Dear Members,

 

It is our mission here at Toolstolife.com to support you and give you all the Tools you need so you can achieve the life changes you want. This Monday Inspiration is a journey to success.  We’ve attached it to many of the functions and features that Tools To Life offers, including last week’s Monday Inspiration, Getting Started, providing you an opportunity to create the skills leading to real success.  I am excited to offer you this level of guidance and support here at Toolstolife.com. I am also eager to hear about the results you create on the journey to your personal growth.

 

This Inspiration is a bit longer than usual, so we really build a strong foundation as we get you ready for real success.

 

If you want changes and success in your life, stick with it! You are worth it!

 

Keep believing! You can make your life what you want your life to be!

 

I believe in you…

 

Devlyn Steele

 

Should You Be Committed?

 

Don’t worry, I am not going to send men in white jackets to put you in a straight jacket and take you away.  The question is really about personal commitment.  Commitment, because all the changes you say you want to create in your life happen only at the level of commitment you give.

 

“If you make the unconditional commitment to reach your most important goals, if the strength of your decision is sufficient, you will find the way and the power to achieve your goals.” - Robert Conklin

 

Commitment-commitment-commitment, why all the fuss?  Most people want to learn how to achieve their goals.  In response, most books and programs on success and goal setting take people through the usual scenic tour. Trust me the tour is great and the views of success are magnificent.  It is a tour as worthwhile as any art exhibition, whether it be Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Picasso at the MET, Bernini at the Getty, or even Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  The views you see on this tour are the endless possibility of what life can offer you.

 

You can see yourself creating a healthy and happy relationship, living in a healthy body, enjoying your home, life style, and career and having stability, safety, excitement and joy in your life.  That view is incredible, breath taking and exciting. When you take the tour, you will learn to state your goals, to write them down, visualize them, break them down and take action.  You certainly want to stop at each of these places on the tour and learn these skills. Without them, achieving goals and changes is difficult. 

 

Depending on whether you take the quick tour or the extended one, you might look at consistency, progress rewards, support groups, application to specifics and more.  All these places are great parts of learning about achievement.  Many of the tours stop at a place called commitment. You might briefly talk about it, you might sign a contract to yourself, and then you move on. The stop is brief because the concept is hard to teach.  I guess most people feel that the concept is too abstract to teach, and that most people understand what it means. The result is commitment is mentioned, but then we move on.

 

After all, the idea that commitment is the reason for us not achieving our personal growth would put the responsibility back onto ourselves.  That would mean we would have to examine ourselves and question our own behavior. We would question our commitment to success.

 

So what really is commitment?

 

One of the definitions Wikipedia offers which really fits our conversation here: “a personal commitment, which is often a pledge or promise to ones' self for personal growth.”

 

A pledge to self,

a promise to self,

a commitment to self,

for personal growth…

 

Are you ready to really get committed to your personal growth?

 

“There are only two options regarding commitment. You are either in or out. There's no such thing as a life in-between.” -Pat Riley

 

So are you in? Are ready to learn about and get committed to your success?

 

How do you teach someone to be committed to self?  Without commitment, we often start in a direction of personal growth only to stop shortly after.  Without commitment when things are not easy or when we run into obstacles, adversities, set backs or a lack of fast results, we quit.

 

That is why success requires commitment, because success is not a straight point and click line. You have to adjust to what life throws at you.  However once the commitment is there, the how will reveal itself and you will make the needed adjustments and get to your success. Why? Because you are committed. You will adjust your schedule, change your patterns, deal with your immediate wants and needs, and gain a greater outcome.  You will resist temptation, not give in to instant gratification, and stick to your goals. Why? Because you are committed.

 

Learning commitment is the core, the foundation, the key ingredient to your success. But can we teach commitment?

 

It might be a difficult to teach commitment. However, we can reinforce it with conversation and reminders of its meaning. We can keep you on track by consistently asking for review and renewal of your commitment.  That is where the Internet and social networks can take personal growth to a new level. Your connection to others helps you and your community stay connected to commitments. We encourage you to let others know about your commitments, to make it more likely you will follow through.

 

Here is the great thing about commitments, the more times you follow through and keep them, the more that commitment becomes a habit.  When commitment becomes a habit, guess what? As commitment becomes a habit, success becomes a habit. Success becoming a habit means you are achieving the life changes you want. 

 

So do you want the changes you say you want?  Do you sincerely want to lose weight, enjoy your career, have better relationships, enjoy your life more and all the other changes you claim? Because learning how to make and keep your commitments means you can have all that.  That also means you will have to do the work.  It means you will have to follow through and keep consistent no matter what life does throw out at you. 

 

Are you ready to live the life you want?

Are you ready to learn how and make really commitments?

 

I hope you are!

 

If you are, you can and will.  Last week’s Monday Inspiration discussed Getting Started and I talked about it all week on the Podcast. I asked if you were ready to get started, but then I never pulled the trigger and said, “Let’s start!”  That’s because we have started so many things in our lives that we have not finished or kept up. There is more to success than getting started.  Success is all about staying committed to what we start.

 

Although we offer and are building many programs to guide you to the successes you want in your life, the success of each program you take will be determined by the level of your commitment. Are you applying what you learn to your life? We will help you develop the life skill of commitment because you can build your life on that foundation.  We’re going to have fun with it this week, diving into commitment.

 

Listen to the Daily Podcast; develop and reinforce your level of commitment to the changes you want.  At the end of the week we give you some commitment Tools. We will make a commitment and actually get started. Then you’ll have opportunity to support each other, to keep us all on track.

 

This is an exciting opportunity! It’s up to your level of commitment to success that you will or will not take advantage of it. I have to ask you yet another question, a question I ask everyone all the time:

 

Do you really want the changes you say you want, or are you just talking?

 

“The achievement of your goal is assured the moment you commit yourself to it.”

                                                                                                             -Mack R. Douglas

 

Stay with us all week on the Daily Podcast. Next Monday we launch our commitment to success!

 

Together we will be successful…

 

Get Excited!

 

Devlyn Steele