Every Time I Keep a Promise to My Future Self, I Trust Myself a Little More

I have 37 habits today that I am proud of.

When I say that out loud, it sounds slightly ridiculous.

Thirty-seven?

It makes it sound as though at some point I sat down with a spreadsheet, designed the perfect version of myself, came up with 37 things she should do every day and then diligently went about doing them.

That is absolutely not what happened.

There was no grand plan.

It started with one habit.

And a very boring one at that.

It Started With Tracking My Expenses

In 2018, I started logging my daily expenses.

I wasn’t thinking about self-development.

I wasn’t trying to build discipline.

I definitely wasn’t thinking, This is going to change who I am.

I just wanted to know how much my life cost.

By then, I had been working in corporate life for 16 years and had started thinking about what I wanted to do next.

I knew I didn’t want to work in the same way forever.

I also knew something else quite clearly.

When I eventually left corporate life, I didn’t particularly want to dramatically downgrade my lifestyle.

So I needed to know the number.

How much did I actually spend every month?

And therefore, how much passive income would I eventually need before I could comfortably say: I don’t need my salary anymore.

So I started tracking.

Coffee.

Taxi.

Lunch.

Groceries.

Whatever I spent that day.

Most days it probably takes me less than 30 seconds.

And I have done it every day since.

Even on holiday.

Eight years later, I still do it.

The habit achieved exactly what I wanted it to achieve. I now have years of transparency into my spending. I understand the cost of my lifestyle. I know roughly how much passive income I need. I can make decisions about when I leave corporate life based on numbers rather than hope.

All of that has been incredibly valuable.

But lately I have been wondering whether the habit gave me something else that I hadn’t intended.

It gave me evidence that I could trust myself.

I Never Thought of Myself as a “Habits Person”

After the expense tracking came other things.

I started learning French every day on Duolingo.

I had always loved French, but for years I had assumed I probably wasn’t someone who could actually learn another language properly.

Then Duolingo made it ridiculously easy to start.

One lesson.

Then another.

And somehow I kept going.

I started flossing every day.

Not exactly life changing material for a motivational speech.

I started reading at least one book a month.

Listening to podcasts during my commute and while walking.

Psychology.

Neuroscience.

Investing.

Relationships.

Personal growth.

Anything I found interesting.

I became more consistent with exercise and eventually strength training.

I started journalling.

Writing.

Paying more attention to sleep.

At some point, I added a weekly gratitude practice after hearing Jay Shetty talk about it.

And somehow, one habit slowly became 37.

Each came into my life for a completely different reason.

I didn’t think of them as one system.

Some were about health.

Some money.

Some learning.

Some relationships.

Some simply made me feel good.

It was only much later that I realised they had been doing something collectively.

They were changing my perception of myself.

I stopped thinking:

I wish I were more consistent.

Somewhere along the way I started thinking:

Actually, I am a pretty consistent person.

That sounds like a small distinction.

For me, it wasn’t.

Maybe Confidence Isn’t What I Thought It Was

For much of my life, I assumed confidence came from achievement.

You work hard.

You get good at something.

You perform well.

You get promoted.

You receive recognition.

Then you become more confident.

And of course there is truth in that.

I’ve spent more than two decades in investment banking. There is a particular confidence that comes from experience. When you’ve done something hundreds of times, when you know your subject and you’ve prepared properly, you naturally become steadier.

But I’ve also noticed something slightly strange.

Some of the achievements that I once thought would make me feel incredibly confident became normal surprisingly quickly.

You get the promotion.

It feels great.

Then one day it is simply your title.

Life carries on.

Yet the confidence I have in myself today feels deeper than it did years ago.

And I’m beginning to think some of it has very little to do with achievements anyone else can see.

Maybe it comes from my history with myself.

I said I would track my expenses.

And I did.

I said I wanted to learn French.

And I continued.

I said I wanted to exercise consistently.

So I made it part of my life.

I said I wanted to write.

And even when hardly anyone was reading the blog, I kept writing.

None of those things sound particularly impressive individually.

But put together over years, they start telling me something.

When I tell myself something matters, there is a pretty good chance I will follow through.

That knowledge is incredibly reassuring.

Is It Really Discipline?

People sometimes tell me I am disciplined.

I understand why.

Thirty-seven habits probably sounds like discipline.

But strangely, discipline isn’t the word I identify with most.

Discipline sounds as though there is a daily argument happening in my head.

Responsible Michelle saying:

You have to go to the gym.

And another Michelle saying:

Nooooo.

Maybe it started that way with some things.

But most of my habits don’t feel like that anymore.

They are simply what I do.

I don’t wake up feeling particularly proud of myself because I flossed.

I don’t congratulate myself after entering yesterday’s dinner into my expense tracker.

I just do them.

And perhaps that’s why the word trust feels more accurate to me now.

I trust that I will generally do what I told myself I would do.

Not perfectly.

But consistently enough.

And there is a big difference.

I Definitely Don’t Keep Every Promise

Before this starts sounding like I live some perfectly optimised life, I should clarify something.

I don’t.

I miss workouts.

I waste time.

There are weekends when I intend to work on BYORM and somehow don’t do very much.

And last year, during a short business trip, I made one spectacularly unnecessary purchase.

A chunky gold necklace.

On impulse.

At a time when gold was trading around historic highs.

It was expensive enough to hurt my spending budget for pretty much the entire year.

Very aligned with my financial freedom strategy. 🙂

Did I regret it?

A little in the beginning. 

Do I still like the necklace?

Yes. I wear it daily and like how I look in it still. 

But oddly, mistakes like that don’t bother me in the same way anymore.

Years ago, I think I might have interpreted a bad decision as evidence about myself.

See? I’m not disciplined.

Now I tend to see it for what it is.

I bought a necklace I probably could have lived without.

That’s it.

It doesn’t undo eight years of expense tracking.

One missed workout doesn’t undo years of caring for my health.

One weekend where I don’t write doesn’t mean I have stopped building BYORM.

Maybe part of trusting yourself is knowing that you will come back.

The Future Feels More Believable Now

I think this is where all of this becomes particularly relevant to the stage of life I am in now.

I am preparing to leave a corporate career of more than two decades and build the next part of my professional life around BYORM.

That is a huge change.

There are so many things I don’t know.

Will BYORM become what I imagine?

Will people care about the ideas?

Will I enjoy doing it full-time as much as I imagine I will?

Will I eventually be invited to the podcasts and panels I would love to participate in?

I have absolutely no idea.

And yet, strangely, I feel fairly calm about it.

I think part of the reason is that I am not entering that future with no evidence.

I have years of it.

I know I can learn things I don’t currently know.

I know I can start small.

I know I can continue when there is very little external reward.

I know I can build something quietly for a long time.

I know I can change course when the evidence tells me to.

I originally planned to leave corporate life earlier. Then I looked at my financial spreadsheet and realised I needed more time.

So I changed the plan.

Not the dream.

The plan.

I trust myself more because I know I don’t need everything to go exactly as expected.

I just need to keep responding.

Letting Tomorrow Create Today

I sometimes say:

I let tomorrow create today, while most people let today create tomorrow.

What I mean is that I spend quite a lot of time thinking about the woman I want to become.

Not in an obsessive manifestation kind of way.

More practically.

What does her ordinary Tuesday look like?

How does she spend her money?

What does her body need to be able to do?

What kind of work is she doing?

Who is around her?

What is she learning?

Then I try to let that woman have some influence over the decisions I make today.

Would she exercise?

Probably.

Would she invest?

Definitely.

Would she keep learning?

Yes.

Would she write even when the audience is still tiny?

Apparently yes.

Would she occasionally buy an unnecessarily expensive gold necklace?

Possibly. She is still me, after all.

The future version of me isn’t perfect.

I don’t want her to be.

But I do want to become someone I can rely on.

And every time I keep a small promise to her, she feels slightly less imaginary.

Maybe This Is What Self-Trust Looks Like

I used to think I needed confidence before doing difficult things.

Now I’m beginning to think I had the order wrong.

Maybe confidence comes later.

Maybe trust comes first.

You make one small commitment to yourself.

You keep it.

Then another.

You begin building a history.

Eventually, when something much bigger appears—a career change, a new business, a difficult decision—you aren’t standing there trying to convince yourself that you’re capable.

You already have evidence.

Not that everything will work.

But that you will keep showing up.

That distinction gives me a lot of comfort.

What Are Your Daily Actions Teaching You About Yourself?

I have become increasingly interested in the stories our ordinary behaviour creates.

Every day we are quietly collecting evidence about ourselves.

Sometimes the evidence says:

I can rely on myself.

Sometimes:

When I fall off, I return.

Sometimes:

I can keep going even when nobody is watching.

And sometimes perhaps it says:

The promises I make to myself are the easiest ones to break.

There is no judgement in that.

But I think it is worth noticing.

Because one of the unexpected things I have discovered through my own habits is that every small action isn’t only changing an outcome.

It is changing my relationship with myself.

When I started tracking expenses in 2018, I thought I was trying to understand how much money I needed to leave corporate life.

And I was.

But eight years later, I can see that I was also beginning something else.

One tiny promise.

Then another.

Then another.

Until eventually I had enough history with myself to think:

If I say I’m going to build this next life, I probably will.

Not exactly as planned.

Probably not in a straight line.

But somehow.

And perhaps that quiet belief is the confidence I was looking for all along.