Things that I learned: That just like we need to build trust with others we also need to work on that with ourselves. And one really great way to do that is keeping a promise or commitment we made to ourselves. I was grateful to find even more suggestions from the 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey. It has a lot of really great stories on top of this great principle. Plus as I looked a little deeper into Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for highly effective people I found a suggestion there about building strength of character. It is easy to try to help build a person's self esteem from the outside but that makes it so fragile. I will list the 6 things that is suggested by Sean Covey in the 7 Habits for Teens book that are super helpful -- not just for teens but for everyone.

1. Keep promises you make to yourself.

2. Do small acts of kindnesses to others

3. Be gentle with yourself

4. Be honest

5. Renew yourself

6. Magnify your talents

I also really love this quote from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for highly effective people in the chapter about being proactive. "The commitments we make to ourselves and to others and our integrity to those commitments are the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.

It also is the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas for improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then, as we recognize and use our imagination and independent will to act on that awareness – making promises, setting goals, and being true to them – we build strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.”

"It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise and keep it. Or we can set a goal - and work to achieve it. As we make commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.”

I love the idea of as we build our strength of character that work then makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.

So I hope this is super helpful not only for you but for you children and youth. If they feel like their lives are out of control encourage them to make and keep a promise to themselves or set a goal and achieve.

“When we repeatedly break a contract with ourselves, we may end up internalizing feelings of disappointment, frustration, distrust, or unimportance towards ourselves, which could be damaging to our self-esteem.” From The importance of keeping a promise to yourself, part 1 - Upsider Therapy