Why You Don’t Do What You Say You Are Going to Do (And What to Do About It)
Most people never do what they say they are going to do.
In fact, I’d say everyone doesn’t do what they say they are going to do, some of the time.
Unless you’re David Goggins.
But you’re not.
Most of us aren’t.
Sometimes, we fuck up.
The 10-Year Empty Promise
I read a statistic the other day that claimed about 80% of people make the same New Year’s Resolution 10 times!1
That means, many people make the same empty promise to themselves 10 years in a row!
Staggering.
I don’t know how accurate that claim is. It seems pretty hard to accurately measure. But I don’t think it is very far off the mark.
I’ve made the same resolution to eat healthy and work out “regularly” for many, many years. I kept making that resolution because, well, I didn’t stick to it. Ever.
But why?
Why do we all do that?
And not just resolutions, but other things, too. Like saying we will call someone, then we don’t. Saying we will try that food, then we don’t. Saying we will “get healthy”, but we don’t.
The list is long. And quite frankly, exhausting.
I’m tired, aren’t you?
I’m not saying I’m perfect, far from it. But I have, however, managed to stick to what I say I’m going to do really, really well the last few months.
I got tired. Tired of saying things I would do and then not doing them.
It was exhausting.
It Can All Change in a Moment (Sort Of)
All of a sudden, I just started doing shit. Like really doing the stuff I said I would do. It was wild.
I wrote in my journal that “something snapped”.
Not in a “Hulk-smash everything” kind of snap, but an “Oh, doing things I say I’m going to do is the most rewarding thing I can do for myself and for those around me” kind of way.
I came to—I woke up. I started picking things that I wanted to do. Things I enjoyed doing. Things that actually made me feel really, really good. And not in a pleasure-seeking way, either (I went down that empty road before. Done with that nonsense). It was in a way that improved my life and the lives of people I came in contact with. It became bigger than me.
Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Peter Attia. Outlive
That’s the thing: you live your whole life controlled by this idea of “I”, “Me”, and “My”. My life, my phone, my favorite, my food, I like, I want, me, me, me…
That’s all most of us ever know.
That’s all most of us ever care to know.
Showing up for “You” all the time is hard. Especially if you’ve fucked up a bunch and didn’t do what you said you were going to do, then it’s really hard. And as you might already know, you’ve fucked up a bunch and didn’t always do what you said you were going to do. You’ve lost trust in yourself.
Always Do What You Say You’re Going to Do
You must keep the promises that you make, to yourself and others, and always do what you say you are going to do. No matter what.
Truth is, like it or not, you are the center of your world. You need to figure yourself out, show up for yourself, and make sure that “you” are leaving the world better than you found it.
So if you are the center of the world, why don’t you show up for the only thing that matters: you?2
Maybe you don’t do what you say you are going to do, because the things you say you are going to do are too difficult.3
Or maybe you don’t like doing the things you say you are going to do, because you never liked those things in the first place and only say you are going to do them because other people told you to do them.
Or maybe…
Maybe it all comes down to the fact that you don’t actually know yourself as well as you thought you did.
You said you were going to do something but it was too difficult. The solution: simplify. Rig the game so you can win.
You did things because other people told you to do them or said that you would enjoy them. The solution: Stop doing what other people think you should be doing and learn to listen to yourself—get bored and then listen to what you actually want.
You don’t know yourself. The solution: remove distractions, get off social media that’s telling you what to want and what you should be doing, and get bored as fuck—in other words, get to know yourself. It’s awesome.
The Bottle of Life Is Right in Front of You
You can spend your whole life looking for answers outside of yourself. But you won’t find any there. They aren’t there. They never were.
Have you ever opened up the fridge looking for the hot sauce and you were searching and searching, moving things around, looking in the back of the fridge, lifting things up, getting on your tippy toes, and nothing. It was nowhere to be found. Then, all of a sudden, someone walks up behind you, reaches over your shoulder, and plucks the hot sauce right off the shelf in front of you. It was there, right in front of your face, the whole time.
That’s life.
Just a bottle of hot sauce sitting right in front of you.
Waiting for you to find it.
So that’s the thing: you have to find what you are looking for. You have to find yourself, who you are, and what you are, before you can be satisfied in life—before you say what you are going to do. And once you find “you”, you’ll see that it was worth the search. Once you know “you”, you’ll know that doing what you said you were going to do was never the problem in the first place. The problem was you. You were the only thing that was standing in the way.
So, yeah—Hot sauce…
Find yourself. Help others. Do what you say you are going to do. No matter what.
Got it?
Good.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisabodell/2022/12/19/new-years-resolutions-fail-do-this-instead/ ↩︎
- https://markmanson.net/personal-values ↩︎
- https://markmanson.net/question ↩︎
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