Commitment pt3

So we are talking about commitments and how people use the way you handle your commitments to determine their judgement of you and your overall value to them. It seems logical then, that we discuss what the most likely possibilities for how you can handle your commitments.

The first thing that comes to mind is that you can commit to whatever anyone asks you to do, even if you have no intention of actually doing it. This is one of the worst possible ways of handling things. It doesn't start out seeming that way though. In the beginning people will think you are awesome because you agree to all kinds of different things that need doing. And they "say man won't it be awesome to have all these things done! "  But, then as time passes and people see that your words and your deeds do not meet up, they may start to get angry that you don't do the things that you say you will. Worse yet, if you are consciously, making agreements that you have no intention of keeping you are lying directly to the people that you are making those agreements with. Isn't lying intentionally telling someone something that you know is not true? So this option makes you an unreliable liar.

Then there is the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. You do not want to make commitments that you are not going to keep, so you decide not to make any commitments at all. And at first, this seems like it might be a good idea. I mean at the very least you are not lying about what you are going to do. You just aren't declaring anything.  The problem here is that no one can count on you for anything at all. You might be on time, you might not, if you bother to even show up. You might pay your bills, you might not. You might shop, read a new book or watch the neighbor's kids, or you might not. Nobody has any way of knowing what you will or will not do. So you aren't a liar, but you are still unreliable and can't be trusted to do anything without supervision.

Those are the main extremes. Now we start moving towards the center. This next option is done a lot by nice people that are afraid to upset others around them. You can commit to everything that people ask of you, with every intention of keeping all of the commitments that you make. From my experience this is the most common mishandling of commitment. Again, at first, this doesn't seem like a problem because you haven't made that many commitments and things are manageable. You can keep all of your commitments at once. But, as time goes on and people see how good you are at keeping commitments they ask more and more of you. You have value to them as a person and they want more.  This makes you feel good so you make more and more commitments with more and more people. That's where the problem comes in, over committing. Regardless of what you do, there is only so much time in a day.  You agree to everything that is asked of you and to help make sure things get done you prioritize the commitments and do them from most important to least. What ends up happening, since you have made such an overwhelming amount of commitments, is that you get the big ones done(or mostly done) but there just isn't time for you to do all of them. AND as time goes on, you make even more commitments and a higher and higher percentage of them goes undone. This causes a couple of problems. One, your value to other people plummets because you are unreliable, untrustworthy and some people may start to think you are the liar from the first example. Also all kinds of problems tend to happen within yourself, such as guilt from your word being constantly broken. You may become overwhelmed and even depressed from all the work you have created for yourself. Or, you may develop self worth issues from the constant inability to do what you say.
Join me tomorrow where we will finish up the not so good options and talk about how you should handle your commitments.