Commitment

— is not just a word but a promise you make to yourself. The highest level of assurance given you can’t lie to the one to whom you have promised.

Then how suddenly we start taking things so casually. Start treating this commitment just like another word. Is everything supposed to work on our moods? There is only one way to take over your Monkey mind — that your commitments become sacrosanct.

Now how do you make that happen? I think simplest way is to ensure that your commitment is your main thought at all times. Your life is designed around it. Let’s take the case of writing where I am concerned. I promised myself to write at least one post a day. The advantage that I have is that thoughts essentially flow through me, if i really let my mind speak itself. Essentially I write everything my mind thinks of, as it is without trying at all to guide it about certain something. All I need is to sit in front of a blank screen for few seconds.

Now seems like to make my commitment happen I am not even giving myself these few seconds in front of the screen. To design my life around it I’ll have to set a few rules.

1. Habit Stacking— James Clear in Atomic Habits talks about there are certain habits which are already used to do everyday. Use them as your Anchor Habit and start stacking a new habit along with it. So thats what I can essentially use — Every day I login work (Yes, I do have a regular job) at around 9 in the morning. The first task of the day can become this sitting in front on a blank screen for few second till my mind pours.

2. Morning Ritual — Haruki Murakami in his book “ What I talk about when I talk about running” talks about how writing is what he does first thing in the morning. He gets up at around 4 AM and works for four hours, only post which he enters his regular day. Now I am not an early riser, I am more of a nocturnal creature if any. I do resonate with finishing your job early than late, because the guilt of things being pending actually wears down your whole day. My habit stacked with an early morning anchor habit sort of solves for it.

3. Wrapping up Hurt in Daily Transactions — I don’t know if you have realised this or not but operational activities or daily chores are a cure to hurt as well. Mind has a limited capacity to work on essentially one thing at a time. (Multi Tasking is a myth, that’s for another post.) So if you pile up these “Habits” of things that have to do in day. So mind mostly focused on tasks on checklist and cut short on emo shit.

4. Pray — or the new age term for it — affirmations or manifestation — essentially praying is nothing but repeating to yourself the set of rules / vision you have laid down so that it remains main focus of your monkey mind.

Commitment by Magicthreadworks

Mostly this should work.

To know if this was a success just see if I have been posting something consistently or not. There, proof for you!