Committing to Self

The biggest commitment you will ever keep is your commitment to yourself.

Learning to commit to myself and not to feel shame and guilt or that I was being selfish when I honoured my values, was a long and painful journey that required unsticking from story.

In my family, commitment meant that you committed to serving another’s needs, wants and values. Acknowledging your own wants and needs, and knowing and living your values, was viewed as a sin. That was not the way you earned the reward of Heaven. I was conditioned that giving was approved of by God but receiving was an ungodly act unless you had proved yourself to be worthy. As a child, I had to prove that I was worthy of the basic needs. I was strong and healthy and that was not an issue. I chopped wood and carried water. It is what I knew and I didn’t question it until I went to school and learned how other children lived. However, no matter how hard I worked and how good I was, I didn’t seem to be worthy of love. I would just think I had it figured out and would feel a sense of relief and then, in a blink of an eye, the love would be gone and I would need to start over to prove my worth to earn more. As a child, I had no understanding of the concept of conditional love. In my mind, there was only one love, so I internalized the belief that I was unlovable.

I spent many years of my life thinking that if I just was more committed, I could prove that I was worthy of love. I lived the Saboteur pattern of being over committed out of the fear that I was unlovable. The pattern gave me hope. One of my teachers refers to hope as a beggar. Commitment was my hope of being loved. Through commitment I was begging to be loved but to no avail. My inner child was crying out, “Am I enough yet? How much more do you need of me? What will happen to me if I can’t prove I am worthy of love?” I was stuck in a story — a belief — and the pattern of over commitment was my protection from the truth. The medicine for the healing came in the most unexpected way. A stranger had message for me: “Your loyalty is going to kill you”. It was delivered with so much certainty that when I tried to make light of it my words trailed off mid-sentence. I had so many questions and she had nothing further to add. It was clear she had delivered what she needed to.

Her voice played over and over in my head. I could not figure out who I was so loyal to that it was going to kill me. In my mind, one could only be loyal to a person. Then through a friendship it was revealed that it wasn’t who, it was what I was loyal to, that was killing me. I befriended a woman who shared many of the same interests as I did. It was refreshing to talk about and share things that I couldn’t discuss with others in my life. I valued her friendship and committed to making sure I was good enough for this friendship to continue. Then I became aware that her relationship with commitment was the opposite of mine. She couldn’t commit. She was always waiting for something better to unfold. She wouldn’t commit because she didn’t want to miss out on something better. I tolerated it because that is what I thought it meant to be a good friend. She lived a couple hours from me and one weekend I invited her to stay with me and we had planned to attend an event we were both interested in. I had the tickets, had everything prepared including lovely meals with her favorite foods and an hour before her planned arrival, she called to cancel, saying something better had come up that morning. I was devastated. I just could not be enough, there was always something better. That was my moment of awakening. She was the mirror and the medicine was in the mirror. She couldn’t commit because she couldn’t commit to herself. It was nothing to do with me not being enough. She didn’t know her values and didn’t have boundaries. Neither did I. I was living the opposite expression but it was the same pattern. Our friendship ended with me having deep gratitude for her coming into my life and being my mirror. 

That day, I began looking at what I valued versus trying to prove I had value. In time, I committed to living my values, learned to value myself and that brought change. Some relationships ended and others changed and then eventually they ended as well. I began attracting new people into my life with no expectation of what those relationships would be. I trusted that if I loved myself enough to be committed to living my values and value myself that they would be exactly what they were meant to be.

I learned many truths on this journey:

1)    The more I love myself and am committed to expanding and growing love into the world, the deeper I love life. 

2)    The love I desperately sought was always there. 

3)    I had always been worthy of love. 

4)    Love is within me and all around me. 

5)    There is nothing to prove.

6)    Being loyal to my values supports my expansion and growth.