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"After you eat your lunch, I will bring you out for a walk". Promises like these are not uncommon when trying to get Joy to comply with my wishes. Sometimes, I make promises I end up regretting. I might be too tired to go for that walk, or have something else to do. She ends up disappointed and trusts me less. I feel guilty for failing to keep my word.*
We promise to get chores done, to help with a problem at work, to attend a party that we aren’t interested in. We buy packages or products which need a commitment on our end. We make promises to ourselves by writing it in a to-do list or declaring our plans publicly.
We regret our promises. Promises get us to do things we rather not do. When the time comes to carry it out - such as staying back at midnight to finish that extra piece of work we promised a client, we regret having made that promise.
Promises are a source of pain. As our list of promises grow, so does our stress. We feel guilty about those we cannot carry out and have to give up. We feel overwhelmed seeing the long list of things we owe. Our identity gets shaken as we worry that people doubt our reliability.
Even when we complete things we promise, we do so with gritted teeth, enduring a painful experience, and wishing we could be doing something else. We do it half-heartedly, and quality suffers. We feel unhappy knowing the things we really want to do are left undone.
The more promises we make, and over longer periods of time, the more this stress piles up. This is unhealthy for us. We are less able to treat others well, or do good work.
We don’t need promises to do things we want to do. Where there is match-quality - a consistency with our personal goals or desires, we don’t need to make any promises. We would get it done anyway. I do not need to make promises to play computer games, eat exciting meals or go for training.
This is not confined to fun things, I would similarly be quick to follow up on a work crisis that I know is my responsibility, or a project touching on areas of law I find interesting. In these cases, promises are not needed, though still useful to keep us from the infinite distractions we experience now.
Why do we make promises which we regret? I like this explanation: promises are short-term pain relief. Making a promise to do something later is a quick way to get a person off your back, appear reliable and useful, whilst avoiding the pain of having to say “no”. Recently, a salesperson for a tech product asked if I could schedule a follow up demo with my management. I doubted they would be interested, and I did not have the will to bug them for something like this. Yet I failed to give an outright “no”, I ended up making a promise for short-term pain relief. I was left with someone following up regularly with me about a matter, a constant reminder and source of guilt.
Even a promise to ourselves is short term relief. When we make plans to upgrade our lives, we immediately feel better about ourselves, as we think about the possible outcome. Yet these plans are rarely carried out to completion.
Promise yourself to make less promises. We can’t avoid making promises entirely, at times we do need to accept some responsibility or hold ourselves accountable. But, we can be cautious, and avoid them as much as possible. Make as few promises as you can, for the things that truly matter or have value. When we do commit, keep them on a short leash, to be completed as quickly as possible before they drain our energy. Be willing to take the short term pain of saying no early. We could learn something from the French culture of saying no by default (though taken with a pinch of moderation). They recognise that it is easier to commit later on, than to get out of a promise that they regret.
We are good enough without any promises. We are good enough for the people around us without having to commit to any of their requests or desires. We want to be agreeable, capable, and helpful people. However, trying to achieve this by making promises too easily leaves us reliant on others’ opinions, surrenders control to them, and might end up abused. They get to decide if they appreciate our added effort, or to condemn us if we fail. Ironically, where we limit our commitments, we have the space to do them well, and we will also turn up better as a result.
Have a good week!
James
Thanks for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts and discuss further! What promises have you made recently that you regret? Do you feel overwhelmed by your promises or find them useful to keep you on task?
You can email me at jameschanwz@hey.com, leave a comment, or starting a conversation on whatsapp.
*For those curious about parenting techniques - What I ought to be doing based on the literature is acknowledge her feelings without promising anything: "I know you want to go for a walk now, the problem is that it is time for lunch, and I would like it if you ate together with everyone else." I am still on the fence whether all these parenting methods are truly better, but I feel it is my responsibility to read about and try to apply them where conventional methods are not helping me.