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Testing Theories on Commitment

by Meghan McChesney Gilroy

Commitment. What are you committed to? I recently started to explore this idea. I started by looking at “what is” in my life to see if I could determine what I was committed to creating. I saw that I am committed to being in a loving relationship. I am committed to supporting my business and my husband Jamie’s business. I am committed to a balance of resting and being at home combined with being active, expressing myself in new ways, exploring my creativity and personal power. These commitments were evident to me because the results existed in my life. I have a loving relationship, two successful businesses, and a centered life. On the other hand, I could see that I had no commitment what-so-ever towards being a captain of a sea-faring vessel nor any commitment towards climbing Mt. Everest.  I have taken absolutely no action towards either of these things (nor do I have any intention of doing so!) From my explorations, I developed a few theories which I put to the test – and so can you.

Theory 1: The amount of action you take in any particular direction has a direct correlation to the amount of commitment you have towards manifesting the result in your life. As much as you might want to profess to being committed to an idea, goal, or way of being, when you get down to it, if there isn’t action behind this profession, then there isn’t real commitment on a deep level either. But what about the things that seemed to fall into a gray zone? What about the things that you want in my life, but aren’t currently evident?

Test 1: Let’s take the example that Jamie and I have set our intent to buy a house. When I asked myself if I was committed to this, I was surprised at the real answer. Yes, we have taken some action toward buying a house. We’ve worked on decreasing debt and increasing income and we’ve signed up to receive announcements on properties for sale in town. But, we have not looked into what it would take to get a mortgage, or what our current credit scores are, or creative ways to finance a home. So was I really committed to buying a house, I asked myself again? When the answer came back as “yes” then I knew that it was time to take some more action. I could use this awareness and this way of examining my commitment to shift into a deeper commitment and therefore new results.

Theory 2: All complaints are actually a disguise for a lack of commitment on your part. Huh? You ask. Well, here’s how this works. As the creator of your reality, you are responsible for what you create. At the ultimate level, this means you cannot point a finger at circumstances outside of yourself as being the cause of your happiness or unhappiness. When you have a complaint about a situation, another person, or even yourself, you have to look at who is creating this.

Test 2: Let’s say that you are annoyed that your boss never asks you about what is happening in your life. To take responsibility for this situation and see where your commitment lies, you would say to yourself, “I am committed to my boss never asking me about what is happening in my life.” Let that sit for a moment. At first, this might feel strange. You may want to lay the blame on your boss, not on yourself. But when you look a little deeper at this, you may realize that it is true. Perhaps you hardly ever volunteer information about your life to your boss. Maybe when she does ask how you are, you give brief answers like “good” or “fine.” At this point, you can explore further how this came to be. Are you afraid to share what you are truly interested in because you fear she won’t be interested? Do you need her approval? Ultimately this is not about your boss. Whatever underlying agreement you made with yourself, you are free to change at any time (whether your boss likes it or not) by either letting go of your annoyance over her not asking about your life, or by sharing more of yourself with her.

Test Game 1: As you continue to explore responsibility and commitment, you can play a game with yourself. If you have a complaint or a wish, you apply the commitment test. Let’s say you are sad that you don’t have many friends close to where you live. Ask yourself, “Are you committed to not having friends in the area?” Then look honestly at you behavior. If there has been no action in this direction, then just honestly admitting that up until this point, this you have been committed to having few friends in town allows you to take a deep breath and let go (as opposed to trying to blame which produces clenched energy). So ask yourself again, “Do I want to be committed to not having friends in the area?” If the answer is no, then you can say to yourself, “I am now committed to making friends in the area.” From this space, you can brainstorm some actions to take to manifest this in your life. If, on the other hand, your answer is, “Well, I’m not really committed to having friends in the area.” Then you can let go of this complaint and focus your energy elsewhere.

Test 3: This technique works for both external circumstances as well as internal ones. Another way of saying this is, what are you invested in? If you notice that you are eating emotional poison, then you have to ask yourself, “Am I more invested in eating emotional poison than I am in changing my diet?” When you ask this type of question that goes to the core, you may surprise yourself with the real answer.  When you admit that if you are eating emotional poison, then the truth is that you are committed to doing this. You can then look at what agreements you have made with yourself, or what beliefs you have that would cause you to be committed to something that ultimately does not serve you.

Theory 3: Underneath each complaint, there’s a deeper issue as to what’s really going on. The truth brings forth a miracle. Just by admitting that up to this point you have been committed to poison, then you have the awareness and therefore the choice of whether you want to continue living that way. If you created the commitment to the poison, you can also create a commitment to letting go of it. You can take the energy that was locked in the complaint, in the hiding, in the deeper and issue, and apply it towards making a new commitment, “I am committed to no longer eating poison.” From here, you must take some action, even if it’s a small one. By taking action, and another action, the commitment becomes real. It goes deep and takes root. Pretty soon, you’re manifesting a whole new way of being.

With this new awareness, a little responsibility, and some commitment, your life is guaranteed to change as mine has. Try it out. Take the commitment litmus tests for a test drive. Before you know it, I’ll be buying a home and you? Well, only you know. So let’s begin by asking, what are you committed to?

Post Note: Several months after this article was written, Jamie and I did indeed buy a home that we love.

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