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    <title>Recent Posts in '#104. Commitments' | Beast</title>
    <link>http://forums.thinkarete.com/forums/the-big-ideas/topics/commitments</link>
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      <title>#104. Commitments posted by brian @ Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:43:10 -0000</title>
      <description>&lt;p align="center"&gt;&amp;ldquo;&lt;em&gt;The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="center"&gt;&lt;em&gt;is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="center"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="center"&gt;~ Stephen R. Covey&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="center"&gt;from &amp;ldquo;The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you honor your commitments?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you making commitments you don&amp;rsquo;t want to make or have no intention of following thru on? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to what you&amp;rsquo;re committing to and to whom you&amp;rsquo;re making those commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Covey says, your integrity to the commitments you make is one of, and perhaps THE, most important factors in living with Arete&#769; and achieving a consistent level of joy and happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although you may not be aware of it consciously, if you have a bunch of (or a string of hundreds of) broken commitments over the last day/week/month/year/decade, you&amp;rsquo;re energetically drowning in the weight of that lack of integrity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;know &lt;/em&gt;you know when you&amp;rsquo;re not doing the stuff you say you&amp;rsquo;re going to do&amp;mdash;whether it was getting up at a certain time this morning, working out or following a certain routine, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To the extent you&amp;rsquo;re not honoring those commitments, you are, to state it bluntly, screwed. Simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good news: the solution is simple as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start honoring your commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make an inventory of the commitments you have outstanding right now. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decide which ones you will re-commit to honoring. Get completion with these. Finish them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decide which ones you are &lt;em&gt;no longer&lt;/em&gt; committed to honoring. For the record: No, just b/c you said you were going to do something in the past &lt;em&gt;does not &lt;/em&gt;mean you &lt;em&gt;absolutely&lt;/em&gt; must do it now. It DOES, however, mean that you need to make a NEW commitment. So, although you don&amp;rsquo;t need to do it, you DO need to communicate the new commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enough talk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you committed to taking an inventory of your commitments today? (Right now perhaps? Is there &lt;em&gt;really &lt;/em&gt;something more important you need to do?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;rsquo;s rock our commitments, guys.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:43:10 -0000</pubDate>
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      <author>brian</author>
      <link>http://forums.thinkarete.com/forums/503/topics/104</link>
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