How to Keep Promises to Yourself and Stay Consistent

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I put my phone out in my living room area, forcing me to have to get up physically and go get my phone to turn the alarm off. And there's this little voice inside my head that pops in really quick. It's like, if you lay back in bed, you're a little bitch.

What is going on, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode number 95. I'm really, really excited about this episode. I'm sure I've said that in the past about previous episodes, but this one is something that I am doing for myself right now.

What better way than to share my experiences live here with you on the podcast, so you can take these experiences and intertwine them into your own as you see best fit. I think this one is so freaking important, you guys. What I've been doing in the last couple of weeks, almost a few months now, is this motto: keep the promises that I make to myself. Or, make sure you keep the promises that you make to yourself.

Whatever resonates with you the most, I encourage you to write it down on a piece of paper. I encourage you to say it every single morning when you wake up. I encourage you to say it all throughout the day, whatever the promises are that you're trying to keep. Mainly for me, it was like, dude, I know that I am at my best throughout the rest of my day when I get my workout done in the morning. And this shift is so new. It's been about two months now, because I've been an afternoon workout person for years.

But what I've noticed is the way that I show up the rest of my day for my team, for my clients, for myself is so profound, so energized, so clear-headed when I work out in the morning, when I absolutely crush it in the morning, when I have that space to myself in the morning. So this motto unpacks the ability for me to show up for myself and get this done in that light. That's my goal.

So whatever you are trying to keep the promises to yourself around, whether it be that you get your workout in during your day, or that you want to focus on your nutrition better, or that you're trying to create space to show up for yourself in a way that's talking better to yourself, or getting to sleep earlier, whatever the promises are, say this motto over and over again. But most importantly, you have to get clear on what those promises are.

Okay? This is a fitness podcast, right? So if it's that you need to eat better, keep that promise to yourself. If it's that you need to track your macros better, you need to set yourself up for success by planning the day ahead. Keep that promise to yourself. Is it that you need to show up and get your workout done first thing in the morning? We're going to dive into this in a second. We're going to talk about how comfortable that bed feels in the morning. But if that's the case, you've got to keep the promise to yourself. If it's that you need to work out no matter what throughout the day and get that done for yourself, keep that promise to yourself.

That is what this podcast is all about. I was like, man, I could literally make two podcasts out of this one topic. One talking about key examples I feel like all of you go through, and how you can make sure you keep the promise to yourself in those specific experiences around fitness and nutrition. But in this one, I really want to talk about two specific things. One, the psychological aspect of keeping promises: what goes on in our brain when we keep these promises to ourselves and when we don't.

And the second big thing I want to talk about is the link between keeping those promises and the mental strength and the discipline that you build. There's a recent IG reel that I put out, and also when I heard Venus Williams speak at an event, the idea was that discipline is freedom. I've also heard Jocko Willink talk about that, and Jocko is my man.

Read his books, guys. So good. He was a Navy SEAL. But I digress. I don't want to get sidetracked here. Venus Williams said discipline is freedom, right? When you have discipline, you get what you want. When you don't have discipline, you don't get what you want. So my big thing for the second part of this podcast, the link between keeping promises and mental strength, is that when you keep these promises to yourself and you understand what's going on mentally, which we're going to talk about first, you develop this insane mental strength.

And I can speak to this so confidently, because if there's something I pride myself on, you guys, it is the mental fortitude that I have. It is the discipline that I've built for myself. It is the self-worth and self-respect that I have for myself, for my body, and for doing these things and making sure that I'm staying in alignment with my words. My words are the most important things that come out of my mouth, okay? So when you understand the link between keeping the promises to yourself and the mental strength you can build, these are key elements to you getting what you want out of your fitness goals, out of the results you're seeking, and, again, what I said is my own personal thing, which is self-worth and self-respect.

So let's dive into the first big component here, which is the psychological aspect of keeping promises to yourself. First and foremost, and this is so freaking important, you're building trust with yourself. Consistent action and kept promises build trust internally. It also builds trust when you do this in interpersonal relationships, but the same dynamic applies internally with you.

Those consistent actions, those kept promises, build trust within yourself. Every time you fulfill a commitment made to yourself, like going to the gym, eating better, tracking your macros, setting yourself up for success, you reinforce the idea that you can rely on your own word. And as I said a couple minutes ago, the biggest thing to me, the thing that is so important to me, is my word. I stick to my word at least 90% of the time. I'm human, I make mistakes, I'm imperfect, but my word is the most important thing to myself.

So when you fulfill commitments to yourself, you reinforce the idea that you can rely on your own word. And over time, this builds a reservoir of self-trust. When you tell yourself that you'll do something and you follow through, you prove to yourself that you are dependable.

Okay, the first thing that popped in my mind there that I need to say out loud right now: when you tell yourself you're going to do something, most of you listening are like, well, I'm going to start my fitness routine and eat better starting tomorrow. Some of you will follow through, but the majority of you will not. And when you do not follow through, you prove to yourself that you are not dependable. You're going against your own word. Some of you buy into fitness programs. Some of you are WarriorBabes listening to me right now who tell yourselves that you're going to follow through with the WarriorBabe program.

And it is on you, my friends. WarriorBabes, if you're listening and you're not following through, it is on you. It is not the program. It is not your coach. It is you. And when you don't follow through, you prove to yourself that you are not dependable, so you're breaking this trust with yourself. Some of you do follow through, right? Some of you WarriorBabes listening, man, I've got a few in my head right now I could call out and give acknowledgement to. Y'all crush it. Y'all follow through. When you follow through, you don't prove it to the program.

You don't prove it to the coach. You prove to yourself that you are dependable. You've kept your word. You've taken consistent actions. You've built trust. Over time, you're building this reservoir of trust, like, hey, I can do this. And this self-trust is fundamental. It serves as a bedrock for self-confidence, for courage and for resilience. Okay? It is huge that if you say you are going to do something, you do it and you follow through.

Because you build self-confidence. You build trust with yourself. You build that feeling of hey, I can do this. And the reverse is true too. If you don't do any of that, you don't have self-confidence. It's just this internal battle of, well, I said this in the past and I didn't do it, so I'm probably not going to do it again. Right? So the first and most important thing in understanding the psychological aspect of keeping promises is that it builds trust.

The second thing is huge, and it's what I've personally experienced over the last couple of months with keeping the promise to myself to work out in the morning: this insane dopamine reward. Our brains, you guys, are wired to reward achievement. So completing a task as simple as me waking up in the morning, and I'm going to talk about this when I link keeping promises and mental strength, just the power of me putting on my clothes in the morning and going to work out, completing this task or sticking to this personal commitment, triggers the release of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, reward and motivation in my brain.

Okay? This dopamine hit, which a lot of you have heard about in the fitness space or seen on social media, gives a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. It's this internal pat on the back that makes us feel so good about ourselves. And over time, when you're consistently doing this, which is what I'm experiencing, right? I'm so proud of myself. I feel good. I'm patting myself on the back every morning. I'm getting these dopamine hits when I'm done with my workout.

Over time, as we consistently meet these personal promises, this dopamine-driven reinforcement can help create a positive feedback loop in your brain, motivating us, motivating you, motivating me to keep pushing forward and sticking to those commitments.

Hey, guys. I love so much that you're listening to this podcast. If you ever want the video version of this, which usually has more effects and all that good stuff for those of you who are visual learners, check out the WarriorBabe YouTube channel, if that's what you like. Either way, keep enjoying the show.

Guys, I can't fully explain it, but I'm going to try as much as I possibly can through words: my personal experience of these dopamine hits every single morning that I get my workout done. I feel so damn good. But most importantly, it's because I kept to my word. I kept my promise. I got this accomplishment and satisfaction after my workout because I've done it and kept to my word.

And this dopamine reward is real, and it feels so damn good for those of you who keep your promises. Whenever you do your workout, in the morning, at night, in the middle of the day, whatever, the second you're done, and I'm going to talk about this in a second, we don't always feel it while doing it, but the second you're done, you get this dopamine hit. You have this feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that you've stuck to your word and followed through.

And when you consistently keep doing this, it creates a positive feedback loop in your brain that keeps motivating you to want to do more of that thing. Right? Knowing how I feel after I hit my morning workout, regardless of the feelings I have when I wake up in the morning, which are not always great, it's like, oh God, I don't feel like it. It happened to me this morning. It happens to me a lot of the time, you guys. I don't feel like working out. But I know what I'm going to feel like afterwards, and that drives me to go get my workout done.

Okay? So that's number two, the dopamine reward. Number three in the psychological aspect of keeping promises, let me bring it back, is avoiding the guilt or mental turmoil you may feel. Because on the flip side, when you break a promise made to yourself, and I've touched on this a little already, it often leads to guilt. It often leads to disappointment and almost a decrease in your self-worth. This mental turmoil can be extremely distressing.

We might ruminate on it. Let's say for a week now I didn't do the workouts. I didn't stick to my word. I didn't get up in the morning. I didn't do what I said I was going to do. I may ruminate on that as a perceived failure. And I may question, do I really have discipline? Do I really have the willpower? You may be doing those same things with yourself, and those negative emotions can cause you to go down this spiral, down this rabbit hole.

It can dampen your motivation and even lead to a feeling of defeat, like, I can't do these things. This is the promise that I made, and I can't do it. But you guys, if you understand the emotional toll that breaking self-promises can have, it underscores the importance of staying true to our word, not just for a tangible achievement, but for our psychological wellbeing. If you understand that, you'll say, I would rather reap the rewards of staying true to my word and having this dopamine hit than break the promise to myself and feel the pain of a promise that I made and broke.

I would rather understand the importance of what staying true to my word does for me and for my wellbeing, which are those two specific things I just talked about. But speaking to that point, which I'm going to come back to at the end when we talk about the link between keeping promises and mental strength:

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We are not perfect. Okay? So you will experience breaking a promise to yourself. In the last two months, there was a week where I moved all of my workouts to the afternoon. I still kept the promise to myself, but I didn't feel as mentally primed as I did keeping my workouts in the morning. So you will make shifts and changes and alterations. But, and this is what I'm going to talk about, it's not a landslide. Your entire journey is not messed up. I just want to put a pin there, and I'm going to circle back to it towards the end of the podcast.

So those are the psychological aspects of keeping promises to yourself, what happens mentally. There's no tangible reward other than the satisfaction of feeling really good. These things are happening in your mental state. You're building trust with yourself. You're getting this dopamine reward. And by really honing in on the importance of those two, you avoid the emotional toll of breaking promises to yourself. Now, what I want to do is talk about the link between keeping promises and mental strength, the link between the brain and the mental strength, fortitude and discipline, the things you can carry more tangibly and actionably throughout your days.

The first one is mental resilience. Well, before I dive into it: the strength of our character, you guys, is mirrored by the consistency of our actions. If you understand the connection between keeping personal promises and fostering mental fortitude, you can better navigate the challenges of your life with resilience, with grace, with, yo, I'm a badass, I've got this, and with the power of your word and following through. So the first one is mental resilience.

You train the brain through discipline and consistency. Just like we train our bodies, our minds can be conditioned to handle psychological and emotional stressors. Every time you keep a promise to yourself, you are essentially flexing that mental muscle and reinforcing your capacity to stay committed and remain disciplined. Over time, this consistent behavior strengthens your mental resilience, making you better equipped to handle the challenges you're going to face, and I'm going to use an example in a second.

And it shapes your character. Through discipline and consistency, you literally cultivate this unstoppable force around yourself. Let me break it down with an example so you can understand a little better. Mental resilience comes from all the things I just said. But let's use the challenge of hitting the gym on the lazy days. I totally feel this. We've all been there. Especially for you morning workouters, and from what I've experienced in the last couple of weeks, some days the alarm goes off.

And for me, guys, I had to set two alarms. I put my phone out in my living room area overnight, and I set the alarm there, forcing me to have to get up physically and go get my phone to turn the alarm off. There have been a few times that I've laid back down and gone back to bed. But the majority of the time, there's a little voice inside my head that pops in really quick. It's like, if you lay back in bed, you're a little bitch. That's just personally for me. Okay? And right there it's like, dude, I've got to keep my word.

I've got to get up. I've got to do what I need to do so I can go get my workout done. But we've all been there. The alarm goes off, and yo, the way your bed feels in the morning, you are hella comfortable. You're warm. You're under the blankets. That environment is far more enticing than the idea of going down to the gym, sweating it out and putting your body through physical exertion. However, these are the days that truly test your commitment to yourself.

Pushing through the inertia on those days not only gives us a sense of accomplishment, it also builds mental fortitude, you guys. I always say there's motivation versus discipline. Motivation ebbs and flows. It's a feeling that'll come and go. But with discipline, regardless of how you feel in that specific moment, regardless of how comfortable you are, if you push through and go work out, it not only gives you a sense of accomplishment, it builds that discipline inside of you.

It builds that mental fortitude. It builds that mental resilience. It's so critical to remember that consistency in fitness is way more about showing up even on days you don't feel 100% than only on the days when you are bursting with freaking energy. That is the most important thing I need you guys to understand. Consistency in fitness is more about showing up for yourself even on the days you don't feel 100%, rather than only showing up on the days you are bursting with energy.

Okay. That's a more tangible thing. The more you do that, the more you strengthen your discipline. You are flexing that discipline muscle. You are building mental resilience and making yourself better equipped to handle any type of challenge you may face in the future. That's huge.

And with those challenges, you guys, I can speak to things I've experienced in my life: you will handle them with almost a sense of calmness. I swear to God. Hand to God. You will have a challenge in front of you, and because you have this mental resilience, this mental fortitude, this mental discipline, speaking mainly for myself, a challenge arises and it's, okay, what's the solution? That's the beauty of the whole thing that transpires when you do all the things I'm talking about in this podcast.

Okay. Two more things. This one is so important, which is building a habit loop. Again, this is the link between keeping the promises, understanding it, and the mental strength and tangible things you do on a daily basis. If you've read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, and Atomic Habits, the fundamentals of habits are around cue, routine and reward.

So building the habit loop: the loop comprises a cue, which is the trigger for the behavior; a routine, which is the behavior, the action itself; and then a reward, which is the positive reinforcement received after the behavior.

To break it down, by keeping promises to yourself consistently, you establish these positive habit loops. For example, the cue for me over the last couple of months has been setting out my workout clothes the night before the morning I'm going to work out. The routine is doing the morning exercise. And the reward for me specifically is, man, I look so forward to my protein shake afterwards, because it tastes so damn good.

Your reward could be how you feel, and that's also part of mine: the way I feel afterwards. I feel good, endorphins, all these chemicals, a dopamine hit. Another one for you could simply be checking it off in your workout journal or workout app, checkmark, done. I just completed that workout. And over time, you guys, these loops solidify our desired behaviors, and they transition from being deliberate efforts to automatic habits.

That's how you build a habit loop. And it reinforces your mental strength without your conscious push. A lot of people at the beginning of their journey have just conscious push. They have to force themselves to do these things. But because I've been doing this for so freaking long, these things are now automatic habits. They just happen. Now, I'm not perfect, and I'm going to share that in the last one.

But more often than somebody just starting their journey who has to consciously push, I have these automatic habits. I've transitioned from deliberate effort, all these things I have to do, to them automatically being part of my routine. And that is a liberating feeling. My friends who are just starting out or trying to build all these habits, just keep going. The payoff is so worth it.

Okay, and the last one, because I said I'm not perfect, and the other thing I said is about avoiding the guilt or mental turmoil you may experience when you don't keep the promises to yourself. The last one I want to touch on, once you experience and put these things into play, building the mental fortitude and resilience and building these habit loops, is overcoming setbacks and not letting one slip-up become a landslide. Okay? Nobody is perfect.

I am not perfect. You are not perfect. There will be instances where we waver in our commitments. There will be instances where we waver with our word. There will be instances where we may have a day where we break a promise to ourselves. What defines our mental strength, you guys, is not the absence of setbacks, but our response to them. It's crucial in these moments when you have setbacks to develop a growth mindset.

View setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures. Keeping promises to yourself fosters this perspective. When we falter, instead of spiraling into self-criticism, into this mental landslide, into a rabbit hole, into I cannot do this, we can assess: what led to this slip-up? What led to me not keeping this promise to myself?

Then you can recalibrate and continue forward. This approach prevents minor missteps from snowballing into significant setbacks. Meaning, if you have a little hiccup one day and you have a growth mindset about it, you can sit back, reassess what caused the slip, recalibrate and move forward with the rest of your day and into the next day. That will prevent you from snowballing into, fuck it, I can't do this, fuck this journey.

I'm not equipped to do my fitness journey. I can't get into shape. I can't eat right. And then you snowball out of control. Foster a growth mindset around these things. It's about realizing that one bad meal doesn't ruin your diet, nor does one missed workout spell the end of your fitness regimen. It's the overarching commitment to getting back on track that showcases genuine mental fortitude.

Let's use a small window, a single day. Let's say you had breakfast, you were on point, you worked out, but then your friends were like, man, I want to go out to lunch today. So you go out to lunch and you try to eat right, but you're unsure of what you ate, especially if you're tracking your macros. Maybe you didn't have time to pre-plan with the menu and things like that.

Or even if you're just trying to eat healthy outside of macros, maybe you slipped up and had some fries, or a little dessert, or a beer with your friends. It doesn't mean that for the whole rest of the day you spiral into a snowball and eat whatever the hell you want, or you don't eat at all. It doesn't mean that has to happen. It's like, okay, awesome, cool. Fostering a growth mindset here: I had a great time with my friends. I had this lunch, and I probably overloaded on carbs and fats in this meal.

So for the rest of the day, I'm just going to prioritize protein with minimal carbs and minimal fats. That is a growth mindset. That is getting back to the commitments you've made to yourself, which showcases genuine mental fortitude, genuine mental discipline, genuine mental resilience. It's a game changer, you guys, when you can get to that point. And trust me, if you just keep at it with your journey, you can get to that point. Trust me, trust me, trust me.

I am living proof that you can get there. You just have to go through these things. But most importantly, you have to keep these promises to yourself and build this mental fortitude. So in conclusion, you guys, keeping the promises you make to yourself emphasizes this profound relationship between your actions, your internal reward mechanisms, and your emotional and mental health. Keeping promises to oneself is not just a matter of discipline. It's an essential component of self-care and self-respect.

As I said at the beginning of the podcast, that is something I pride myself on, and it's mainly because of everything in this entire freaking podcast. This may not be a here are macros, here's a workout, let's talk about the science kind of episode. But what I talked about today is so freaking important for you to be extremely successful on your fitness journey and to turn this into a lifestyle that you just live.

I am living proof. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, and there's a golden nugget in here, screenshot it or write that golden nugget down, tag me on Instagram and share it to your story so I can see that this podcast resonated with you. That's all I love to see. I love the positive impact this podcast makes for you. So do that for me, please. I appreciate you guys, and I'll see you in the next podcast.

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