What do you do when you are anticipating a pleasant journey through your goals or life adventures, but you get difficulty instead? Do you: * Mope and sulk? * Give up interest in your goal? * Get into a foul mood? * Punish yourself for your difficulty? * Eat to stuff your sorrows?

* Drink to escape?
* Get addicted to stuff?
* Cry?

These and many more are options we take when we reach an obstacle or our goal becomes difficult to achieve. One way to move beyond emotions and self-doubt is to learn how to make and manage agreements.

In business management circles, there is a saying that you cannot manage people you can only manage agreements. Great business leaders are compassionate and attempt to understand the feelings of their employees, but they do not try to manage other people's emotions and personalities. Instead, great leaders get great results from their people by managing agreements.

With self-leadership, you are not managing people outside of yourself, but you are managing emotional opposition and internal resistance. Learning how to manage agreements with yourself leads to increased motivation, and a higher degree of confidence.

Avoiding the Should Trap
Many people approach goals as something someone else is making us do. For example, "I should be eating healthy," or, "I should exercise today." Should statements may seem motivating, but in truth they lead to unnecessary emotional turmoil, resistance, and defiance. When you say you "should" be doing something, you are shouting, "I should, but I don't want to." And at the first opportunity, you won't.

Make self-respectful decisions about the direction you are moving toward, and follow through with those decisions. When you make an agreement with yourself, you own that your goal is self-chosen and important. Every time you hear yourself saying, "I should..." replace your statement with a conscious choice and say, "I made an agreement with myself to pursue this goal." When you honor your agreements you'll feel happier and have more energy for long-term motivation.

Choose the Right Agreement
Let's say you're a writer and your goal is to write for one hour each morning. You agree to get up at 5:00 AM each morning so that you can write before everyone else gets out of bed. When you are in the process of choosing this action, ask yourself, "Can I count on myself to follow through with this commitment, with 100-percent compliance? Will I follow through with this promise to myself?" If the answer is "Yes" then you have an agreement. If the answer is "No" then make a different agreement.

Modify Agreements
Change your agreement as soon as you notice it is not working. For example, if experience shows you that getting up at 5:00 AM seven days a week is unrealistic, be honest with yourself. Breaking your promise, making excuses, or ignoring your agreement is energetically draining to your motivation. In addition, you lose trust within yourself and you lose hope about being able to achieve success. Modify your agreements and fine-tune them as often as necessary. Let yourself know that inaction is not an option, but your action is modifiable. What alternate action can you take right now? Agree to take that alternate action, and then follow through.

Your Word to Yourself is Important
Making an agreement with yourself frees up energy and allows you to maintain integrity within yourself. Integrity means that you are the same on the inside as you are on the outside. When you say you're going to take a specific action today, and then you follow through to complete those actions you build faith that you are a trustworthy person, and you are worthy of having what you want.

Managing agreements allows you to move forward through inner resistance or emotional obstacles, without becoming trapped in sticky emotions. The more you honor your agreements to yourself, the more likely it is you will achieve both personal success and self-respect.


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