 I'm going to tell you something your father should have told you. I'm going to tell you about the importance of keeping your word as a man. It's a quality that's quickly vanishing as the years go on. You see, back in the medieval days, men would hold their word to the highest esteem. If someone said you have my word, it literally meant you have my life because a man's word was his bond. Fast forward to today and people throw their word around loosely. It means nothing to them. They don't care about the concept of integrity. I'm sure you've experienced a time when you'd organize an event with someone, perhaps over a couple of weeks or months. You talk about this event and there will be a lot of hype leading up to it. Only for that person to bail out last minute, most likely through a text message as well. They'll come up with some excuse about why they weren't able to show up or perhaps you agreed to meet up at a certain time with someone and they arrived 40 minutes later, again with some excuses. This is a failure of keeping your word and a failure of your bond. The failure to keep one's word affects you on two fundamental levels. The first and most obvious level is your relationship with others. The less you keep your word and the more times you break your promises, you start to diminish in your friends' eyes or your family's eyes. People no longer see you as someone who's dependable and they start to lose respect for you because the whole notion of you not being able to keep your promises conveys that you lack respect for them and hence how can you respect someone who does not respect you? But I want to talk about a deeper level. I want to talk about when you are unable to keep your word to yourself. I'm going to argue that this is even worse than not keeping your word to other people because when you don't keep your word to yourself on a very deep level, it subconsciously makes you lose faith in yourself and can sabotage everything you do. You learn to not trust yourself and your self-esteem suffers as a result. So everything you do can create this effect whenever you don't stay true to your commitments regardless of how small they are. If you say to yourself that I'm going to wake up at 7am and you proceed to wake up at 8am, it affects your self-esteem. If you say to yourself that you're going to start on a project but then you don't start for the next two weeks, it affects your self-esteem and your mind starts being identified with the thought process and you repeat it time and time again. So when the day comes when you really need to fire the gun and accomplish something great, you won't have the resources to do it because you've lived a life in which you're always half-stepping, always half-committing. You don't take no half-measures when you're going for self-actualizations. When you commit to something, you commit to it 100%, especially your word because you know that as soon as you stop committing to yourself, you might as well give up, you might as well resort back to the level of an animal where you are no longer in control of your destiny just living life as it comes passively, accepting your fate. But if you do decide to take your word seriously and to keep your word to others, you can guarantee that when you say you're going to do something, when you have something great to do, that you'll be able to do it. They say if you really want to do something, you have to reach the point of no return. Ancient warriors, when they wanted to take a city, they would burn their boats to ensure that there was no way out. They were either going to take the city or die trying and that's the same way you should approach your word. When you commit to something, you're either going to do it or die trying to do it. And of course, through this, you cannot just throw your word loose. You cannot commit to many things. You can only commit to things that you are serious about and this is going to ensure that you take your word very seriously. The problem is a lot of people are too scared of conflict. They're too scared to say no. If someone invites you to a party or something and you're unable to do it, don't say that you're going to attend. Tell them the truth. Tell them that you might not attend or that you're not going to attend. But don't say you're going to attend if you're going to bail out last minute. As we said before, this affects your self-esteem. Only say yes to things that are worthy of your yes. We only have so much time during the day. Don't waste it and don't waste your self-esteem. Anyway, there's a certain type of freedom that comes with this too. You learn to be someone that doesn't take things such as procrastination seriously or doesn't take a lack of motivation seriously because you don't need those things. When you agree to something, you're going to do it. So there is no room for procrastination. There is no room for lack of motivation. These are things that people that don't take the commitment seriously entertain. People that half step entertain. When you don't half step, you don't entertain things like this. You just do what you have to do. You become someone with a vessel. It's no longer you involved. It's something else, something greater than you is involved when you're doing your work that you've committed to. So take your word very seriously, guys. And I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure you like the video, subscribe and all that good stuff. Peace. Do it! Just do it!