How keeping Commitments can help you heal.

One of the great windows of opportunity for growth is commitments; keeping them or not. When we are presented with a choice, we are presented with an opportunity to move ahead towards healing, or staying in the exactly the same place we were the day or moment prior.

Making the choice sometimes creates resistance….perfect! That is where you get to see your inner 4-year old attempt to sabotage you and to see where the current, healthy adult that you actually are, go in and make the inner 4 yr old calm. When you choose to keep your commitments, you are providing leadership, guidance and security to your inner child; something that was lacking when you were growing up.

One of the main benefits of keeping your commitments is it will lay the groundwork for self-respect and self-respect is critical in healing.

A person in one of my workshops commented to me: “ I already keep all my commitments, so where is the learning opportunity for me?”
Good question.
The answer is: there are two different kinds of commitments; internal and external: commitments to yourself and commitments to the outside world.
Very often people spend more energy keeping their outside commitments for fear if they say “no”, they will be rejected. Sometimes people keep those outside commitments because they are coming from the need to be perfect all the time. They cannot distinguish when they have gotten to the “done” boundary.

But looking at the internal commitments reveals more to us. And are those commitments creating conflict…those conflicts give the opportunity for choice.

So, the woman who asked the question then had to reflect on exactly what kinds of commitments she is referring to. As we probed more, we saw that her internal commitments needed more input….more challenge; we needed to flush out her 4-year old.

In doing so, she was able to see a new canvas upon which she could start to find her self-respect which would be critical in learning to trust herself, like herself.