Nothing can be achieved in life without first committing to yourself.
It has taken me a long time to learn this and to really practice this every day. Yet, I have seen the evidence time and time again where, through my lack of self-commitment, initiatives, projects, and relationships have all fallen apart or faltered partway-in because of my lack of commitment to myself.
Many people struggle with this very simple and fundamental part of life, especially those who experienced difficult childhoods and/or are addictive types (and if we are honest with ourselves, most of us are addicts in one way or another). It takes great strength and courage to commit to yourself as this involves inherently learning to love yourself and value who you are properly, no matter the trials and tribulations of your life-to-date. It also takes great courage to commit to your true path, yet it is only through such commitment that we are ever able to truly manifest in our lives that which we truly desire.
Self-commitment requires not only a belief in yourself, your gifts, and capabilities, but it also requires that sometimes elusive tricky thing of self-worth: We have to believe we are worth anything, let alone good things, before we can even start to commit to ourselves. Self-commitment also entails valuing your feelings, intuitions, bodily sensations, and insights that spring up from your unconscious. It encompasses all of these things, and over time, all of this steadily builds self-worth.
This is often difficult for people who lacked really strong and healthy mothering when they were small. Lack of love, attention, and true nurturance of who we really were back then creates gaps and holes in the fabric of our soul, and through which troublesome energies and voices can enter, creating a toughened and often very destructive false-self, who likes to berate and doubt us at every turn. Therefore, getting to grips with these voices and their impact on us in all that we try to do is vital. We have to learn to slay these dragons before they take hold of our attempts to live the life we feel is truly the one for us. This involves continual deep inner-work and vigilance. It involves developing an inner witness so that we can observe more objectively what they are saying to us and how we respond to them. Paying attention to our dreams is a hugely helpful device in this regard, as is working with a loving and attentive therapist or coach.
In addition, if we have co-dependent tendencies, we will often try to commit to other people at the expense of truly committing to ourselves and our unique path. Here we are misdirecting our energy outwards when it should be turned inwards. Needless to say, this is a false economy, and eventually, usually after many painful experiences in relationships, we will finally learn this lesson and realize that it is ourselves who we need to commit to first, foremost, and always. Then it seems to be a natural law that once we fully do this, we have the capacity to genuinely also commit to another person or project.
Once we have mastered this, then we can turn our attention to the lonely, neglected parts of ourselves who carry our as yet unmanifested abilities and gifts. We must give them plenty of attention and love in order to develop a genuine feeling of commitment to ourselves as well as to our unique path. This takes time, but it is essential if we are to stand true and firm to that which we wish to pursue. And not only that, we need to have established a genuine strength of self-commitment in order to defend against anything in our external environment, including other people and the wider culture, which can often put pressure on us to follow a more acceptable path rather than our own unique path.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is truly feeling that WE are worth committing to.
Once we have built this firm bedrock of commitment to ourselves, then we can start the task of committing to our life’s purpose, whatever that may be. Trying to do this stage without having accomplished the first part sufficiently is like building a house on shaky foundations; whatever we attempt to create will lack stability and will tend to wobble and falter.
Commitment also requires that we can be strong enough in ourselves to choose to follow that one thing that truly makes our heart sing and our soul dance for joy every single day. We can be strong enough to cut-away with a sword of discernment anything which does not serve this purpose. All of which requires trust and faith in ourselves and in life itself. We often struggle with making this single, deep commitment to one path. Yet as one of my favorite teachers, Chameli Ardagh of Awakening Women Institute, says of commitment: I used to think of commitment as something opposed to freedom; that if I decided or committed to one thing, I would lose out on other opportunities. Yet, she adds, it was only after she committed and jumped in with both feet that opportunities finally arrived: Commitment made them appear.
In essence, then, commitment involves huge doses of genuine self-love, faith, trust, and strength, as well as the courage to leap-in fully to our soul’s calling. Ultimately, we have to really value ourselves and our unique soul path.
As W.H. Murray of the Scottish Himalayan Expedition famously stated: Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.
