Commitment is key to consciousness. Not more commitment. Clear commitment.
Often we hear leaders talk about needing more commitment. “If we’re going to hit our sales target for the quarter we need everyone to really up their commitment level.” Or, “We’ll never achieve a breakthrough unless we really commit.”
At the Conscious Leadership Group we believe that everyone is already fully committed. You can’t get more committed. Telling yourself or others to get more committed is a waste of time. The key is not more commitment, it’s clear commitment.
From our perspective commitment is something you are, it’s not something you do. You can tell what you’re committed to by the results you are producing. For example, right now I’m committed to sitting on our screen porch in Michigan writing an article on the power of clear commitment. How do I know that’s what I’m committed to? Because that’s what I’m doing. Those are my results. Commitment is seen in what is occurring, what is actually happening.
From our perspective everyone is 100% committed. You can’t get any more committed. You’re committed and the evidence of your commitment is the results you’re producing. This is both unnerving and liberating. It’s unnerving because we are confronted with the reality of our results and it’s liberating because we can clarify and change our commitments. We are empowered.
My results right now show that I’m committed to sitting and writing. If I want to change my commitment I would simply stand up (stop sitting) and go play golf (stop writing). Then I would be committed to playing golf. If I sit here and talk about playing golf and say that I’d really like to go play golf I’m still not committed to playing golf. Rather, I’m committed to talking about playing golf. Get it? Results = Commitment.
Commitment is key to consciousness. What this means is that being honest about what I’m actually committed to (as evidenced by my results) is a first step in living and leading consciously. Owning our commitment is taking a stance in personal responsibility. Once we own our commitment we can make a choice to shift our commitment.
Application: If you’re in constant drama with one of your clients you’re committed to being in drama. How do we know? These are your results. If you’re overwhelmed and stressed out you’re committed to being overwhelmed and stressed out. How do we know? Your results. If you’re under resourced you’re committed to being under resourced. If you’re 20 lbs overweight you’re committed to being 20 lbs overweight. Results, results, results.
We need clearer commitment not more commitment. To clarify commitment is to ruthlessly own your results.
Once you’ve owned your result and your actual commitment, you can take the next step and learn from your commitment. Let’s say for instance that you see your results are constant conflict with your client. You now know that you are committed to being in conflict with your client. If you wanted to learn more about this, you could ask yourself questions like these:
How you have created the results you are getting? If you wanted to teach someone how to create ongoing conflict with a client, what would you teach them? How would they need to act? What would they need to believe and say to create drama with a client?
Once you see yourself accurately and how you’re creating your results you’ll see the power of clear commitment.
Now that you’ve clarified and owned your commitment you are in a place to change your commitment. Just do the opposite of what you’ve been doing to create drama with your client and you’ll likely create a different result.
