To paraphrase the late, great Coach Bear Bryant, “The trouble with the road to success is that it’s filled with too many parking places!”

We don’t usually have difficulties and failures in our lives because we simply don’t know what we ought to do. We don’t live defeated lives because we don’t promise ourselves that we’ll do better. Instead, most of our self-disappointment comes because we don’t keep those promises.

I’m convinced that a big part of the cure for self-disappointment is self-honesty. We make all sorts of promises to ourselves that we break. This diminishes our self-respect and our overall joy.

For instance, this morning when the alarm clock went off what did you do? Did you pop right out of bed or did you hit the snooze button? You see, last night you made a personal promise that this morning you would get up at a certain time. But by hitting that snooze button you broke that promise…and began the day with a defeat. I’ve reminded lots of my audiences (only half-jokingly) that snooze buttons are for losers!

Every January it’s the same way at the gym. The exercise machines are loaded with what I call the “New Year’s Resolutionists.” They’ve promised themselves to get into shape. But each year by mid-February, those exercise machines have far fewer users.

Here’s my point: it’s easy to make a promise, but it can very hard to keep that promise. We all make lots of mistakes, but successful people spend their lives gradually changing those mistakes into wins. This leads them to become the disciplined and productive people we all aspire to be. If you can relate to what I’m saying, here are my two suggestions:
1) No matter what’s happened in your past, don’t beat yourself up.
Change the future. Remember, it’s never too late to begin doing the
right thing.
2) Remember you really have only one job: Make the next right decision.

One of the rarest and most under valued commodities in our modern culture is the truth. So, if you want to stand out from the crowd and have a true differential advantage that will get you noticed, remembered, and highly appreciated…simply speak the truth.