Clients who are participating in a particular coaching program I offer are required to, among other activities, check in with me each day via email, voicemail or text.

The purpose for the check-in has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them. We use this as a means of acknowledging predetermined effort completed throughout each day and its purpose is to reinforce the importance of living up to the commitments we make to ourselves.

Some do, some don’t.

So many of us have repeatedly brought disappointment into our own lives by beginning, with great enthusiasm, some form of change personal change process – weight loss, health improvement, taking courses – only to have it taper off as we revert back to the very behaviours we are trying to change.

I have worked with hundreds of people over many years and frequently seen these same behaviours repeated and, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit to having done the same things many times.

I often wonder whether our repeated failures to live up to the commitments we make to ourselves forms within us the very real belief that even though “this time we really, really, really intend to do it,” somewhere in the deep recesses of our minds lies a belief, born out of repeated previous experiences, that reminds us that we probably won’t.

When we let ourselves down we slowly whittle away at the very spirit that soared in us when we were kids.

We have allowed that spirit, that can-do anything, will-do everything, and doubt free belief in our ability to become “well, I’ll give it a try.”

It’s interesting that when we “try” something, along with the word “try” is the “okayness” to fail.

Try gives us a way out and a reason for quitting. “Well, I tried, I really tried, and I couldn’t. My conscience is clear I gave it my best and perhaps I’ll try again sometime in the future.”

They say that the greatest asset we possess is our word and that once it has become viewed with suspicion, we are forever tainted.

If this is true in how others view us like we can only imagine the damage we do to ourselves when we repeatedly go back on her own word and repeatedly violate the very commitments we have made to ourselves.

Our greatest strength lies in the belief we hold in ourselves and our abilities and the more we lead ourselves to disappointing conclusions the more challenging it becomes to regain that self-belief.

Try this: Pick a difficult task or project that you have started before and quit or have been putting off, make an irrevocable commitment to yourself that you will do it or work on it every single day, without exception for the next two weeks.

At the end of two weeks calibrate the enormous and liberating feeling of accomplishment against previous times when you have broken commitments to ourselves.

Exhilaration beats disappointment every time.

Hesitant to try? Come on, it’s only two weeks out of your whole life.

At the end of two weeks please contact me and let me know how well you did.

I look forward to hearing from you and sharing newfound successes with you.

Till we read again.