Commitment

Here's a nifty little bit of inspiration I received in my email yesterday. It's a quote from a Starbucks customer that was printed on a Starbucks coffee cup:

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating –- in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around like rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life."
-- Ann Morris, New York

It's seems funny that commiting ourselves to something would be liberating. Wouldn't it be more like confining ourselves, restricting ourselves to a course of action or a situation when we would rather have freedom to do as we please when we please?

I can see what this is saying, though. I can see many applications of this principle -- spiritual and emotional and relational -- but the application that really hits me between the eyes is how this applies to my List of Doom. I can see how truly liberating it would be to just get up and do something that has been bugging me -- and then I am free of the weight of it!

That's what I need for myself today -- some commitment to the tasks I see that need doing, so that I won't be beating myself up for not getting them done. There's always a good reason in my head that convinces me it's okay to not do something, to wait and do it later, or to do it shoddily -- but it really doesn't help in the end. That just makes me feel more enslaved to the List. What actually works is to stop analyzing WHY I am not getting things done, commit myself to doing -- and then DO.

And so I shall. ;-) I'll let you know how it goes.