What do you do when you are committed to something and don't follow through?

Welcome back to Design Your Destiny, everyone. Today, I'm gonna be talking about something that is common, and that is: what do you do when you commit to something, but you don't follow through. Like, what do you do? I think it's a challenge that many people fall into. And oftentimes my clients have faced this challenge. To be committed to something means that you have decided to do something. There are many factors that can come into play in our commitment to do something. One of those things is how committed are we to the thing that we are pursuing– whether it's a business venture, a partnership, deciding to relaunch the podcast as I am here, changing directions, deciding to build out your business in a new and different way. How committed are you to that?  Probably one of the most common mainstream, if you will, ways of looking at commitment is people who decide to go into fitness, or to weight loss, healthier eating those types of things. And people often associate their success, or lack of it, with their willpower.  The first myth that I want to debunk is that willpower works.Willpower does not work. Willpower is a function of the conscious analytical mind. Our conscious analytical mind, even though we believe it runs the show, it does not run the show. So as you go through your day, say you're someone who has, committed and I'm gonna use health as an analogy, but you can apply this to anything in your business. You can apply it to anything in your life, say that you were committed to your health, and you decided that you're going to stop drinking caffeinated beverages, and you're going to drink warm water. That's a big thing right now, “the warm water challenge”.  Say you're gonna commit to that each and every time that you go to drink water, you are making a choice each and every time you think, oh, you know what? I would really like a cup of coffee, or I would love a soda or an energy drink. You are making a decision when you're using willpower. You were relying solely on individual decisions to get you where you want to go.  [00:03:59] So what does that mean? If you're relying on individual decisions to get you where you want to go, when you end up with a lot on your plate, whether it's a lot of deadlines coming due, something unexpected happens in the business or with the client or a project, or even in your personal life, your relationships, especially if you have kids, life can be really unpredictable when these unpredictable things come up. If you're relying solely on your decision making and you get into a space where your stress response is activated, you have a lot of things going on in your conscious mind that you are sorting out, you're going to possibly, most likely, revert to your old habit. It's easier. It's easier than having to make the conscious choice. Now water versus energy, drinks and caffeine. That's kind of easy because you can set your day up by making sure that all you have available is water, but if you're stressed out and you're worn down and you're going to the kitchen and you have all kinds of options, your mind's just not even gonna think about it. Your subconscious goes, oh, well, we always go to the caffeine, let's go to the cafe. Your willpower is like a battery on your cell phone. The more tired we become, the more that we have on our mind, the more things that we are processing, the weaker that willpower becomes.  [00:05:33] If you're committing to something new, the biggest, most important thing you can do is just decide, and in the words of one of my mentors, declare it, make a declaration. Actually, a couple of my mentors, when it comes to bringing something new into your life, you define it, you decide it, and you declare it. And that really just sets it in your mind as an unbreakable standard, which goes to identity. If you've listened to episodes 86 and 87, GREAT, if you have not, I want you to go back and listen to episodes 86 and 87. I talk about identity because this is another piece of commitment. When you are committing to something, your identity should be an identity that supports the actions that you are taking. Your identity should support the actions that you're taking from how you identify yourself, the beliefs that you have within that identity. How someone with that identity, like what actions they take. What do they delegate? What are their capabilities? If there's,Something that you don't have that you need, then you're gonna be the person who's going to go out and learn that you're going to acquire that skill, that knowledge, that reference point, if you will, so that you can deliver what it is that you want. And when those things fall into place, then your outcome will come about. But if you're committed to an outcome and you have no idea what the identity is that's going to get you there. You know I want to start this company. I want to hit a hundred million dollars. I'm at 40 million. I want to hit a hundred million. I don't know. Let's say in 18 months, what is the identity? That's gonna get you there because what got you to 40 million is not going to get you to a hundred million. So just being committed and knowing you want to get there is not. Who do you need to be?  [00:07:42] Another piece of this is when you find yourself not following through on commitment, what are the things that you are doing? And there's a very key question that you can ask yourself. And that question is, what am I committed to? Because we are always committed to something, even if we're committed to staying the same. Sometimes we can be in a situation in our life where we're doing what we're doing, because it's what we've always done. It doesn't necessarily align with what we want, but we don't know what we would do with our. If we weren't doing it because we've just always been moving to the next thing and moving to the next thing, and I'm gonna do a whole podcast episode on what all of that means. But if you're wanting to shift, and the shift is not happening, then you're committed to something else more than what you're committed to, what it is that you want.  And so where is the alignment? Where is the alignment in that? Are you aligned with the thing you're committed to, that maybe you don't know that you're committed to? Sometimes we're committed to avoidance. Sometimes we are committed to our suffering. Sometimes we are committed to an identity that has us believing that we can't be more that Our whole lives. We get filled with other people's perceptions of us. We get filled with our own faults, perceptions about ourself and our abilities, usually to the negative. Right. Are you committed to holding onto that identity, which is going to limit your commitment to the thing that you want? Just a deep question for you there. [00:09:39] One of the things that I have come to realize over the last year that I'm blessed with. I, for a while, just assumed that everybody processed information this way, but one of the things I've really come to own is my ability to see people's patterns. In their thoughts and in their behaviors, the way that it's showing up in their life. And when that pattern is identified, we can basically take the legs off the table and collapse that, which is not serving you so that we can build back something that is stronger. Something that supports your identity, something that supports what you are committed to and when your identity and your values support what you're committed to, and you've eliminated the bullshit beliefs that are supporting this identity over here that's not serving you anymore, that's when the world really opens up to you. That's when possibility opens up to you,. [00:10:50] It doesn't matter where you are in life. If you were someone who has built your businesses from the ground up, think back to when you first started, as you shifted, and as you grew your identity, your characteristics, your traits, your values adapted and adjusted and moved with you. The same is true now. And I think that sometimes we get so immersed in what it is that we're doing, that we can lose sight of the big leaps that we made early in our career. And this ability to see these patterns is something that I have a lot of gratitude for, because I had made the faulty assumption that all people in business have this ability. All people who are expert hypnotists, all people who are coaches, all people who do transformational work, that they have this ability. And it's simply not the case. So what is it that you have that's unique to you? How does commitment and where you're wanting to go, how does all of that align? What does it look like for you? And I know I took you in a little bit of a circle here at the end, and we made some twists and some curves, but I did that intentionally because the answer is inside of you and through pondering and processing, you might be surprised to find that you tap into something you didn't know was there before. So until next time, please subscribe, leave a review. And I do look forward to catching you on the next episode of design your destiny. Check out Episode 86 and Episode 87 here.  Thanks for tuning in today! I’d love it if you could head over to Apple podcasts and leave a positive review, so we can reach even more people, so they can change their lives. That positive energy of sharing comes back to you as we spread this message.