I used to
think that living up to my promises is for granted, until one day that I had
made a bad decision. I promised to do something that I don't want to do later
on, but I didn’t realize my unwillingness at the time that I made the commitment.
So how did
it happen? What makes us unintentionally promise things that we are actually
unwilling to do?
Looking
back on the situations where I have made those bad promises, I realized that
they have certain things in common.
One
commonality is that I feel obliged to
help out because of my relations with the people involved. Of course, no
one has forced me to promise anything. In lots of cases, they didn't even
mention that they would need me to do anything for them. But in many moments, I
just felt the words came out of my mouth naturally. When my friends complain
about their lives, I felt compelled to offer if there is anything I can do. If
a friend talks about moving to a new place, and how stressful it is to organize
everything without a car, I feel that as a good friend who has a car, I should
help to move, so I offered and sometimes it’s accepted. Then I got bounded by
the promise. The thing is I would promise to help without even asking which
weekend it is, and for how long… At that moment, these details just wouldn't come
to my mind. If it turns out to be a very
busy weekend for me as well, or if it became a moving marathon that lasts the
whole weekend, it's going to make me feel bitterness or even worse jeopardize
the friendship.
But it does
not need to be this way. If I say something like a. “if I am free that weekend,
I can help one afternoon”, or b. “I know a moving company which is really
professional and friendly”, it's going to be completely different. In option a,
I made a fairly conservative promise that is based on conditions
of availability and timeframe of “one afternoon”. In option b, I didn't commit
to help with the move, but to recommend a professional service company. Both
options are trying to minimize the level of promise to a
degree that I would definitely be able to execute and happy to do it as well. As
I am comfortable to do it, my friend would also feel more relieved than if I am
pouting all the way through the move…
There is a
second reason that I failed to think carefully before making the promise – the promise is not immediate, but in the
future. In the same situation of the moving promise, what I promised to do
is not happening the next day, but somewhere in the future. As I did not recognize
the urgency or importance of what I promised, the cost analysis fell through
the cracks of my brain. In another word, I didn’t take it seriously because it’s
in the future. Then when time comes, I start to take it seriously, but it’s
already too late.
So next
time, in other similar situations, what I do is to completely ignore the time
factor, and just imagine I need to execute the potential promise tomorrow. The
immediate urgency will force my brain to think it through, and make better
promises.
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