Little Promises for Massive Success

Hello my lovely visionary! I want to talk with you today about building confidence as an artist—and a person. Confidence is not about a sense of false bravado, or always feeling like the best in the world. Confidence is about having a sense of security in yourself. That starts with self trust.

Do you trust yourself? Let me give you an example. If you say to yourself “I will get up at 7:30AM tomorrow morning”, do you know that you will follow through on that?

How about when you say to someone “I’ll get back to you by tomorrow”. Do you get back to them tomorrow?

How about when you say “I’m going to go running today”. Do you know you’ll follow through?

How about when you say “I’ll paint an hour a day this week”. Do you put it in your schedule and show up for yourself?

These are little promises that you make to yourself that you can choose to either follow through on, or let fall away. For little promises to yourself like this, you might be tempted to think that they don’t matter. After all, what terrible thing will happen if you don’t go running today like you promised yourself?

Nothing, today. But if those promises you make to yourself keep being broken, two things will happen. First, the thing that you are trying to do, will not happen. It won’t happen because you aren’t doing the necessary little things to make it happen. A painting is a series of tiny movements of your brush and intentions that come together to create a beautiful masterpiece. Likewise, a skilled surgeon performs one surgery at a time, one tiny movement with her scalpel at a time. If you don’t do those tiny steps, the big goal—the masterpiece, the successful surgery—simply will not happen. It’s the tiny choices that make up what becomes the bulk of our lives, and compound to create the reality we live in today.

Second, you will start to internalize not trusting yourself. If day after day you say “I will paint today”, but you do not, pretty soon your brain won’t believe you, because you are giving it evidence of otherwise. It is dangerous to make this a habit because breaking promises to yourself leads to lower self esteem, a desire to hide, and avoidance—none of which will take you where you want to go! And when you are used to breaking promises to yourself, it becomes a habit to break promises to other people, too. It becomes a downward spiral. And professionally, people want to work with people who keep their promises and deliver on their word.

This is often what happens with new year’s resolutsions. We set very high goals, and then when we can’t follow through, we give up altogether, so we don’t have to keep breaking promises to ourselves.

There’s another solution though—one that will build confidence and character from keeping the tiny promises to yourself. The solution is to make yourself at least one daily promise, and follow through on it! It can be as easy as “I’m going to take a shower today.” Then, when you take a shower, you are fulfilling the intention and the promise to yourself! This tiny promise sets your mind up to believe you next time you make another commitment. The key is to keep making easy promises to yourself, and following through on it. “I’m going to eat lunch today”. “I’m going to respond to 10 emails today”. “I’m going look at art books for 15 minutes”. or “I’m going to sketch for 10 minutes”. These effortless goals, when you follow through on them, will train your brain to believe you and give you more confidence. Pretty soon, you will start to think of yourself as someone with integrity, who always follows through on what they say…even if it’s only to yourself!

From there, you can move on to bigger self-promises. Things like painting 4 hours a day, applying for grad school, or running a marathon. But always remember that every big goal is nothing but 1,000 miniature promises that you have kept to yourself. And with every promise you keep, you build confidence and cast a vote for the kind of person that you want to be!

So what promise will you keep to yourself today?

xo,

Jessica

ps—I’d love to empower you more. Click here if you’re an artist interested in upleveling your career with one on one coaching. I’m so excited to help you reach your goals!