Keep Your Word: A Practice for Your Internal Code
Three katas for following through when nobody is watching and it would be easy not to
This is a paid companion for Does Your Word Still Mean Something?
🧭 The Struggle
You said you’d do it. Then life moved fast, the moment passed, and you let it go. Nobody noticed. Nobody called you out. And that’s exactly the problem — because you noticed. There’s a small erosion that happens every time your word and your actions don’t match, and it compounds quietly over time.
The second layer is the explanation you give yourself. It was a small thing. Circumstances changed. You’ll make up for it later. Those explanations aren’t wrong, but they train a habit of negotiating with your own commitments at the exact moment they cost something. Enough of those negotiations and the word stops meaning much — including to yourself.
What actually closes the gap isn’t more willpower or stricter standards. It’s three specific practices: one that catches the gap before it spreads, one that lowers the cost of giving your word in the first place, and one that repairs the gap fast when it opens anyway.
👉 Reality Check — Debug the gap between what you said and what you did before it becomes a pattern
🎯 What You’re Training
You are training word integrity. That means you can follow through on what you said — to others and to yourself — not because someone is enforcing it, but because your internal code makes drift the harder option. Word integrity isn’t about being perfect. It’s about closing the gap fast when it opens, and making the gap less likely to open in the first place.
In practice, the katas below do two things. First, they give you a concrete tool for each moment that matters: before you give your word, when you’re about to break it, and after you already have. Second, they make keeping your word a design problem rather than a character test — which means you can fix the setup instead of blaming yourself when it fails.
There’s also a second benefit: evidence. Each time you follow through when drift was the easier option, your brain updates its picture of who you are. That update is what the article called the internal code becoming default. It doesn’t happen through intention. It happens through repetition.
In our latest reflection (Does Your Word Still Mean Something?), we named the difference between honor as external reputation — the shell that survived without the substance — and honor as internal code: the practice of behaving consistently with who you want to be, whether or not anyone is watching. This companion turns that distinction into a loop you can run.
👉 Designing Low-Friction Routines — Lower the cost of following through before the moment of resistance arrives
⚡ The Katas
Katas are short, named practices. Each one takes 30–120 seconds. Practice them on easy days so they’re automatic when stress hits.
1️⃣ The Word Audit
This kata trains word integrity. Use it once a week, at the end of a day when you have five quiet minutes. You will see the actual gap between what you said and what you did — without turning it into a verdict.
