VOWS DON’T WORK

VOWS DON’T WORK

No this isn’t an inditement of marriage and actually marriage isn’t really a VOW I don’t think but I’ll get to that.

A vow is a promise we make to ourselves in a moment.

“I will get up early tomorrow and do a workout” for example.

I’m sharing this because I think it’s really important for confidence.

We make vows to ourselves and then if we fail to follow through we beat ourselves up and become less likely to try again in the future.

They don’t work because we have 3 motivational networks.

One concerned with bodily concerns like hungry, pleasure, pain avoidance.

Another concerned with human connection and another concerned with doing what needs to be done to make the future better.

We switch networks constantly based on our environments and what’s important to one isn’t important to another.

When we make a vow it might be strong with lots of will and determination and emotion behind it but those feeling aren’t likely to be there when the time comes to act.

There is plenty of research to back this up too.

So what does work?

Commitments -

What’s the difference?

Back to marriage.

We make the commitment in front of our tribe. We invest money to demonstrate a measure of importance. We physically move environments, selling or giving away anything we have two of. We talk about how we want life to be.

Basically we make the new way of acting easier to do and the old way significantly harder to do.

In short, with a vow we try to use words and emotions in our head.

With commitments we reorganise the external world.

Since I STOPPED making vows my head has become a far simpler place to live.

Do you make vows and often find yourself not following through?