Commitment – Defined as a promise or firm decision to do something.

Four interesting aspects to commitment that I want you to consider:

First
A commitment is really a verb, an action item. Think of marriage vows, each commits to the other to do or not do certain things. It’s something they have to do day after day throughout their marriage. It’s an action, something they keep doing. 

It’s something that we keep doing to get to our desired financial goals.

Second
A commitment is not goal. If we set a desired result of paying off all our debt by the end of the year, that would be a goal, not a commitment. We CAN commit to ourselves to take the required action to achieve the goal but the end result is not the commitment.

A goal is the desired result, a commitment is the obligation we make to ourself to achieve the goal.

Third
Commitments are usually thought of as being made between two parties. But perhaps more importantly we can make commitments with just ourself.

Fourth
Commitments are not promises, they tend to insinuate a longer term objectives. It’s like a recurring promise over a longer period of time. A promise might be something like, “I promise to pay you back on Friday.” A commitment to oneself might be, “I’m going to spend less so I don’t need to borrower money.” There is no set end-date/time of when you’re going to stop spending less.

Most financial goals are achieved over a longer time period, 1-3 years. So a commitment is really relevant to our financial lives. It will help carry us through the time period needed to achieve our financial goals.

Think of a commitment as a guide as to how you will act while on your way to achieving your financial goals. It allows you to plan beforehand how you will act in certain situations.

It’s common for people working towards financial goals to feel hopeless, fearful, or want to give up. Knowing this we can commit to ourselves how we will act when this happens. Some examples of good financial commitments include:

I won’t quit

I will keep perspective

I will stop and take breaks when I need them

I will not judge myself

I will keep a financially abundant mindset