Brian Johnson (Optimal Living 101) presents a short video urging viewers to maximize their "promise-keeping ratio"—the proportion of promises fulfilled—framing it as central to personal integrity and self-respect. He cites Tim Sanders and Stephen Covey to support the claim that honoring commitments manifests proactivity and integrity, gives practical advice (notice commitments, only promise when fully committed, act quickly), and encourages treating follow-through as a game to improve the ratio.
Chapters
Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian with another Optimal Living 101 video. This one's another quick one. How's your promise keeping ratio? This is a big idea pulled from a great book. In the Philosopher's Note on that great book today we are rich by Tim Sanders, he tells us this. He says, of all the values Billy holds, integrity is tops. That's all you've got in the end. She told me once she's right too. If you don't respect yourself, you cannot maintain your confidence. Regardless of how well you follow all the other principles in this book, nothing will inform you as a person more than your actions, specifically your promise keeping ratio during your life. It defines you as either a truth teller or a liar. Now promote promise keeping ratios. Question for you today is do you make a lot of promises and commitments that you don't follow through on? If so, you have a bad promise keeping ratio. We want to get that as close to one to one as we can. You make a promise, you follow through on it. Here are some thoughts on this. Stephen Covey tells us the commitments we make to ourselves and to others and our integrity to those commitments is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity, which is habit number one of his seven habits of highly Effective People. So the commitments we make, the promises we make, are we in integrity with them? Incredibly important. I just love this idea. Norman Vincent Peale tells us promises are like crying babies in a theater. They should be carried out at once. So let's make it a game. Let's see how fast we can follow through on our promises. And let's notice when we make a commitment. A lot of times I know I did this in the past and still do it more than I like. You kind of make a flippant commitment of oh yeah, I'll do that. I'll send you an email about this or I'll follow up or I'll introduce you to this person or whatever it is you're saying you're going to do. Notice when you make those commitments and get really, really clear and start only making those commitments when you are absolutely 100% committed to following through on it. Otherwise say, I'm not so sure, I might be able to do this for you. But get really clear when you make the commitment. See how fast you can follow through on that promise. Make it a game, just make it fun and get your promise keeping ratio as high as you can. There you go. Get on that. Another way to build our integrity, honoring our commitments. Hope you enjoyed. Have another great day. See you.
