How can we break the habit of believing that we won’t be able to keep our promises?

How can we break the habit of believing that we won’t be able to keep our promises?

Answer :

We can’t make the mind believe, we have to believe. It takes a life time to make the mind pure. We have to convert ourselves, so we’ll be able to control the mind, then we will be able to convert the mind. We need to convert our intelligence by cultivating knowledge. Now just by knowing this is right, the mind is not going to accept it immediately. So that’s when we control it. And gradually it gets converted. Generally, when we can’t keep our past promises, it is not because we don’t have the ability to keep them, but because we don’t have the conviction to keep them.

Understand the importance of the promise :

We need to recognize why is the promise important to us? Write it down. When we feel weak, look at that and draw strength to keep that promise.

Make practical promises :

Some promises need to be adapted pertaining to time, place, and circumstances. Say waking up at 4. So we can’t keep it if we have had a night shift. So we can change to limiting our sleeping hours. The promises should be thoughtfully taken and thoughtfully modified. They should be thoughtfully preserved. Try to make promises which we can fulfill.

Make gradual progress :

When lifting weights, don’t jump to 50. First lift 10,12… and then gradually proceed slowly to 50 kgs.

Have time bound promises :

Have time bound promises, so that we can detect the practical problems in keeping the promise, and then we can re-adjust.

We aren’t talking about initiation vows(Panch Vartaman) , as they are absolute. But other vows, they can be flexible. We need to take commitments more seriously. If we aren’t going to stick to a commitment, better not make that commitment. You can say you’ll try so that we don’t damage our self esteem, by promising things we ourselves aren’t convinced are important and do because of momentary inspiration or momentary pressure. We need to deliberate seriously. If we can do it once twice and so on, we’ll be confident.

One of the biggest dampener in keeping promises, is that “I have to keep this promise for the life time.” We have to keep some promises for lifetime, but it isn’t that difficult. Life goes on moment after moment.

Keeping a promise simply means keeping it for the present moment. Hence called as Vartaman. Rather than thinking I’ll break the promise tomorrow, can’t we think, we can keep the promise today, or at least at this moment? The present is the only thing that we have. So if we keep a promise in present, we’ll keep it in future. I have my struggles too, but we all can keep promises which we want to.

Read more: https://www.thespiritualscientisppt.com/2012/12/how-can-we-break-the-habit- of-believing- that-we-wont-be-able-to-keep-our-promises/