Honor Your Decisions Day 3: Stop Renegotiating with Yourself

“Discipline begins when excuses end.

One of the fastest ways to lose respect for yourself and from others is to renegotiate decisions you’ve made over and over again.  Right after you’ve made one decision, you’ve changed to another.  Here are the situations you allow to happen: You decide to train and grow, then renegotiate with yourself when you are tired.  You decide to speak up, then renegotiate when it becomes uncomfortable.  You decide to commit, then renegotiate when fear shows up.  It’s OK to have an opposing opinion with someone you respect.  Respecting someone does not mean they are always right.  This is how you honor your decision and demonstrate self-respect.

Every time you change your decision without reflection, you weaken your own self-respect.  You tell yourself that your own authority is less than and doesn’t deserve to be heard or valued.  Honoring your decision means removing unnecessary negotiations.  Ask better questions, evaluate your own, then commit fully.  Stop asking yourself after every decision, “I hope I was right”, or telling yourself, “I could be wrong.”  If you are wrong, have been proven, apologize, and move on.  Smarter and wiser than you were before, and your growth is more evident by acknowledging and moving on.

​The next time someone asks you why you work out, why you commit so much time to training.  Turn the questions back to them to answer, ask them why they are not adding more to their lives than sitting and watching the world go by.  Motivation and growth come from challenges and tough decisions that keep us moving forward with purpose and direction.  Your decisions that are supervised by discipline are the reason you succeed and not fall to lazy.