Making and Keeping Commitments

6:10, Saturday morning.  The alarm went off one snooze ago and I was tempted to just turn it off and roll over.  It was hard to get up and out to the yoga class I had made a mental plan to attend.  Still, I managed to do it and felt better by two and a half hours later. What made the difference though between sleeping in and getting up I wondered?

I read something recently in a book called The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels about commitment that  seems closely related to this question.  The authors write: "The biggest difference between those who succeed and those who fail at any endeavor is their level of commitment.  Most people would like to be committed.  But in practice, commitment requires an endless series of small painful actions."

This got me thinking about what I was really committed to and how I knew.  Maybe you have made a commitment to something--or maybe you want to--or maybe you thought you had but following through is proving a real challenge.  Here's where I started to look to understand my commitments.

Do you know why this matters? The answer here needs to be big--and personally meaningful.  Something like, "exercise" isn't big enough.  It should be something like "I want to be healthier" or maybe even, "I want to feel better about myself."  It's important to really care about your why. Sometimes I get hung up here and pick something I think I should care about, or that other people care about for me.  This is a sure way to end up with an obligation rather than a commitment--and I tend to find more guilt than inspiration on that road.

Let's look at that early yoga class--and the moment when push came to snooze.  Getting up was a small, painful action.  Was I committed to the yoga class though?  I actually dragged myself out of bed for the feeling I get from yoga--the physical exercise of it and also the mental peace it brings me.  Yoga is simply a tool to achieve that end, but my commitment is to more internal balance and less stress.  Yoga class, or getting there, is sometimes a small, painful action. To keep my commitment, I need a good enough reason to choose that pain or when the going gets tough...you know the rest.

There is a critical importance to knowing the why of any commitment--and there is a necessity for actions that support it. Do you have action steps and habits to help you do the big thing you want to do? In my example, the big thing I want is more balance, maybe I should even call it inner peace.  Going to yoga regularly is the action I take to help me achieve that.  It's a habit for me now to pack my yoga bag, roll up my mat and take them to work.  That makes going to yoga regularly a lot easier.  That makes feeling balanced a lot more possible.

Without actions or habits to hold onto in the day to day reality of my life, a big desire rarely translates into an actual commitment.  My tool didn't have to be yoga.  It could have been meditation, or it could have been kickboxing.  What mattered was that I found something that worked for me.  Taking actions or developing habits that support your desire is where the rubber meets the road.  When there's something you want, it's worth figuring out specific things you will do to get it and making those actions as much of a pattern as possible so they stick.

This practice of incorporating actions and habits, however, calls for patience.  Sometimes I forget that instilling new habits takes time--even when the why is really meaningful. (I've heard statistics ranging from 30-50 days as the time frame it take to change a habit.)  I tend to want the change to happen in the time it takes for me to make the mental commitment--and if it doesn't, I can feel discouraged.  If I try to change too much at once, I can get overwhelmed and if I try to change too little, it seems to have no impact and I lose my motivation.  It's a fine balance--picking things I can do and taking on enough to see the progress.

The other kind of patience it's important to maintain is patience with yourself.  I usually expect myself to be able to carry off a commitment without faltering--and then when I mess up or don't follow through perfectly, I am disappointed and consider giving up.  In moments like that, I need to remind myself that the small, painful action here is picking myself up and trying again.  My patience needs several layers--and when I want to follow through on a commitment and still am not, this is often where I find the breakdown.

It's important to commit wisely--for I am coming to realize that commitments don't start hard and get easy.  A real commitment--staying married, building a secure financial future, doing what you love with your time--always includes a challenge.  Master one challenging aspect and there's another behind it.  Keeping those commitments despite the challenges requires strategies we can rely on--over and over--and it requires the right motivation and mindset to stick with it.

Navigating the Obstacles of Daily Life

As I drove to work earlier this week, it was snowing--and as the pace of the precipitation was picking up, traffic was slowing down.  I was at least two-thirds of the way to work when I ended up behind a large, slow Frito-Lay box truck.  I was anxious to get to work as the snow had already added time to my commute.  The truck was slowly making his way through the last stretch of a busy street before I could turn off and get to work--and I felt trapped.  I started to get frustrated.  I couldn't see what could possibly be causing him to go so slowly for so long...and I just wanted to get where I was going.  As I sat behind the truck for what felt like too long, I started to realize there had to be a red light up ahead.  Whatever originally caused the truck to slow down had led us to a legitimate need to wait.  While I sat there, recovering a little patience, a Subaru wagon drove casually up the right where parked cars would normally be and turned down a side street.  Then the truck started to move and I realized that giving the driver a bit of space might enable me to see much more of what was happening.  I started to back off even more.  Several pauses in my journey later, I took a deep breath, exhaled a big sigh, looked at the clock and realized I was still going to get to work on time.

Imagine this whole story as a metaphor.  There is something you want--in my case to get to work--and so you are headed toward it--with a specific path in mind and a specific timeline of how long it should take to get there--and maybe some expectations about what the whole journey will look like.  Something gets in your way--that Frito-Lay truck.  This obstacle slows you down, or prevents you from seeing your path, or following your path, and causes you delays.  You too might get frustrated.  What's your next move?

A. Be the Subaru wagon--get around the obstacle by taking a different path.  This seems like common sense--but I was on my path that morning and I lost sight of my alternatives.  I could have gone around the truck too.  There are at least three ways to wind through that final neighborhood and get to work.  Two things got in my way here: routine and expectations. I have a route I generally take to work.  That's my routine.  The truck interfered with my routine but I didn't consider changing my routine.  I wanted my commute to go as I expected it, as I planned it. Had I been a bit more flexible about either my drive taking longer or taking a different path, I might have saved myself some frustration.

B. Back off and take a bigger view.  As I backed off and quit tailgating that truck, I could see more and understand more.  I could see that light turn yellow then red.  I could see the crossing guard stop the truck for pedestrians to pass.  With the extra space, I had a better understanding of what was going on.  Every moment is a complex set of interconnected dynamics and sometimes, it's a little space and perspective that we need to really understand a situation and what's in our way.  This space and understanding then help us choose a good response.

C. Relax with what is--and I mean this in a "put it all in perspective" sort of way, not a "say everything is fine while you are seething inside and steam is coming out of your ears" sort of way.  This is actually about accepting the interplay of your plans and reality.  When a difference between these two occurs and I can't accept it, I do things like tailgate and admonish other drivers from inside my car, trying to control the situation or at least getting sucked into it.  When I actually relax, I see that often, there's not really a problem--for example that I wasn't even late to work.

It's inevitable that things will sometimes get in the way of the path you mentally lay out--or in my case, physically follow.  What's not inevitable is getting irritated by or about this. What's not inevitable is being stuck or trapped because of this.  Those are choices--just like going around or backing off or accepting what is.