You keep your word to everyone. Your kids, your husband, your friends, the people at church who somehow got your number. But that painting you stopped doing, the walk you keep meaning to take, the book with the bookmark stuck on page 12 since spring?
This episode is about the promises you only ever make to yourself, and why those became the ones it feels safe to drop.
This isn’t about guilt, and it isn’t about discipline. If you follow through for everyone else, you have plenty of discipline.
You’ve just spent every last drop of it on other people.
What’s really underneath the broken promises is something quieter and a good bit older, and once you see it, the whole thing changes.
Timeline
00:00 — A careful hello, and why this one is easy to hear wrong
00:40 — The promises you keep for everyone else vs. the quiet ones to yourself
01:15 — The pause. “Oh, that one. Yeah, that’s been on the list a while.”
01:55 — A woman I worked with: reliable for everyone, sure something was wrong with her
02:50 — The list — the painting, the morning walk, the bookmark that never moved
03:30 — “I just need more discipline,” and why that isn’t true
04:20 — Look at your actual life: you keep the promises that cost you something
05:05 — The tank is empty by the time you get to your own list
05:45 — “When you were small, what got you loved around here?”
06:30 — Good, easy, not needing anything — and how that once kept her safe
07:20 — The turn: you’re the one person you decided it’s safe to disappoint
08:15 — A different perspective: follow-through isn’t productivity, it’s loyalty
09:05 — Putting your own name on the list of people you won’t break your word to
09:45 — You don’t get there by blowing up your life on Monday
10:20 — One small promise, almost embarrassingly small — and keeping it
11:00 — How she started (the walk came first, the painting came later)
11:35 — You count. Lower down in your body where it’s true.
12:00 — If you’re ready for the deeper work, and how to set up a consult
This week’s practice
Make one promise to yourself. Make it so small you cannot wriggle out of it.
The 10-minute walk, the one page, the paints left out on the table whether or not you touch them. Then keep it.
Not because it will change your life by Friday, but because you’re finally someone worth keeping a promise to.
Work with Lynn
If this is the work you know you need, the real version where we go find where you first learned to go last, that’s what I help women do.
It starts with a consult call, just a conversation to see if it’s right for you.
Thank you for listening.
xo Lynn
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