Committing

Currently I’m on day 12 of 30 consecutive days of yoga. The inspiration came from a conversation at a Thanksgiving dinner when a woman I talked to briefly revealed that she had done 30 consecutive days of yoga and how profound it had been. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but it stuck in my body.

For about two weeks I didn’t think much of it, and then the idea returned. Soon I was having thoughts about doing so. I would look at yoga studio websites, I thought about getting some one-on-one coaching to help, I thought about intentions, and so on. The odd thing was I had never decided or committed to do this, yet it seemed like I was fully on the way to doing it. This got me to thinking about committing, and I thought of different types of committing. So here goes.

A goal

This, to me, would be the most common. You lay out a goal for yourself, a resolution perhaps, and then you go for it. It could be small or big, but it’s a goal. The endgame is the goal.

An announcement

This is a good one – this is when we announce to several people, or maybe the world, what we are going to do. It’s similar to a goal, but because we’ve announced it we are now on the hook and accountable to get it done. We don’t want to have to tell the story of why it didn’t happen. It has deep external motivators.

Prove something

This is one I have some experience with. It’s when we decide we are going to do something come hell or high water, we have something to prove. It’s a fighter’s fight. We go in headlong, full of steam and get it done. It’s a lot of energy and often doesn’t have the real results we want, but damnit we’ve proved what we could do.

Go with the flow

I would describe this as exactly what I experienced setting up for my yoga stretch. The idea stuck in my body, it seemed my soul wanted to go for it. I didn’t need to commit because it was already happening and I just had to ride the wave (and oh yeah, not resist).

All-in

This one is rarer, and it’s thrilling. This is where everything aligns – body, mind, spirit, soul, being – where everything all at once says with the biggest scream and smile – ‘I’m all in’. The word commit almost doesn’t even seem to be big enough for this. Whatever the idea or action, it has complete alignment.

I’m sure there are others – what else comes to mind for you? How else do you commit to something?