“The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments,
is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.”

~ Stephen R. Covey
from “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”

Do you honor your commitments?

Are you making commitments you don’t want to make or have no intention of following thru on?

Pay attention to what you’re committing to and to whom you’re making those commitments.

As Covey says, your integrity to the commitments you make is one of, and perhaps THE, most important factors in living with Areté and achieving a consistent level of joy and happiness.

Although you may not be aware of it consciously, if you have a bunch of (or a string of hundreds of) broken commitments over the last day/week/month/year/decade, you’re energetically drowning in the weight of that lack of integrity.

You know you know when you’re not doing the stuff you say you’re going to do—whether it was getting up at a certain time this morning, working out or following a certain routine, whatever.

To the extent you’re not honoring those commitments, you are, to state it bluntly, screwed. Simple as that.

Good news: the solution is simple as well.

Start honoring your commitments.

…

Make an inventory of the commitments you have outstanding right now.

Decide which ones you will re-commit to honoring. Get completion with these. Finish them.

Decide which ones you are no longer committed to honoring. For the record: No, just b/c you said you were going to do something in the past does not mean you absolutely must do it now. It DOES, however, mean that you need to make a NEW commitment. So, although you don’t need to do it, you DO need to communicate the new commitment.

Enough talk.

Are you committed to taking an inventory of your commitments today? (Right now perhaps? Is there really something more important you need to do?)

Let’s rock our commitments, guys.

Author's Bio: 

Brian Johnson is a (Professional) Student of Life. He used to build businesses. Now he’s building his life while inspiring and empowering others to discover and live at their highest potential.

In his past lives, Brian raised over $7.5 million to finance the two leading online social networks he created: eteamz and Zaadz.

As a 24-year-old law school dropout, Brian created eteamz —which he grew into a company that now (profitably) serves over 3 million teams and their families involved in youth athletics and counts Little League Baseball® as a client.

After selling eteamz in 2000, Brian spent a few years as a philosopher, immersing himself in philosophy, psychology, mysticism and optimal living. He created ThinkArete.com, a site where he began distilling the universal truths of optimal living. Over 10,000 people signed up to receive his daily newsletter, The Philosopher’s Notes, where he broke down the wisdom of his favorite teachers, showing how everyone (from Nietzsche to Buddha to Rumi) is saying the same thing.

In an effort to integrate his philosophical and entrepreneurial selves (yes, he’s a Gemini :) ), in 2004 Brian created Zaadz—a company named after the Dutch word for seed committed to leveraging world-class social networking tools to connect, inspire and empower people committed to transforming their lives and our planet. (Think: MySpace for people who want to change the world.)

Feeling the dharmic pull to immerse himself back into studying and living the universal truths, Brian sold Zaadz to Gaiam, Inc. (Nasdaq: GAIA) in the summer of 2007.

Before all of that, Brian graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from UCLA where he studied Psychology and Business. He’s been on MSNBC’s The Most with Alison Stewart, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal (a couple times), The San Francisco Chronicle, and various other places on everything from philosophy to business to his vision on how to change the world.

He reads a lot and has fun integrating universal truths into his day-to-day life and also likes to hike, laugh, write, think, draw and teach. He’ll be re-launching ThinkArete.com later this year and publishing his first book: “Areté: The Ten Universal Principles to Living at Your Highest Potential” in early 2009. He’s 33.