For me, one of the great values of putting something into the same brain compartment where you store: "pick the kids up from school" and "catch plane home" - is that when you've really committed to something, you find out if you really want it or not.

What a relief.

Everything that follows the moment of commitment is information to you about how much you really want something or how much you don't.  Sometimes, it's the first time you actually realize you really just don't want this thing - and can stop fooling yourself (or trying to please others or not let them down) and just get on with your own life the way you want to live it.    

We can waste a lot of time trying to 'should' ourselves into things we never wanted in the first place (like those college majors we dithered over).  Commitment is the great sorting hat!!   

(May you not end up in 'Slytherin')

I spent a year as an apprentice with Michael Neill and I can tell you there is one thing Michael knows better than anyone and that's how to tip the balance of life toward inspiration.  When you consider that many of us struggle to get out of perspiration and into inspiration even for a short minute it’s a source of hope to watch Michael proving there's another way.

The quirky thing about Michael’s brand of inspired is that he works very hard at it. In an effortless kind of way. Now, I don’t propose that Michael’s or anyone’s life as the “THE formula” but it’s certainly worth thinking about this.

More often than not the idea of "Living an Inspired Life" sounds like a spiritual or artsy or deeply cool -but faraway thing.  But real inspiration, funnily enough, might just be mundane.  Rather than the big bang that will finally hit you and reveal your life purpose and the secrets of the universe... in practice it might be more like: "Yay! I woke up today! What Next?"

And here's the thing about people who are genuinely thrilled by waking up again  so they can do the things they enjoy... very often they are also successful.  Or maybe I should put it this way, successful people seem to also love what they do.

So which comes first?  How many of us are hoping the success is what will bring us the satisfaction?

I think living inspired is a minor art.  And ‘inspired’ is a terrible word for it really.   It’s just not the getting-psyched-up and be-a-go-getter thing, nor does it mean I put a flower behind my right ear and dedicate my life to verse - from what I can tell it is the simple art of genuinely falling in love with your life.  

Then, of course, it all goes slightly wonky.. because when you are in love with your life, hard work can be a big part of it.  Sometimes you toil hard and you sweat.  Other times you rest and float.  Maybe you don’t so much balance between % inspiration and %perspiration, as allowing inspiration to decide what’s worth sweating over while you've got that smile on your face.

Hear Michael on the radio show this Friday, May 7th, live at 10 am Pacific as we talk about waving goodbye to money fear.
(if you miss it, go here for the archive after the show)

Discipline is the new dirty. We love it; we hate it and we don't need it. But let me come to that in a moment.

We associate discipline with the ways our parents forced us to do things because they “said so.”  Or we talk about it as if it were a missing gene: “I dunno what it is but I just can’t stop…” 

How many times have you argued that what you really, really need is more discipline in order to get things done?  Discipline is our special form of self-coercion exacted viciously in order that we might do, not just our chores, but the things that we say we want to do.

This is curious. 

And totally wrong.

Why would you need to force yourself to do something that you say you want to do?   (Or force yourself not to?)

Well, you don't.

Recently I heard someone say “I really want to exercise, but I just don’t have time,” so I asked them to take the word “exercise” and substitute it with “pick up the kids from school.”   (Then I practically had to duck and cover, but that’s another story).

The truth is, we will do what we care about and what we commit to, and we don’t need discipline to do it.  We will simply find the time.  Somehow.

How do we do that?

I notice that did not just pick up my daughter from school because I had previously given myself a very nasty dressing down and then swore I would not reward myself if I didn't do it.  I arranged life to get there.

I did it because it mattered to me.

If you are not doing something (especially when you say that you are committed to it) it is because somewhere inside you have not decided that it matters enough. Making something matter is a decision. I had to decide that it mattered to me to write these articles. On a Sunday night, ready for sleep, I may have to remind myself why it matters.

And I need a deeper reason than hating myself if I don’t.

Next time you want to do something, try NOT punishing yourself into it.  Try finding one positive thing about what you say you want to do that connects you deeply with why it matters to you.  (In other words, you do not get to use: “He won’t speak to me if I don’t,” or “I’ll hate my body forever”)

If you can’t find a positive why for you, then you will never be able to disapprove of yourself enough to force yourself to do it.  Not in the long run.

Making a commitment certainly reveals just how uncommitted one is.  Don't believe me?  Commit to something.  Recently I committed to writing a book. Several times actually. What happened?

"Dear Diary,

So far it looks like I like the idea of the book more than I like the reality of getting up at 5:30 in order to have writing be the first thing I do.  BUT,  I am very committed to my book.

Hm.  Having writing be the last thing I do is not turning out either.
But lots of nice, lovely wishful thinking happened!!

Loosely fitting it in writing time during the day between tasks, is well, erm, not quite working out I notice.  This book thing sure sounds good, but looks  unlikely to happen if I continue like this. Do I or do I not want this?"

So, as I find with my clients so it is for me, the proof of whether we want what we say we want is tested by our willingness to do. (Which is why for coaching purposes, asking someone to commit and just take the first step - actually works.  At the very least you find out you don't really want it that much after all).

Having experienced the full effects of non-commital dilly dallying, I decided I do want to write my book.  And although I have decided this before and declared it, I am actually ready to be inconvenienced (get up at o'dark hundred) in order to do something I think is meaningful.

Commit Or Die.

It's me or them so... the excuses have to die.  I just take one step: I set the alarm for 5 am (so I can do some secret inner moaning for a 1/2 hour before I actually get up. And I'm only partly kidding about that). Then I create the page called "101 New Pairs of Glasses" and I begin.

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My Supercoach Academy students are making their lives an Excuse-Free Zone for 7 days.  Join them?  More here...