What if what we really want is a bi-product of knowing what we really want to commit to in life and deepening that commitment?
‘It’s only a deadline if you make it a deadline?’
While it started as a joke with a friend at university, there is some wisdom to this.
Without a doubt deadlines are useful in getting important things done, particularly things we may resist or that feel particularly difficult.
Equally, if you’re anything like me, I’ve met as many deadlines as I’ve moved and what is often the deciding factor is whether I have made it a deadline. That is, have I really committed to what the deadline means or do I even know what the commitment is that makes or would make the deadline meaningful?
In reality, deadlines are often missed because the deadline is unachievable. Deadlines are an effort to predict the future based on our estimations and past experiences, they can never factor in all the possible variables.
However, regardless of a deadline, commitment can always grow and as it grows we make what we are working towards more real.
What if, ultimately commitment is what matters more than a deadline in the accomplishment of what we really want to achieve?
What if creating what we want then comes down to 3 things:
Being clear on what we are committing to
Knowing what makes that commitment important to us
Making that commitment feel more real?
Being clear on what we are committing to?
Commitment to something evolves over time. A conversation to explore an idea can grow into a collaboration or project, a coffee can be a one off conversation or the start of a relationship.
This can work both ways, the weight of something can be lessened by the reality of what we have committed to. Yes, some decisions are harder to change but with enough commitment they are still changeable as much as they are possible to see through.
Which comes down to
What makes that commitment important?
How does that compare to what we want to commit to in life?
What makes that commitment important?
In Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl quoted Nietzche’s famous line ‘He who has a why can bear almost any how?
While we may not be aware of it, there will be a motivation behind everything we do.
Commitments help make that explicit and ensure that we commit to what matters and act in a way that fulfils those commitments, a likely bi-product being meeting those deadlines we have a more meaningful connection to.
Wait a minute…
What about the deadlines we do not want to do?
And what about the things in life we have to do and don’t want to?
What is a commitment that does matter to you that they contribute to, even in some small way?
Equally, knowing what you really want to commit to and are committed to may mean what you do day-to-day or how you do it shifts.
What do you really want to commit to?
What do you long for?
For the sake of what are you living and leading?
What would you be sad about not doing or trying or having at the end of your life? (your commitment is the opposite e.g. ‘I would be sad not to have had a real go at creating my own business’ would mean ‘I am a commitment to creating my own business’)
While these may all feel like big questions to consider, in some ways what we want to commit to we likely already know or feel and may just not have the words for. For example, imagine the times you’ve felt like you’ve said ‘yes’ ot something you wished you had said ‘no’ to or the moments you have felt at your best in the moment.
Somatic coaching often talks about framing commitments as declarations by completing the following sentence:
‘I am a commitment to…’
As somatic work focuses on physical sensation and feeling, a commitment should feel resonant in you; it should feels right to you (along the lines of ‘trust your gut’).
This often comes from testing a few ideas and saying them out loud.
Going back to the Nietzche quote, knowing what we want to be a commitment to and how that feels can help direct what we do and do not do and how.
A commitment is only a commitment if you make it a commitment….
The other key part of seeing a commitment as a declaration is that it is an act. I am a commitment to something…
What will make that commitment more real?
Who can you share it with?
What is the smallest thing you can do to make it real?
This blog was inspired by the making of a registration of interest form for a pilot programme I had been talking about for months with a colleague. In committing to making the form, I had the energy to make it and in making it, the whole project felt more real and with that came even more energy to share the form and to continue to make that more real.
When we have a commitment that really resonates to us the steps we take to be that commitment both deepen it and make it more real, so that what we want becomes a bi-product of that commitment.
What are you a commitment to?
What can you do to make your commitments more real?
What will become possible as your commitment deepens with each step that contributes to it?
What would it be like if we all more consciously committed to what really matters and committed to making that commitment more real each day?
