Don’t promise people you’ll change their life. Promise you’ll show up, and then do it.

Big promises borrow against a future you do not have yet. Telling somebody you will change their life sets a standard nothing can meet, and when it is not met they end up worse off than if nothing had been offered at all. A small promise kept repeatedly builds something the large one cannot. Reliability gets believed because it is checkable.

So size the commitment to what you can actually deliver: I will be there on Thursday, I will read it by Friday. Then do that, and keep doing it, because the sequence is what people come to rely on.