How To Stick To Your Commitments
If you’re someone who takes personal growth seriously, chances are you have made a lot of commitments to yourself through the years. Do you ever wonder even after making so many commitments to yourself, it’s just so easy to make excuses and not work on whatever you said you would? If you’re like this (don’t worry, most of us are), keep reading as in this post I share some great tips to keep you accountable and stick to your commitments.
When it comes to keeping commitments to others, such as our job, partner, and family, most of us do a little better compared to the commitments we’ve made to ourselves. How many new year’s resolutions have come and gone within the first few weeks of January? Remember the time when you told yourself you would stick to exercising, eating healthy, meditating, or even working on your business ideas and just couldn’t keep up when it was time to do it? This is because for most of us, how others see us is more important than how we see ourselves. This is rather sad, as it should be the other way around. But through generations of societal expectations, our brains have been wired to think this way. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you shouldn’t consider what others think at all. It is important to deliver what you have promised regardless of whoever it was promised to.
Another very important aspect of commitments is engagement or action. No amount of commitments to yourself or others mean anything if you fail to engage in the actual activity that will take you towards this commitment. For example, you cannot just say you’re committed to protecting the environment if you aren’t taking any actions such as cutting down on single-use plastics, planting trees, reducing your power usage, or cutting down on food products that cause a massive impact on the environment to produce.
Now that we have covered some basics, below are some practical things you can do to make smarter commitments that are more attainable and ultimately stick to your commitments more consistently.
- Make realistic commitments: It’s easy to get caught up with the annual wave of new year’s resolutions people make on social media. It is a sure-fire way to compare your life with many others who are on an entirely different journey than you and then make commitments that you are unlikely to stick to. For instance, if you have never meditated before or tried it only a few times in your life, don’t commit to meditating an hour every day. Commit to meditating for 5 minutes every day and then work your way up. What I am trying to say is to be true to yourself and make smarter commitments that you can actually achieve.
- Eliminate the option of choice: It’s very common to make commitments with exceptions. For instance, that diet you want to start but with the exception of family dinners or the occasional dessert or chocolate. This is not a great way to make commitments as it sets you up for justifications that will become more often when you don’t feel like sticking to your commitments. Instead, have a mindset of showing up even when you don’t feel like it.
- Give it your all: This is the most important thing about not just commitments, but everything you do in life. If you’re not going to give your full focus and commitment to something, it’s better if you don’t do it at all. This is not to mistake with perfectionism, this just means that whatever you’re going to do, do it to your best ability. Put your heart and mind into it.
- Remind yourself WHY you are committed: If you made some commitments at the beginning of this year and are currently struggling to keep up with them, you’ve probably forgotten why it is so important to you. It has become just another thing you said you will do this year. Remind yourself why this was and is still so important to you. Maybe you wanted to start a blog and go full-time with it (or maybe that’s me) and then slowly lost your vision of what you wanted to achieve. Taking the time to re-evaluate your commitments and see why it is so important for you can give you that motivation you need to keep going at it every day.
- Hold yourself accountable: Being critical of yourself isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes when you’re too hard on yourself for being a little lazy is a different story. Being a little lazy sometimes won’t really stop you from achieving your goals as long you’re still working on it consistently. Most of us will do whatever it takes to please our partners, bosses, family members, or friends even if they don’t feel like it just because they worry about what the other person will think of them if they don’t deliver on their promise. I am not saying you shouldn’t stick to commitments you make to others. But you should also do the same with the commitments you have made to yourself. Being a little critical can be equal to keeping yourself accountable when it comes to actually doing what you said you would.
All of us essentially want the same things out of life. To be happy, healthy, loved, and successful. While how we define these things may differ from person to person, it is safe to say that most of us have to make lifelong commitments to make sure all these things become a reality. Remembering that your life is your own doing and no one else can help you realize that the only way to achieve your life goals is to make smart commitments and stick to them every day.
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