Cru’s Letter

I recently hit 2,900 days in a row of my run streak. You can imagine I take promises pretty seriously…

When someone keeps a promise to you, it makes you trust and respect them because it shows their willingness to do difficult or inconvenient things for you. When you keep a promise to yourself, it makes you trust and respect yourself in the exact same way.

That’s just math.

And it’s such a clear path to the way everyone wants to feel about themselves because it taps into the identity itself which is the very thing driving all of your decisions and thoughts.

Here are a few daily promises that I personally keep:

These things are hard to do but I haven’t lived a day where they were impossible to do for many years at this point. They’ve helped me build a golden relationship with myself…

BUT

Not everything is meant to be a promise.

I was on a call with a 1:1 client yesterday that has been doing a lot of deep thinking and reflection to identify his priorities which are the blueprint for setting aligned expectations.

He runs his own e-commerce business and mentioned that he wanted to have a 4hr block of work after his morning routine. He said something along the lines of, “I want to make sure that I make a realistic promise when it comes to my work expectation.”

Now, the thought process was great: Make a promise → keep it → be incredibly productive with work.

The only problem is that not every part of your life or day is supposed to be in the context of a promise at all.

The distinction we made was that promises are made for the devotion to yourself and others.

Standards, on the other hand, are for things separate from the self that allow for a bit of flexibility so life can happen (and it will lol).

Realistically speaking, my client will have some days where 4hr work blocks don’t make sense and if there was a promise in place, he’d find himself resenting that work because it wouldn’t make sense.

When it comes to a personal promise like running a mile every morning for example, the difficulty and inconvenience makes sense because you’re showing yourself you’re willing to overcome that for the sake of self respect.

This concept is obviously customizable to your life specifics but is a great rule of thumb when it comes to setting expectations.

Generally speaking, people want ease… or at least they think they do. What I think they want deeper down is difficulty that comes along with meaning.

When something is difficult and meaningless, it build resentment but the difficulty isn’t the problem. It’s the lack of meaning.

When you can make meaningful promises and set appropriate standards for yourself, you start to work with your own mind instead of against it.

-Cru

P.S. Check out my recent youtube video: