I often hear people complain that their partner is not committed to them. The next question I always ask is “How committed to you are you?”
Are there aspects of how we commit to others or how others commit to us that are really a reflection of our commitment to ourselves?
Take just one area of your life where you are not meeting your goals or living life the way you want to. This will reflect some way in which you have not made the commitment to yourself. You can look at relationships, business, health…..
I’ll use health as an example. Specifically eating healthy and exercising enough to maintain good health. How committed are you? It may seem like a simple question but be sure to look at both parts of commitment; your beliefs and your actions.
I guess the action part speaks for itself. Do you eat a healthy diet? Is your weight within a healthy range? Do you eat enough whole foods versus processed foods? Obviously, the actions you are taking will tell you something about your commitment.
However, your beliefs in this area are even MORE important because they will drive all of your actions! What are your beliefs about committing to yourself? Do you make excuses? Do you put other things first? Here’s an example I noticed in myself:
In order to eat healthy meals, I need to allocate time to prepare them. Otherwise, I just grab what’s quick and easy if I don’t have time to prepare fresh food. This results in eating more processed foods. So when I am making decisions all day long about how I am spending my time, I am telling myself that getting my work done is more important than my health if I don’t honor that commitment to make the time to eat in a way that takes better care of my health. It is easy to tell myself that I am just too busy. But it really boils down to commitment. If I knew that the only chance I had to live another year was to make time to cook then I can assure you my commitment to eating healthy would be so strong that I would make that time no matter what.
I think that is a powerful realization that applies to every area of our lives. Why haven’t you made a bigger commitment to yourself for what is important to you? What excuses are you telling yourself? What would the cost of not doing it have to be to you to increase your commitment?
So now I consciously ask myself this question every day. How committed am I? What am I willing to do to keep that commitment? Am I willing to be uncomfortable? Am I willing to make it more important than something else?
