How important is commitment?

Staying committed is one of the most fundamental principles of success.

When setting goals for example, which can vary from leading a healthier life, having better relationships or achieving results at work, commitment remains an essential.

The reality is that it’s not always easy to maintain commitment. When you start on something new, motivation is often at a high, but that can wane and it’s commitment that will keep you going!

For some people, it’s not just maintaining commitment that’s a challenge, it’s actually wanting to commit in the first place. This can be for many different reasons, but all too often it’s our own negative self-talk that stops us going all-in and committing to something – fear, doubt, lack of confidence. Equally, commitment to a goal or task may be lacking as it’s simply not in line with your values or what’s really important to us.

A quick and useful exercise to better understand your motivation and commitment is to use the ‘5 WHY’S’ principle. I mentioned this in my post The Power of Goals. You simply repeat the question ‘Why’ to yourself 5 times. For example,

Why am I committed? – to this goal / task

Why is it important to me?

Why is that? And why is that? …. Why?

This is an opportunity to reflect and raise self-awareness. The answers you reveal will give you a deeper understanding of your motivation (or lack of). If you’ve uncovered your true motivation that’s great; you can harness this to your advantage, using it as fuel to maintain your commitment.

If you are still lacking in commitment it’s useful to check in and ask yourself if this is something you’re just interested in, rather than committed to;

“When you are interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient.

When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results”

Kenneth Blanchard

There are situations and roles where commitment is an imperative, such as when this would have an impact on life or death. In this case, there is no option but to be committed. The resources exist within all of us to be committed.

If you need help tapping into those resources, one option is to use an ‘anchor’. In Neuro Linguistic Programming we use ‘anchors’ to harness powerful positive states that we want to use as a resource. A good example would be if you were going to make a presentation in front of an audience and you were worried or anxious about this, we could anchor positive resources to support you. You might choose to anchor the positive sensations and feelings of being ‘confident’, ‘calm’ and ‘focused’ for example to help you be at your best during your presentation.

In the case of commitment, we can also take this approach and anchor the sensations and feelings you you associate with being truly ‘committed’. We can find a time when you experienced these sensations and anchor them as a resource that you can call on when you feel your commitment wane – essentially giving yourself a ‘commitment boost’!

Similarly, we can use visualisation to boost commitment. For example, if you are working towards a goal, take yourself forward to the moment in time when you have achieved that goal. Close your eyes and imagine what is feels like to have achieved the goal. Imagine you are there right now, experiencing the positive sensations, hearing, seeing and feeling all those great feelings of having been truly committed and having achieved your goal.

Creating a positive and resourceful ‘mini-movie’ and running this in your mind can be extremely powerful. It can reduce those feelings of fear, self-doubt, or lack of confidence for example, as your mind believes what it sees and begins to work positively for you, towards your desired outcome or goal.

These are some insights into tools to help you better understand and boost commitment where needed. NLP and visualisation techniques are very powerful and can have a significant and lasting impact. As a qualified NLP practitioner, I can help you access the resources within you to help you be at your best, whether that’s achieving your goals, boosting your commitment or simply improving your mindset and resilience. If you’d like to learn more, please do contact us at 4PositiveGrowth!