Commitment pt4

Now for the last of the common misuses of commitment, people who under commit. You do keep the commitments that you make, you just do not make that many. When you under commit you make some commitments but not really enough to make your life work the way it should. You are putting in some effort, but out of a fear of not being able to keep your commitments you commit probably less than half of the time that you should. In fact, some people will think you do not make any commitments because they are never around on the rare occasions when you agree to something new. Others will see you make some commitments but not the ones that they ask you to do. Many of them will take it personally, deciding that other people (and their judgments of you) are more important than they are.  People who under commit are also often considered unreliable and wishy-washy.

Take some time and think about it.  Over committing, under committing, not committing at all. Are you doing any of these things? Have I made too many commitments or not enough? Am I keeping the commitments that I do make?  Part of being a mature responsible person is taking the time to reflect on how you handle the situations that come up in your life. Part of being a person that others feel is honest, reliable and trustworthy is by making the right amount of commitments, keeping them whenever possible and saying and doing the right things when you can not keep them or when you can not comfortably make new ones.  With commitments moderation really is the key. When someone asks you to commit to something new, you get to reflect on your life and the amount of commitments that you currently have and figure out how much of an additional strain on your life the added commitment will make. If that additional amount is acceptable, you can see yourself following through with it, and you intend to follow through with it then agree. If any of those things are not true, do not agree and explain why.

Communication is very important here. Sometimes one of the reasons that you can not see yourself following through with a new commitment is something that can be handled. The road block may be able to moved out of the way so to speak.  What if the reason you don't want to take on anymore is due to a time constraint of another commitment. For example, Let's say your boss comes and asks you to work four extra hours on Fridays but he will pay you time and a half for the whole day. You hesitate to make the commitment to  work the additional hours, even though it would be quite a bit more money,  because on Friday evenings  you babysit for a friend who is taking night classes.  Her classes are only for another two weeks and he wants you to work the extra hours for the next six months. Your boss agrees to change your schedule starting three weeks from now and everybody is happy.

Unless the commitment is something you are just flat out not interested in, never say no point blank. You will have much more value to those around you if they realize that you do care about what matters to them and if you are willing to work towards finding an acceptable solution to their problem, whether it directly involves you or not. And quite often this involves negotiation.  When the commitment that they are asking of you is something that you are not entirely opposed to but not completely happy with, find a way to change it so that it works for both of you.  Use negotiation to fine tune the details of new commitments, to sweeten the deal for you and so that they fit within the bounds of commitments you have already made.

That's it for today about commitments.  Next time we will talk about what happens with broken agreements.