Transcript:
Hi, this is Darla LeDoux of Aligned Entrepreneurs and welcome to today’s lesson in the truth about commitment, or how to control absolutely everything. I know that sounds extreme but if you’re like any of my clients, you have a little bit of a control freak in you, right? I know I do. This is a tool that’s going to help you to restore control when you feel like things aren’t going the way you want. I’ll just give you an example. This is our diagram. This is an iceberg. As we know, you can see just a portion of the iceberg and then there is much more going on beneath the surface.
The same thing is true for your commitment. Up here on top, what we think about, what we know, what we say, what we consciously believe we’re committed to, I call those your conscious commitments. For example, a lot of my clients and a lot of entrepreneurs have a conscious commitment to make money and make a difference. Does that sound like you? We want to make money, but we also want to have an impact on the world. So you sit down in your business to create something that can make money and make a difference, and you move forward and yet it’s just not working quite how you wanted it to. Have you ever had that happen? I’ll give you an example in a minute. The reason even though you have a conscious commitment going on of I’m really into making money and making a difference, you have something else going on here under the surface. I call that a hidden commitment. Hidden commitments are what generally run the show. As you can see, there is a lot more mass here in the hidden commitment than there is in the conscious commitment.
What does that mean? We really often get results that are different from the thing that we say that we want, because there is a hidden commitment going on. Clear? Let’s just give an example of what a hidden commitment might look like. One of the common hidden commitments that we see in entrepreneurs is a commitment to staying safe. If you’re committed to staying safe, that commitment is going to conflict with making money and making a difference. Why? Because for a lot of people, making a lot of money is not safe. How many of you heard your parents judge people who had a lot of money. For a lot of you, making a difference in the way that you really want. Putting your authentic work out there into the world and saying the truth, what’s true for you isn’t consistent with staying safe, because maybe you saw someone being judged or ridiculed for actually being themselves.
Staying safe at the end of the day when it’s hidden from our view and we don’t even realize that, that’s our true commitment, staying safe wins out. That’s why we’re so frustrated, because we think and believe we’re committed to this, but we keep getting results that are consistent with this. Staying safe looks different for different people. For some of you, it might look like needing to be right. Ever heard that one? For some of you it might look like, needing to be liked. How many of you know you have a commitment to being liked that gets in the way of making money? Because you want to offer a discount or you want to do things that aren’t in your genius. All of that stuff.
Another great way staying safe can show up is hiding. I’ve had all of these but I know hiding was a big one for me in my household, I learned that when things didn’t feel safe, I would just hide. I would stay in my room, I would be quiet, I would say anything, I’d just get out of the way, because at that time it really did keep me safe. Here is the thing, these hidden commitments, they aren’t serving you anymore. They served you then. They really did help you make it through childhood, make it to adulthood. Maybe you did great in a career like I did in my past career by doing some of these things, but they aren’t serving you to get to this commitment, so you’ve got a conflict.
Let me give you an example of how this shows up for a lot of clients. Meet Sally. Sally is like a lot of you and she wants to really make a difference and make money. She goes online and she buys a course, and she’s sitting behind her computer, and she’s doing all her lessons like a good student, and she gets to a place where she says, I’m Sally … She learns a formula, I’m Sally and I help …. fill in the blank. How many of you have learned a formula something like that to give you a elevator pitch? Or how to talk about what you do? Sally is a great student. She comes up with something she feels really great about. Remember her conscious commitment is to make money and make a difference.
So, Sally leaves the house … You want to leave the house, she goes out to a networking meeting, or an event or a party even. She gets to the point where she’s asked to talk about what do you do?. Sally stands up and she does her little elevator pitch, I’m Sally and I help …. and then she waits. Here’s what happens. The conscious commitment is going on up here when she leaves the house. She knows what she wants to create, but what happens, especially under stress, the hidden commitment takes over. Remember Sally’s hidden commitment is to staying safe by hiding out. This scenario happens, she gives her talk.
When the hidden commitment is running the show, here is what will happen, this person, whoever it is, probably not an ideal client, will come on over to Sally and say, “I think you need ….” Usually this is a man I don’t know why but a lot of us women tend to take the opinions of me even more seriously. He comes up and says, “I think you need blah.” What he’s basically saying, is all of this is wrong. If your conscious commitment is running the show, you just let that roll off your back. You’re like I’m committed to making money and making a difference, next and you do talk to this person, but if your hidden commitment is running the show, in other words if that triggers everything in you to go, “Oh my gosh, I have to stay safe.”
What will you do? Instead of talking to these people. This one over here’s probably your ideal client, what do you do? You get out of there as quickly as possible, you go back, you buy another online course, because you said clearly this one was not right. Let me find another way to say it and the cycle continues. Until you get really clear about what this hidden commitment is. Until you deal with the root cause of your reason for wanting to stay safe, to avoid being seen, to avoid being heard, to avoid standing up and saying what’s true for you, this cycle will continue and we really don’t want that. In all of the work I do with clients, we always start here. We start with who are you being in the matter? What are you energetically committed to? Even if your word say you’re committed to this, Sally’s energy was saying, come collect me. Come save me. Come stop me. Come help me hide. She invited that situation in.
In another blog, we talk about how do you break this cycle? I call it the cycle of proving, but for now what I want you to really pay attention to is when you feel like Sally in this scenario. When you feel that, for me it’s like a clench in the gut. Like I did something wrong. Oh my gosh. When you feel that, I want you to just start to notice what might be the hidden commitment that’s running the show. This is Darla LeDoux with Aligned Entrepreneurs and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Have a fantastic and profitable week.