A Letter from Chris Suarez
Commit to You
April 5, 2020
Good Morning Xperience,
This is my first letter…of the first day...of the first week...of the new quarter...of what has seemed to many to be the most interesting year of their lives.
Let’s not waste a great temporal landmark.
I’ve often shared that human beings love temporal landmarks. We love the first of the year, the first of the month, the first of the week, the first hour of our day…We look for these temporal landmarks. Why?
Because let’s face it, we all need a fresh start once in a while. We all need that relaunch once in a while. We all need to erase yesterday, or last week, or last month, or even last year once in a while. Temporal landmarks allow us to give ourselves forgiveness. Forgiveness for not showing up how we wished we had. Forgiveness for not accomplishing what we know we could have. Forgiveness for not doing what we said we would do. Ultimately temporal landmarks allow us to RECOMMIT to SELF and erase something we wish to forget. We are significantly more likely to tackle our goals with the start of a new date. These temporal landmarks offer a psychological shift. It allows us to separate an old me and a new me.
This week has been an adventure, but not unlike any other week or any other adventure when we look closely. Sure, some new challenges and for some of us, new activities. For one, I’ve suddenly been thrown into becoming a home-school teacher for part of each day. Without choice, I've become the Math teacher and the English teacher. Perhaps that's because my wife knows I can calculate what 6% of anything is…and well, English is her second language.
My “students” taught me an interesting lesson this week related to this word “commit”:
Kids don’t love to do math in pen.
Kids don’t love to write stories in pen.
I’m pretty sure I couldn't possibly be the only parent that had to break up a school time argument in March. The Wednesday “Math Class Meltdown" had everything to do with an argument around who got the “erasable pen”. For nostalgia’s sake, just stop and remember your first erasable pen. It was most likely a Paper Mate. Let’s be honest, it never really erased the ink. But Paper Mate invented erasable ink back in 1979 after a decade of research, introducing their first “Erasermate”... and every kid wanted one. It was the first time a pen “allowed” for mistakes that could be erased. Why ? Because we all want a fresh start sometimes.
Let’s un-package that. First, why does a pencil easily erase and ink typically not? Because ink soaks into the paper fibers while pencils lay down a coating of graphite that doesn’t bond very tightly with the paper surface. When you use an “erasable pen” that ink actually is binding loosely to the paper. In actuality, depending on how hard you press with that erasable pen, it will either erase fairly well or just smudge the ink around on the paper. And either way, the quality of the ink is inferior, as it lacks vivid color.
We are raised in school systems and classrooms that promote erasing mistakes, fearing cross-outs, in effect allowing for lack of commitment in your work…as we can always go back and erase.
This week’s challenge: COMMIT. COMMIT TO YOU.
There are two interesting definitions of Commitment.
The first: “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, an activity, or a person”
The second: “an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action”
Therein lies the problem. No one wants to sign up for something that restricts our freedom or restricts what we can and can’t do. Perhaps that’s why you ended up in a “job” that you could “control”. And yet, to be a “committed” person, we need to show up every day and do what we say we are going to do and be who we say we were going to be. Are we a person that people can look at in any aspects of our life - business, relationship, health - and identify us as a “committed” human being?
Especially now as we are socially distanced, working remotely, having no physical accountability from someone sitting next to us, we need to COMMIT TO SELF.
Regardless of what we have done over the past 30 days, today we can choose commitment. No need to erase...just start writing in pen. Wake up knowing what you committed to accomplish, and knock it out.
This is not as easy as it may seem. Often, it is much easier to commit to others than even committing to ourselves. When there are people to help and work for, we jump in and do it. When we look around and see others next to us, its easier to show up and commit. Yet in Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits” he clearly outlines that we will never be “effective” unless we start with commitment to self. In his book he outlines the contrast between a “private victory” and a “public victory”. What is the difference?
Commitment and trust starts within. We need to win internally before we can win externally. Every day that we show up and knock out what we committed to do, we build self trust, we earn that private victory, which allows us to move on to additional habits on the way to a future public victory. Put simply, we cant help others before helping ourselves.
Wake up each morning and ask: What CAN I do today?
Then ask yourself: What WILL I do today?
At the end of the day ask yourself: What DID I do today?
Take control of something in your world immediately upon waking up.
If our day slips by without us keeping a commitment to ourselves, the opposite can happen. We begin to lose belief and confidence in self. We will feel like we are running in place and not moving forward. We wind up writing the story of our week in pencil...and erasing it upon reflection of our lack of accomplishment.
Go ahead, grab a pen and piece of paper. Press hard. Commit to YOUR story this week. Every hour and every day you keep the commitments you make for yourself is a deposit into your self confidence. That Personal Victory will lead to your Public Victory.
Don’t waste a good temporal landmark. Commit to you.
Committed to you,
Chris Suarez
