UGH. If I Have to Pt. 1

What happens when others commit for us?

Usually, it’s a lot easier to forego the commitment in the end. Maybe something came up and we had to call a raincheck, right?

Maybe we never actually wanted to go and were just being polite and letting someone else plan for us. Could be a lot of different things, but really, it doesn’t matter too much.

In the book “Into the Wild” the author shares a reflection from Walt (Chris McCandless’s father), “If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn’t argue. He’d just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted.”

When other people try to tell us to do something, it usually doesn’t end in the way that they would like for it to end.

Why commit to something that someone else wants us to do? Especially when we don’t want to do that particular thing, many people tend to fall short of execution or completion.

Maybe your partner commits the two of you to an event that you really don’t have an interest in. It’s a lot easier for the work to suddenly pile up and demand your attention than it is on other nights of the week.

At least that’s what it seems like.

But, we are people. Not persons, but people. That means that we are a community and often, we don’t do everything that we want to do, as individuals.

As a financial advisor in the 1990’s maybe your client was very risk-averse. They wanted to stay away from Internet companies. You tried to sway them towards investing in Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and AOL. But they didn’t want to invest in those companies, they were high risk.

As their advisor, you don’t get to call the shots. They do.

It’s important to value what others want and need and ultimately, desire. Especially in situations where maybe you don’t have a preference.

My uncle said it best recently. I forget exactly the topic of discussion but he virtually said that if he wasn’t pulled in a particular direction or didn’t have a particular preference in regards to something that impacted both him and my aunt, it’s up to her, because she did have a preference.

He valued her opinion over his own, thereby letting her decide.

But, does he truly have a stake in the outcome? I’ll be reflecting on the idea of commitment further in the coming days (on Tuesday and Thursday), but, it’s better, in my mind, if we make decisions for ourselves and that may not mean what you think it does.