The word for this week appears to be commitment.
First of all, I want to thank all of you for the birthday greetings. Whenever I hear from you people and realize how many people are actually being affected by Lin’s and my efforts here, it makes me proud, humble (moi?) and more committed to keep going until we have cures for this cursed condition. Thanks again.
I also ran into the concept of commitment while reading our assigned chapter for our “free” DBT course. The topic was how to gain a commitment to working in therapy. There is a whole body of research indicating people who express commitment to a task follow through better than those who do not.
Reading that, I realized I make commitments – private and public – all the time. My goals tonight are to review my lesson for class tomorrow and proof a report. My goal for last weekend was to shampoo the carpet. Once I shared that with you people – even if I could have lied to you and never pushed a stick of furniture out-of-the-way, at all – I felt an obligation to honor my word, to honor my commitment. The carpet got done.
Looking for information on commitment, I did find one thing interesting. It was an article by Bruce Rogow entitled The Power of Commitment and Pursuing Your Dreams. Regrow quotes W.H. Murray:
Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Cool quote. Rogow goes on to say, in order to accomplish our goal, we must choose to commit to them. We must pursue relentless action towards our goals.
Rogow then made the statement that interested me the most: expect and have faith you will get help along the way. Intriguing. I don’t know why it would happen, but I know it does. People help me accomplish my goals all of the time. Somehow I get rides. Somehow I get the equipment I need. Somehow we have gotten readers. It is almost like “Field of Dreams.” Build it and they will come.
Like I said, I have no idea why. Maybe it is because attitudes are contagious and people like positive people. Maybe it is because we all have a little Sancho Panza in us, and we want to see the cock-eyed dreamers, Don Quixote’s of the world, triumph. Maybe we all like to cheer for the plucky underdog. Whatever the reason, commit to a goal, pursue it relentlessly and people will come out to help and cheer you along.
Why am I preaching a “sermon” on commitment in an AMD blog? Commitment to a goal is a great source of motivation. Most people, if they say they will, especially publically, by damn they WILL. We can use commitment to move us along to goals. We can use it to help us keep fighting. publically promise to use assistive technology, to go out even when it is easier to stay in, to keep involved and help the researchers find a cure and someone will help you. The next thing you know, your goals will be accomplished.
And to round things out, Rogow had one more thing to do: show sincere gratitude for the help you received…THANK YOU! Thank you for backing our commitment. With your support, our goals can be reached.
Written July 17th, 2018