One of my Dad's favourite racers, Mario Andretti, once said this, "Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek." It is words like this that have shaped and moulded who I am and how I approach life, and I have asked and navigated questions of what determination, commitment, excellence, and success look like in our current reality. What does it actually mean to commit to something, in a day when we toss almost anything for the next great thing? What does it look like to pursue something 100% without it become an idol in your life, or something that is unhealthy? How do we measure success?
Most of these questions, I have found, lend their answers to circumstances and individuals, but as I navigate this current season of my life I want to look particularly at one of them. What does it look like to commit to something and how do we do this effectively?
Like many others, I have often fallen prey to good marketing. I have everything I need - times ten, and yet a commercial, informercial, or even an ad on the side of a website can easily catch my eye and tell me what I do not have and need! I have made countless purchases because of this. A few of those purchases were for workout programs. I would buy the program, and do the workouts. Yet, for some reason unknown to me I never saw any results, and concluded that such programs were a SCAM.
Even with that conclusion drawn, I purchased yet another program not much more than a month ago. But there was a significant difference this time around, and it all had to do with commitment. I have no problem deciding I want to go for something, and committing to it...for a day or so...maybe even a week. But if you are like me, you know that it is easy to get sidetracked. So what has made this time around different?
1) Community
This time I decided what I wanted to do, I put forward my first step of commitment (day one), and on day two when I was sore and would rather have slept in...I continued. Why? I continued because I had a community (in my case a closed Facebook group) that knew what I had committed to and followed up with me. They encouraged, supported, challenged, inspired, and taught me.
2) Goals
In this group, we set goals. Long term ones (ex. I want to fit into this particular outfit), and short term ones (ex. I want to commit to getting up at 7am each morning this week to do my workouts). Some seemed distant and even impossible, and others were small and easily achievable. We defined why we were doing what we were doing. These things gave us vision and purpose.
3) Planning
We set ourselves up for success before failure was an option. We did not dive head into the program without first setting our goals, asking our why's, and preparing our plan of attack. We made meal plans, and learned how to overcome struggles we would face.
I believe that these are some of the key reasons why I went from a decision, to a commitment, to finally SUCCESS.
So for those of you reading these words, may I encourage/challenge/inspire you to decide to commit, surrounded by these three things. I think this is applicable to any area of our lives (physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually). So let's not commit to the pattern of our old ways any more. This time, surround yourself with community that will hold you accountable to your journey. Be vulnerable with them, give them 100% of who you are. Set goals of where you want to go and how you're going to get there...and then let your community know. If you keep these things to yourself it is much easier to deny that you ever made them in the first place when you struggle and/or fail. The beautiful thing in community, is that when we struggle and when we fail they will help pick us back up and help guide us back to the right path. Finally, set yourself up for success before failure is even an option. Make a plan and stick with it. When you struggle or fail, learn from it, then get back to your plan stronger for knowing where your weaknesses are and how you can combat them.
We're in this together, friends. Press on!
