I necessarily say, well, that's that. I'm just throwing my hands up and not do it. Not necessarily. There is an alternative. What I would do is I would say, okay, I'm going to actually try and listen to this emotional resistance. And I'm going to, maybe I could do some writing on this. I could write down the thoughts I'm having. I could write about the feelings I'm having. Why is this so hard for me today? Maybe I need to scale back today. Maybe I need to do this. Maybe I need to do that. But you're doing some reflection on it, journaling on it, maybe. And I would actually count that journaling as part of your gym routine. Okay. So that you're not seeing it as, oh, I didn't go to the gym today. You're actually saying today my gym or my fitness goal was met through this journaling that I did. This is a part of my journey here. Right. And that can apply to anything you're working on, whether starting a business. If this emotional resistance comes up, some days it doesn't come up and we can go ahead. But if it does come up, we say, ah, okay, I'm going to meet this now and understand it and listen to it because it's probably telling me I need to go easier on myself. I need more guilt-free play. I need to simplify things a lot more for myself. And this reflection in it, the emotion is actually telling you this. So it's kind of the exact opposite of like making a plan on January 1st that you have to stick to no matter what, however I feel. I'm not a big fan of big elaborate goals for ourselves. I'm much more a fan of an openness and listening to the resistant emotion, because it's going to help you navigate a way that's doable and sustainable over a longer period of time. But, you know, let's say that could look like you find yourself journaling for half an hour, and then all of a sudden the emotional resistance starts to clear and you go to the gym and you do a little bit of gym work that day. Or you do your journaling and you understand the emotional resistance and you determine that's it. That's enough for today. Tomorrow I'll feel better about this. And you decide that's it for today. So that would be how I would deal with the emotional resistance. I wouldn't see it as a problem. I'd see it as an inevitability and I'd see it as what does it need? It needs compassion. It needs to be understood. It needs to be listened to. It needs to be heard. And if I do that, there's a kind of compounding effect on this where your emotional resistance becomes much less intense because you feel like you're listening to yourself and you'll notice that your plan, whatever it may be, it's going to be a good thing for you moving you towards some goal, but it may change a little bit. You'll be more adaptable depending on it, but you will not have the thing where, you know, it's almost a sort of a joke now, but like, you know, by midway through January, the big goal is nowhere to be found and we just throw our hands up and we walk away from it because we're not dealing with the emotional resistance. So, you know, setting the goal is a good thing and is a promise to yourself, but the how-tos of it will be informed by your emotional resistance when it comes up because, you know, even the term resistance is kind of a negative word. The emotions are informing what form your approach needs to take. So the original point I made here in this video was under-promise things and over-deliver and also listen into that emotional resistance and see working through that emotional resistance as a part of your success journey and this. And John, I hope that's useful. Something that you might find helpful would be, I have a book on meeting your own emotional needs and how we can resolve inner conflicts within ourselves. It's free. It's on my website. You can go and check it out. It's called Forget Happiness. It's really about self-parenting and listening in and understanding why a lot of this resistance comes up. So that could be a useful resource for you to check out. But guys, thanks for joining me here and, you know, give it some consideration. Under-promise things and over-deliver and you'll feel more gratitude. You'll feel more self-trust and you'll also feel like, you know, I'm doing so well here. And that guilt stuff goes away. And that guilt is the thing that we really want to get rid of and learn how to deal with in a healthier way. So I'll leave it there for now, guys. And I'll see you again soon. Bye for now.