Where Do You See Yourself Acting Inconsistently With Your Commitments?

The default response to seeing ourselves or others acting inconsistently with espoused commitments is make wrong. We make ourselves wrong, we make others wrong, we question the sincerity of commitments – our own and other people's.

We are biased to justify and explain how come we didn't act consistently with our commitments. And we often even go further and question if we are really committed and if we are real when we speak about our commitments. While we may question if we are really committed when we don't act consistently with our commitments, we have no questions when others don't keep their commitments.

Supposing we could just acknowledge we frequently say and do things that are inconsistent with our espoused commitments. And supposing we could acknowledge that fact without invalidating ourselves, without making ourselves bad or wrong, without abandoning or watering down our commitments. Supposing we could just get  that we are human and imperfect and acting inconsistently with our commitments doesn't negate them – rather it is evidence of them.

So here is a simple practice to support us:

1. Say what you are committed to, be as specific as you can. Example: I am committed to keeping my promises, and when I don't I will fess up, clean up and make a new promise. I am committed to exercising three times a week...
2. Notice when you act inconsistently with your commitment – just notice; no make wrong, no judgement and evaluation, and no attempting to fix anything – just notice. Use the first column in this one-pager to make notes
3. Speculate – what commitment was that action forwarding? Put that in the second column. The perspective here is that every action is an expression of a commitment – the question is committed to what? Mostly when we act inconsistently with our commitments it is because there is an unconscious commitment in place that overrides the conscious commitment – and usually it is a self-protection commitment
4. Choose – (borrowing from Chris Argyris's theories of action) the espoused commitments or the commitments in use
5. Repeat from #1
6. Count – after a week or so of just noticing, add counting – count the number of instances of acting inconsistently with espoused commitments. And run through the steps regularly – daily is the ideal interval.

Run the experiment and see what shows up. And, if you feel so inclined, share.

And remember, Until One is Committed...