What If Commitment Isn’t Everything?
Photo by Jaclyn Chessen.
Commitment.
So many coaches are focused on it with their clients. What are you committed to? What will you give your word to?
It's as if that answer becomes what the work is about. Creating that project. Honoring that intention.
And there's nothing wrong with coaching this way. If you find it useful—and your clients do too—great.
This was my way for a long time. I thought commitment was the secret sauce. Once a clear path was set, it created a direct line of energy and became the main event. An event I gave my word to.
Yet quietly, in the background, that word innocently became a rule. A rule I must follow to honor my integrity and dedication to what I wanted to create. A rule that ultimately determined how good or bad I was in a given day—not always conscious to me.
That's when commitment turned into something else. It moved from inspiration to pressure. A way the mind weaponized the intention and used it against me.
If I was committed to creating a certain number of 1:1 clients, I wouldn't honor other ideas or nudges that came in—for fear they'd take me off the path I needed to be on.
If I was committed to filling a group, I had to send a certain number of invites each week—and if I didn't, I was failing in some way.
If I was committed to writing a newsletter, I had to do it every other week—or I was a bad leader.
I understand not everyone has rigidity programming like me, and that structure and routine can be genuinely helpful. That may be you—and that's wonderful.
And yet. Just because we give our word to something doesn't mean it must rule our lives. When the word becomes the law, the mind has taken over—using structure to create an illusion of control. "If I follow these steps exactly, I will be safe and worthy. I can control the outcome."
But life isn't like that. Life is out of our control—always. Though it often appears to be in our control, which makes the illusion harder to see.
When we recognize this—that there is far more going on in our lives and work than our minds can ever know—it becomes easier to hold commitment differently.
Honestly, I don't think much about what I'm committed to these days. The process is much simpler. I attune to the heart and follow its nudges and guidance. That sometimes looks like spending hours rewriting copy for a rebrand (coming in a few weeks!)—and other times looks like taking a nap and watching a documentary about cults.
There is so much more freedom within me to honor the energy present in the moment. Before, when I relied on commitment as my grounding, I overrode anything that seemed to conflict with my word. Now I'm listening to something deeper. Something beyond the mind. And it feels so good. There is so much more permission for life's fullness, spontaneity, and magic.
This is what happens as we let go of the illusion of control and live more in the present—trusting the brilliant intelligence of life.
One of my amazing clients put it beautifully recently:
"It doesn't feel like I'm doing anything. It feels like things are happening and I'm showing up for them."
That's it. Things are happening—ideas, inspirations, new information, unexpected circumstances and so much more. Saying yes to them as they arrive—as in, this is here, I don't need to push it away—changes everything.
In this paradigm, commitment doesn't seem necessary at all.
There is only life living me.
With loving,
Amber
