COMMITMENTS - MADE vs. KEPT
Commitment is one of those words we use a lot in the important areas of life and performance. There are many different ways to define it, but commitment is really the promise or the pledge we make to do the things winning requires us to do. Making a commitment is an important first step on the road to success.
But while most of us are pretty good at making commitments, we aren’t nearly as good at keeping them. There’s evidence that proves this everywhere. Each New Year’s millions of people make resolutions about what they’re gonna do or who they’re gonna be as the calendar turns, but only about 20% of those people are still on board by mid-February. Almost 40% of married couples end up divorced, even after committing to love one another for better or for worse. Even in college sports, there’s an epidemic of athletes who made a commitment to a particular school, only to enter the transfer portal shortly after.
Now I’m not here trying to villainize anyone who’s chosen to break a resolution, end a marriage, or transfer colleges. There are plenty of valid reasons to make any of those decisions. I only use those examples to highlight that when each of those people made those initial commitments, they meant them. Each one was a pledge or a promise they believed in and felt committed to. None of us make commitments intending to break them. So why, then, are broken commitments so common, and for those of us here who really want to win in some important area of life and performance, what is the key to becoming the kind of person capable of moving from commitments made to commitments kept?
Broken commitments are so common because most people make decisions based on their feelings. They make commitments in those moments when they’re feeling motivated and inspired. The problem with feelings - even the good ones like motivation and inspiration - is that they’re temporary. Feelings are fickle. Even the strongest ones don’t last. Any commitment built on a foundation of feelings is destined to fail.
Becoming someone capable of moving from commitments made to commitments kept starts with recognizing that feelings are not an effective driver of your decisions. That’s because if what you’re after is meaningful and significant, then you have to accept that challenge and adversity will be a part of your experience. There will be moments of disappointment and discouragement, of apathy and indifference, of fatigue and frustration. If you have conditioned yourself to ride the rollercoaster of your feelings, then there will be plenty of moments encouraging you to bail on the commitments you’ve made.
That’s the reason developing your discipline is so important. Discipline is the ability to do what winning requires you to do, regardless of how it feels. Discipline allows you to make the difficult but important decisions your very best in life and performance requires you to make, even when - and maybe especially when - you don’t feel like it. Discipline allows you to get off the roller coaster, and in its place to choose a more consistent and more productive approach. It’s the key component in keeping your commitments.
They best news for each of us here today is that discipline is a skill we can cultivate and develop. Sure, like any winning ability, it comes more naturally for some than it does for others. But if more discipline is something we want to possess, then more discipline is something we can possess.
Developing your discipline starts with diminishing the power and authority of your feelings. Your feelings - both good and bad - are important, of course, but they are not an effective driver of your decisions. They are allowed to come along for the ride, but they can’t be allowed to sit in the driver’s seat. You’ll have to move them to the backseat instead. In doing so, now you’ve created space for your discipline to drive. Now, even if you don’t feel like it, you can make the decisions you know winning requires you to make. Every time you do that, you strengthen your level of discipline, and in doing so, become the kind of person who can do more than simply make a commitment. You become the kind of person who can keep it.