What Did You Say?

There is a question I have started asking myself in the moments when I am about to go

off script. Not when someone else is watching. Not when there is accountability on the

line. Just me, my feelings, and a decision that needs to be made. The question is simple:

but what did you say? What did you say you were going to do this morning? What did

you say you were going to eat? What did you say this season was going to look like?

Because somewhere between the intention I set and the moment, I am standing in, my

feelings showed up with a very convincing argument and I have learned that my feelings

are not always the most reliable guide.

Here is something I have noticed about myself, and I suspect you might recognize it too.

We are remarkably good at keeping commitments to other people. If you told someone

you would be somewhere at a certain time, you show up. You rearrange things. You

make it work. But the promises we make to ourselves? We negotiate those. We push

them back. We let the mood of the moment override the intention we set when we were

thinking clearly. And what that quietly communicates is that we are not worth the same

level of follow-through we extend to everyone else. Setting your intentions in advance is

not about being rigid. It is about deciding who you are before the moment arrives and

tries to decide for you. When you are hungry, tired, distracted, or just in your feelings,

that is the worst time to make a decision from scratch. But if the intention is already set,

if you already know what you planned to eat, when you planned to wake up, what you

planned to work on then the decision has already been made. All you have to do is honor

it.

This is something I am still working through, so I am not writing from a place of having

arrived. Some mornings the alarm goes off and sleep is calling my name louder than

anything else. But I am learning to pause before I just follow the feeling. To ask myself:

is this a flexibility moment, or is this a flesh moment? Because there is a difference

between wisely adjusting a plan and just giving in because it feels easier right now. And

every time I choose to stick to what I said, even in a small thing, even when no one

would ever know, I am telling myself something. I am telling myself that I matter

enough to keep the promises I make to me. That the version of me who sat down and set

those intentions deserves to be honored. We talk a lot about discipline as though it is

something we either have or we do not. But I think it starts here, in the quiet,

unglamorous moment where you ask yourself what you said you were going to do, and

then you do it anyway.