What is a good commitment?

Photo by Wilson Sánchez on Unsplash

Does it ever happen to you that you commit to something and then find yourself not doing it?

This used to happen often to me. What it really meant was that I was not committed; I was just interested. I would do things if they were easy and convenient, but not when they became difficult and uncomfortable. You know, the New Year Resolution types.

Making and following through on commitments has the powerful effect of developing self-trust. It does not matter how small the commitment is, but if we promise and follow through, we believe ourselves to be someone whose promises mean something (and for a good reason). And such self-trust is one of the most powerful assets for personal and professional growth. If you trust yourself, you feel good about yourself; you set goals and achieve them. Otherwise, “what is the point of setting goals if you are not going to meet them anyway,” your deeper voice says?

So, what makes for a good commitment? Here are a few ingredients essential to a commitment that would lead to the development of self-trust. These are especially important if you are starting to learn about commitments (and if you have failed often in this area).

If you have made and kept many commitments and have a high degree of self-trust, then these guidelines are to be kept in mind, but they can be broken if you know what you are doing.

1. Make it small. This is the biggest guideline about commitments. Make it so small that you can do it even when you don’t feel like it. Doing one hour of exercise every day is something you know you are not going to be able to keep if you struggle with exercising. Can you commit to 10 minutes a day of walking? If you can imagine you will not be able to do 10 minutes of walking if it gets late at night and you are tired, commit to 5 minutes. Maybe 2 minutes if 5 minutes is too much. Start small and then slowly increase when you have developed some trust in yourself about this commitment by following through for a pre-determined number of days.
2. Make it binary and specific. Meaning, you can know if you kept it or did not keep it. For example, I will exercise is not binary. What counts as exercise? Does walking count? But saying “I will take a 15 minutes walk every day” is binary. Or “I will stretch for 5 minutes each day” is binary. You know if you did it or did not do it.
3. Make it daily and frequent. Every promise kept increases the level of self-trust. Every promise broken decreases the level of self-trust by a much larger margin. If you make frequent promises that are small, your trust in yourself will go up quickly. But remember to make the commitment so small that you don’t fail at them.

Here is a quick example of a commitment that helped me improve my wrist pain. I fell into the trap of doing a lot of exercise in bursts but could not keep it up. As suggested by my physical therapist, I would do 20 minutes of stretching for a few days, maybe a few weeks, but invariably it would fall off. I tried to reduce the wrist stretching to 5 times a day, but 1 minute each time. Even that I failed at. Then I reduced it to 30 seconds. Too much. Reducing it to 15 seconds did the trick. I was able to consistently do it and oftentimes do more than 15 seconds because once I got started, I wanted to keep going.

Don’t think your commitments are too small. Small commitments are good.

What is a promise or commitment you keep breaking with yourself? What has it done to your trust in yourself? How can you make that a version of that commitment small, binary and daily?