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Want People to Believe Your Promises? Start Small.
Why some promises are more believable than others
You and I constantly deal with promises.
We make promises to ourselves, we make promises with other people, and other people make promises with us.
It’s easy to believe promises that are very near to the present, especially if the person has constantly kept their promises. Correspondence: “Let me get back to you by the end of day.” Deadlines: “I’ll have this back over by the end of week.” Presence: “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Some days, we choose to make big promises, further away in time and space than the present. We’re making new plans (which could be considered more to be like guesses than promises), we’re building schedules to work back from, and we’re setting our ambitions and goals for ourselves.
We might want to move to an entirely different continent. We might want to change our physical or mental states. We might want to develop proficiency at a brand new skill.
The further these ambitions, goals, and visions — these promises — are from our present, the greater the present-promise gap. The larger this gap, the more difficult it will be for most people to generally believe you.
