In Blog, Personal Development, Relationships
In this article you’ll learn a time tested technique for becoming the kind of person that commands respect and has people knocking down their door wanting to help them succeed. An added benefit is that the opposite sex will find you

A few questions before we get started:

  • Why is it that the doors of love, wealth, power, achievement and joy seem to naturally open for some people, while for the majority of the population these things seem like pipe dreams their entire lives?
  • What magic makes people who are successful at dating and relationships different from those who are not?
  • What magic allows Richard Branson have so much influence that just by saying he plans to invest in a business increases it’s share price?

Is it their track record, their network, their skill set, their personality, luck even?

Actually it’s all of those things and more, but if you were to put a magic umbrella over them all, the answer to that question would be TRUST.

The One Single Character Trait That Will Get You Further In Life Than Any Other

BEING TRUSTWORTHY IN RELATIONSHIP TO ANOTHER

All success in any area of life is 100% dependent on your ability to build meaningful relationships with people.

  1. You can’t have a successful love life by yourself, right? You need a meaningful relationship with a partner…
  2. You can’t be successful in business on your own, right? You need meaningful relationships with your clients and your team…

Meaningful relationships cannot be manufactured. They are only built on a foundation of TRUST.

No Trustworthiness = No Meaningful Relationships = No Success For You

So how does trust work in the context of relationships (of any sort)? One way to look at it is like this:

When you first make a promise to someone, they gift you with their trust. It’s as if they give you 100 out of 100 possible trust points – for free.

When you break a promise, you lose some of those trust points, whether you or they realize it or not…

For example, I have a friend who has very few trust points left with me because she consistently borrows things from me and doesn’t return them. I have to chase her down and go collect them myself.

And because her trust account is low with me, I’ll have fun with her and chit chat from time to time, but I’m not going to be offering her any business opportunities that come my way, because I don’t trust her to follow through…

The Formula For All Success Revealed

So how can you build trust?

It’s actually pretty simple, but not always easy…

You keep your promises consistently.

That’s it.

So, it appears that if you want to be successful in dating, business, relationships, sex, whatever…. this is the formula:

  1. KEEP YOUR PROMISES
  2. BE TRUSTWORTHY IN THE EYES OF OTHERS
  3. ATTRACT OPPORTUNITIES
  4. HAVE SUCCESS

But wait!

If you read the thousands of success books, or any biography of someone you’d consider successful, 99 times out of 100 you’ll find that they failed and broke many of their promises BEFORE they became successful…

It appears that the formula for success is also:

  1. BREAK YOUR PROMISES (i.e. Fail for a while)
  2. GROW + LEARN FROM IT
  3. DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES
  4. HAVE SUCCESS

In fact, I’d go as far as to say:

If you’re not consistently BREAKING YOUR PROMISES,
you’re a wimp playing a small game in life and will never
be successful and get what you want…

And herein lies the dichotomy of success…

On one hand success requires keeping your promises, building trust and creating meaningful relationships, yet on the other hand, it appears to also requires making mistakes, breaking your promises and learning from them!

So which true?

Both.

So, if both FAILURE and KEEPING PROMISES are the “door openers” of success, then the question you should be asking yourself now is “How do I break my promises yet remain trustworthy?”

How To Be A Cool Human To Fellow Humans…

To be human is to break your promises from time to time. None of us can avoid it.

However, there is a way to keep your trust with someone… even if you break a promise to them.

You demonstrate to them that you respect and consider them enough to take responsibility for the impact that breaking your promise has on their life.

That’s a mouthful, I know… so read that last paragraph again.

Now, there are as many ways to restore a broken promise as there are to skin a cat.

So, to help you out, I wrote a little step-by-step “How To Guide” to help you make it right when you next break a promise.

Like learning anything new, in the beginning, it may feel awkward to use, but with a little practice it will become 2nd nature. If it’s awkward at first, practice makes perfect.

The 4 Steps To Breaking Promises And Keeping Your Trustworthiness

  1. Acknowledge the broken promise
  2. Apologize for any impact that breaking your promise may have
  3. Make it Right
  4. Recommit

I made an acronym to help you remember it easily…

AAMR (pronounced Armour – as in armour against your trust being eroded in the minds of others).

Here’s how to do each step, with an example beneath each to illustrate how this may work in a business context:

  1. Acknowledge the broken promise
    Your Intention: To communicate as soon as you know you’re going to be breaking a promise you made (explicitly or implicitly). To be a cool human being by considering your fellow man.e.g. “Hey Fred, I promised I’d have your website ready by 1stof October and I’m not going to be able to make that deadline anymore.”
  2. Apologize for any impact that breaking your promise may have
    Your Intention: To have the other person feel that you consider their world and get the impact you’re having on them by breaking your promise. Your intention is notto be pitiful, make yourself appear wrong or to be subservient.e.g. “I know you have the entire marketing team getting ready for the launch on the 1st of October, and I’m really sorry if this screws with your plans to launch.”
  3. Make it Right
    Your Intention: To take responsibility for the impact that breaking your word has had on the other person(s). To restore your trust with that other person(s).e.g. “Look, let me know how much it’s going to cost you to delay the launch and I’ll take that amount off my fee… or if there is something else I can do to make this right with you, just let me know…”
  4. Recommit
    Your Intention: To make a new promise that fulfills the intention the original promise was supposed to fulfill (in this case, getting a website ready for a launch asap).e.g. “You have my word I’ll have the site to you by 3rd October latest… Does that work for you? If not, how can we work together to come up with a better solution.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d trust someone even more who said this kind of thing to me – even if they broke a promise… Why? Because they showed me the consideration to make it right.

Here’s another example of AAMR in action…

A: “Hey bro… You know how I promised I’d meet you for dinner tonight? Well, I’ve have a deadline for tomorrow at work that I’ve been procrastinating and I need to work late and get it finished… So I’m going to have to cancel dinner tonight.

A: I know you must probably be feeling disappointed that we’re not going to get to hang out tonight and I’m really sorry, because I also wanted to spend time with you…

M: So I want to make it up to you… How about I buy you dinner tomorrow, same time same place? Waddya say?

R: Next time, before I’ll be sure to check with my calendar at work before I make plans that I can’t keep.

See how simple it is?

AAMR (Armour) – remember the acronym

So there you have it… This is not the right way or only way to do it, just a way that works…

Use it at home, at work and with your friends and family and watch your relationships wit these people become more meaningful, loving and beneficial for all of you…

Go practice now.

If you’re human (and I’m assuming you are) then you have promises you’ve broken and trust you’ve lost.

To your success,

Bruce

P.S. I’ll make you a promise… Buy my Relaxation For Manifestation mind programming tool in the next 3 days using the coupon code PROMISE (in the shopping cart), and I’ll give you $10 off, just for reading this… Click here to get this awesome deal…

P.P.S. Please leave me a comment below and let me know what you thought…

Showing 19 comments
  • Jeff
    Reply

    Hey Bruce I’m a fan of yours here in the Philippines and I do want to be mentored by you. I’ve been subscribing to you a while and Is there any chance that I could market this website of yours that who so ever visit this video through my link,I could get a royalty?

  • Carla
    Reply

    Sounds to me as if there is a promise broken on purpose and a promise broken accidently 😉 I guess the latter is the failure that let us grow really.

    Thank you for your authentic contributions!

  • Kat
    Reply

    The trust bank account is a great concept!! Words/promises have power and the strength of that power depends on honoring committment… If I say so I will do everything in my power to make it so. There have been instances, however, when I have not had enough power. Your AAMR is a great way to look at restoring the power after such an outage. Yet no matter what they do or say there are some individuals whose words will never have power (my trust) for me again.

  • Dennis Kareithi
    Reply

    hi,
    i have always looked forward to your lovely articles, for real i bet i have someway used this kind of approach and have worked for me,and i have to admit that though the somehow same process,i have to refollow through this…… its much simpler. lovely stuff man!

  • Colin Wingate
    Reply

    Always enjoy your articles and watching your videos Bruce. I get inspiration from you.

    What is the name of the number one selling song you wrote? Always been curious to know that.

  • Ana
    Reply

    Wow, I didn’t expect to receive a response so soon! It really does say something about your article, Bruce, that so many people responded to it as enthusiastically as they did. And for a respondent to then receive their own response so fast! Anyway, thank you for that.

    Unfortunately, I can’t call the person as it’s strictly an online relationship, they travel constantly, and there’s no phone number. The communication has to be online. So, I’m going to use your excellent suggestions in the kindest, most appreciative way I can. It could be that they now have another person doing what they suggested, but it’s worth a try! I can still start this same business even without them, and I already have a deadline for launch. But this particular contact would have helped me get established much faster.

  • andrea smith
    Reply

    Wow thank you so much this has helped me more than words can say I made promises I have always stuck by for exactly that 100 percent trust and was totally let down until all my points ran out. Now I am happier but still devastated that I could give that much for so long.

    • Bruce Muzik
      Reply

      Don’t stop giving Andrea… It is the lifeblood of happiness…

  • Ana
    Reply

    Good article, Bruce. Says all the right things because we are, after all, human. I know no one who has not broken a promise here and there — but business truly needs trustworthiness. Now, I have a question if someone has time to answer:

    A year and a half ago I was offered an opportunity for some expert assistance in a business I was trying to start. I had only a week to implement the steps the person suggested. Time was of extreme essence then as I was truly under the gun, but I also had precious little time to devote to it as my day job required extensive preparation. I began the first step but was unable to complete it in a week. I wrote the person later, but they never responded. I think they figured I really didn’t have the fire to succeed and was no longer trustworthy.

    I’m in a more stable position physically now (no day job homework) and I want to begin the process again. Would you advise I write this person again and what do I say to re-establish trust?

    • Bruce Muzik
      Reply

      Hey Ana,

      Great question.

      I recommend calling if possible as it’s much more personable…

      I’d follow the structure above and be as vulnerable and open as you possible can. You’re human and we all break our promises from time to time.

      If I were you, I’d be wanting to get across to the other person that I am committed and excited to move forward again and am in a real position to do so – and that I’d learned from my past mistakes.

      Go get ’em

      Bruce

  • Cams
    Reply

    Love the acronym Bruce. Trust is like a bank account, everytime you keep a promise you make a deposit. Everytime you break a promise it’s a withdrawal. In relationships you don’t want your trust account to be overdrawn.

  • Lori
    Reply

    I so much love all your posts Bruce: they are really meaninful and helpful!
    Thank you!

    Lori

  • Faustina
    Reply

    wao am really impressed for this useful resource. Have just learnt a great thing here, God bless u Bruce

    • Bruce Muzik
      Reply

      That’s great Faustina! Hope you use it and it comes in handy…

  • jennifer
    Reply

    this was really REALLY good!!!… loved it!!

  • Karen Kay
    Reply

    Lovely Bruce! Thanks!

    I had to think about your acronym for a sec though…. down here in Mississippi in the U.S., we don’t say “Armour” like that! lol!

    • Bruce Muzik
      Reply

      I’m curious, how do you say it? With a twang?

Leave a Comment

Contact Us

We're not around right now. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, ASAP.