How to Be More Strongly Committed to What You Know Matters

“For Every Thousand Hacking at the Leaves, there is one Striking at the
root.” Henry David Thoreau

Drive It Down To Your “Deeper Yes!”

In order to more “strongly” stay committed to what matters most in life, you
have to really know what matters most in your life. The difficult thing in our
life is that many times the things that matter least tend to be the
“squeakiest” wheels that get the most oil. Think about how many phone calls
you’ve answered that interrupted something much more important or the
meetings you’ve attended at the expense of a child’s ball game, dance recital
or family time. The key to truly stay committed to what matters most is truly
get deeper into yourself and uncovering the “Deeper Yes” that is hidden deep
down inside you. The deeper yes is the deeper purpose in your life. It is the
true “purpose” for why you live, why you are here and who are the most
important people around you. The benefit to clearly understanding what our
“yes’s” are is that we also clearly understand what our no’s are as well. By
having our yes in other words, makes it easier to say no to others things in
our life. One of the easiest ways to get down to your deeper yes is to
imagine what you want the most important people in your life to say about
you at your funeral. How do you want your children to remember you? What
do you want your grandchildren and great grandchildren to say was your
contribution their life? The “Deeper Yes” should resonant with your
conscience; it should energize your soul and purpose. You will know when
you have your deeper yes, because every other accomplishment will pale in
comparison to it. The power of knowing your deeper purpose enables you
start to align your life to your purpose and minimize your needless guilt and
concerns that can occupy our daily life.

Think Less Is More!

Once you have connected to your “deeper yes” then most of us believe we
need to do as much as we possibly can to “live” our deeper purpose, Right?
Well actually wrong! We really don’t need to do everything to live our mission
and purpose but instead, let’s first worry about doing what we should do
today to live our mission and purpose. The rule “Less is More” comes from
the sage advice found in the wise answer to the question, How do you eat an
elephant? One bite at a time right! (Why are we eating elephants anyway
right?) The key to overcoming our biggest trials (eating elephants) can easily
be overcome simply by starting small, with one bite at time. The opposite
tendency to try to do too much too often usually overwhelms us and we
eventually give up feeling guilty and less of the person we were trying to be.
Instead, I suggest we just look for small incremental changes in our
character, not dramatic sweeping changes in our life. True character is
forged over time with continuous daily private effort, not dramatic events of
public mastery. The key is simply to start to let our integrity and “deeper
yes” to lead us to the most important, usually small adjustments we can
make in our lives. An important tool to access our conscience is by asking
ourselves a very simple question. “What is the most important thing I can do
today to live my deeper yes?” Time the time to ask yourself conscience this
question every day and let your heart dictate what you need to do next.
Accomplishing a stronger commitment to really what matters to us means
that we make sure that our heart is directly connected to the goal, so we can
feel the immediate benefit and power of the thing we’re trying to accomplish.

Obligate Yourself!

Have you ever noticed how you pay your power bill every month? It’s
probably because the power, company sends you friendly reminders or bills
or they automatically take the money right out of your bank account. The
interesting thing about our lives is that we tend to do things that we are
obligated to do more easily than the things we just “should” do. We pay our
bills because they’ll chase us until we do. We get our car inspected because
the police can ticket us and pull us over if we don’t. In the end, the
consequences of the real world are powerful motivators that are tangible and
sometimes painful. Sadly many of our most important things is life do create
as powerful a pull or sense of obligation on us until they are falling apart.
For example, how obligated do you feel every day to get out of bed and go
exercise for an hour? Or how obligated do you feel to read to your children a
half hour every day? Usually those obligations aren’t right in our face until
we’ve been told by our doctors that we are seriously ill or until our child is
failing every class. Then the obligation sets in and most of us start trying to
do something about our crazy life. By obligating ourselves to that we get
stuff done before the consequences get too bad.

Here are a few ideas that might create a greater sense of obligation for you.
Use your…

● TIME- Put the idea on your planner as an actual event
an not
on you “To Do” list.

● RELATIONSHIPS- Commit another person to be your
workout
buddy. Schedule specific times to come pick each other up every day at the
same time and to not take “no” from you for an answer.

● MONEY- Put your money where your mouth is. Tell
your
partner or your children that you’ll pay them $5 a day for every time you miss
your family together time

● CREDIBILITY- Announce to everyone in your family
about a
goal that you have set and the timeline you will have it accomplished by.

By finding creative ways to obligate ourselves to do what matters most we
usually end up doing what matters most! Although it started as an
obligation, it ends up turning into a privilege or something that we are glad
or love to do, especially if the obligation is connected to your “deeper yes!”

Feel the Benefit Daily!

The biggest problem with making some of our most important commitments
actually take a priority is the fact that we usually don’t really pay much
attention to them. This lack of attention makes it easy to focus on the louder
more unimportant things over the quieter, truly important tasks. In the end
we must start to look for the “intangible” benefits of living a life that is
aligned to your deeper yes. Start to notice how good your life really is and
how much more peace you feel every day when you’ve focused on the
important things that really matter to you. Be present in your moment while
completing your conscience centered goals. Take a minute at the end of
every day and truly appreciate the time you had reading with your child. By
creating a space in your heart to truly feel the peace of living your “deeper
yes” you inevitably end up strengthening your ability to live it better
tomorrow. The more you connect to the power of your commitment to what
matters most, the strong your commitment grows.