Written by Sunday, 07 February 2010 15:30

Defined: an agreement or pledge to do something in the future; the state of being obligated or emotionally impelled. Obligation can be defined as: something (as a formal contract, a promise, or the demands of conscious or custom) that obligates one to a course of action.

“He sure is committed.” What does that mean to us when we hear someone say that? Perhaps the words determined, serious, resolute and purposeful come to mind. This person may be seen as pursuing something to the end without wavering in the process. He may actually be quite enthusiastic and happy about it. How many of us are just as committed to the obligations we make throughout our lives?

It may be the difference of this man choosing his commitment and not having it “forced” upon him. Many of us encounter life situations that carry their own inherent commitments. For example, an unintentional pregnancy potentially comes complete with years of commitments we may not be happy about at all. Or, perhaps our manager at work has obligated us to do something we are not enthusiastic about doing.

Life happens. Just being alive obligates us to doing something. We have to eat, take in water, and breathe air to stay alive. We are naturally committed to finding food and water. We could even call this a core commitment. If this was all we had to do, then life would be fairly straight forward.

As we know, for most of us life is not that simple. Some of us may not even know if we are coming or going much of the time. So, why discuss commitments? Since we have a commitment by just being alive we may as well learn something about them. Perhaps if we learned about the commitment process we would know exactly the when, why and how of our coming and going. Once we know those it will put us in a much better position to be enthusiastic and happy.

The reason why many of us are not enthusiastic and happy much of the time is because we feel worn out and overwhelmed by our daily lives. We may feel this way because we have taken on more commitments than we can currently handle. It is much easier to make a commitment than it is to see it through to completion. In addition, we take on commitments that are unrealistic for us because we do not have the skills to complete them. And, quite often we will take on a commitment that contradicts one that we already have.

When you have this situation going on it is very difficult to do any commitment well, which in turn tends to affect the perception you have of yourself in a negative way. When we do not do things well, we are more liable to have low self-esteem, which can in turn lead to depression and so on.

Much of this negative situation takes place because we often make commitments to others before making one to ourselves. The commitment we can make to ourselves is to first and foremost ensure that we do not take on any commitments that act against our own well-being.  When we act for our well-being we tend to thrive which in turn allows us to make appropriate commitments in helping others.

I do not have the time in this article to give a thorough account on the process of making commitments, but I can start you out with the following. Each and every commitment we have requires a certain amount of time to do. The more commitments we have the less time we have to devote to any one of them. That is why I strongly suggest that each person evaluate all present commitments. You can divide your present commitments up into two separate lists.

The first list will be our core commitment list. This list contains commitments that:

• You are obligated by law to do.
• You or the children you are responsible for will die if you do not do it.
• You are prepared to do everything necessary to see it through because it is that important to you.

The second list will be commitments that we are interested in fulfilling but cannot be allowed to interfere with our core commitments while seeing them through. We can work the secondary commitments in if we have the time, or if we complete one of the core commitments.

By separating out our commitments some of us may be seeing what our actual commitments are for the first time. Through this process we are working on organizational skills. We want to stay organized so that we remain aware of what our commitments are and how we are progressing towards their completion.

Now that you know what your core commitments are, you can stay focused on them. The fewer the commitments you have the easier it is to stay focused. Being able to focus better will now allow you to see what is required to start a new commitment, and equally important, what you need to stop doing before starting a new commitment.

When someone presents another commitment to you, you can see with your newfound ability to focus if the new commitment will interfere with your present core commitments.  If it does, then I suggest that you do not commit to it. Just tell the person that you do not feel that you can do it well, and therefore prefer not to do it at all.