keep yo damn word to yourself, first
i got something to say again.
And I wasn’t even going to write about it. Who am I fucking kidding? Yes tf I was, but still. I made a promise to myself that I was going to talk about more of the shit people aren’t being honest about, so I needed to publish this one. Because this plays right into the commitments we make to ourselves and how seriously we take our own word. and I dont think we talk enough about people keeping their own word…to themselves.
We place a lot of emphasis and expectations on other people keeping their word to us. If they say they’re going to call, show up, change, communicate better, or stop doing some shit you’ve already told them that hurts you, you expect them to mean it, right? And when they don’t, we’re often disappointed. Sometimes pissed. Other times just mad as hell because ain’t no way they thought they were about to move like we a goofy and we wasn’t going to call them out for overpromising and underdelivering. Because if you gave me your word, why the hell wouldn’t I expect you to stand on it?
But ion know, man. Lately I’ve been thinking about how strict we are about other people keeping their word to us while giving ourselves unlimited opportunities to break our own word. It’s so easy for us to not stand on business with ourselves, while ruling everybody else with an iron fist. We’ll give ourselves excuse after excuse, renegotiate promises we made to ourselves, and move our own damn goalpost, but let somebody else do the same shit to us and suddenly we’re the accountability police.
“I’m going to start Monday.” “I’m done this time.” “I’m going to stop answering.” “I’m going to take better care of myself.” “I’m finally going to finish what I started.”
Blah, blah, blah. Lie after lie after mf lie. Because then we don’t do the shit we said we were going to do. And after a while, I think constantly breaking your word to yourself does more than fuck with your discipline. It fucks with your standards. Because the standard for how people treat, handle, and care for you is first set by how you treat, handle, and care for yourself. You set the blueprint first for what feels normal when other people enter your life.
If I constantly keep moving and negotiating my own damn boundaries, somebody else moving them doesn’t feel all that foreign. If I tell myself no and continuously turn that shit into a yes, I’m already teaching myself that my own no doesn’t mean much. And if I constantly make excuses for why I didn’t follow through on the shit I told myself I would do, it becomes a whole lot easier to accept the same dumb ass excuses from everybody else too.
That’s why keeping your word you’ve made to yourself fucking matters. It creates a standard, one that can’t be negioated or settled upon.
Now listen, y’all know I love me a long walk if you follow me on Instagram. Walking literally makes me feel so fucking good and liberated. I’m always going to tell y’all to go get some Vitamin D err’day because our bodies need that shit! The sun, that is. Sooo, how about I told myself I was going to walk 200 miles in August? And baby, I have questioned that decision several fucking times. Because why tf did I say 200?! It has been hard as hell. Some days I don’t feel like walking another damn mile, and technically, I could quit.
Who would fucking know? It’s my goal.
But I would know.
Nobody is giving me a trophy for finishing. Nobody is checking my miles. Nobody is waiting on September 1st to audit my damn walking app. Hell, nobody would even know if I quietly changed the goal to a 150 miles, deleted any evidence that I ever said 200, and went on about my business.
ButI would know that I told myself 200. At this point, finishing isn’t even completely about the miles anymore. It’s about teaching myself that when I give myself my word, I can trust it. I can trust myself to do the hard things. And honestly yall, I think there is something powerful about becoming a woman who trusts herself like that. a woman who trust herself ABOVE ALL. Because once consistency becomes the standard you give yourself, inconsistency from somebody else will literally make you want to fucking throw up. When you honor your own boundaries, somebody constantly testing them starts looking a whole lot less appealing. And because we are already in an ass-whooping deficiency, it’s probably best you just leave them folks alone. When you stop feeding yourself excuses, somebody showing up with a plate full of them becomes a whole lot easier to send them hoes the fuck back.
You start weeding bullshit out faster because bullshit no longer matches your normal. It’s not the standard you set for yourself that you yourself consistently follow. And maybe that’s part of why we sometimes stay too long in situations where people are underdelivering. We’re asking them to give us a level of consistency, consideration, and respect that we haven’t made nonnegotiable in our own relationship with ourselves yet. You accept from others from what you give yourself sometimes and that can be a hard pill nobody throat can swallow. That doesn’t mean somebody mistreating you is your fault. Absolutely the fuck not. But what it does mean is the better you become at showing up for yourself, first, the easier it becomes to recognize when somebody else isn’t.
Your relationship with yourself sets the program. It teaches you what consistency feels like. What respect feels like. What keeping a promise feels like. What honoring a boundary feels like. Sooooo before we make another list of what everybody else needs to do to have access to us, maybe we need to make sure we’re following the damn program too. Are YOU even completing your own to-do list first?
Keep your promises. Stand on your boundaries. Do what you told yourself you were going to do. And Im not saying you need to do the shit perfect. Don’t be so hard on yourself, but I am saying do the shit consistently.
Because the first person who needs to know your word means something…is you.
xoxo
Sho