In last week’s blog, I wrote about goal setting.

As part of the goal setting process, it is vitally important to appreciate that whilst goals and dreams have a very valuable role to play in life, they are only as good as your personal drive and commitment to achieving them and making them a reality.

There is a quote from Yoda in Star Wars which I love “Do or do not there is no try.”

When you catch yourself using the word try in relation to goal achievement, use it as a warning that you are not totally committed or confident that you are going to act upon what you have decided to do.

You have some doubts or mental obstacles to that you need to revisit and overcome. Try gives us an excuse when we do not do what we say we are going to do, it gives us room for manoeuvre, it gives us a cop out.

Have you ever been arranged a party, meeting or function and phoned someone to ask if they would like to come along? Someone who is committed says immediately “count me in, I would love to be there.” A person who is not sure if they want to come along will say something along the lines of “I’ll try and make it.” Do they ever turn up to the function or party? You probably will have found that they do not. They weren’t committed to attend, they were just too polite to say no when you asked them.

When confirming action points at the end of coaching sessions, I frequently ask customers to rate themselves on a scale of 0-10 about how committed they are to acting on the action points they have come up with. If I do not get a 10 out of 10 response, then I ask what the customer what they need to do in order to give it a score of10.

This may involve them resolving some inner doubt that they have, rearranging their daily schedule or if they really not committing to taking action, dropping the action point altogether and coming up with something different. Commitment is a choice. The dictionary defines commitment as “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc.

William Hutchison Murray was a Scottish mountaineer and writer, one of a group of active mountain climbers before and just after World War II. He wrote that the following passage and I have personally found it useful to help inspire me to stay committed to goals and projects.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way.”

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!“

This week, why not take a moment to pause and consider – if there a goal or dream that is important to you that needs your personal total commitment to make it a reality? Alternatively, if you not fully committed, do you need to let it go and make space for something else?

This week’s quotation:

“Commitment is an act, not a word” Jean-Paul Sartrs

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