The PROGRESS Commitment System

Your vision is the lighthouse. Your commitments are the buoys — the navigational markers you place all along the way. They are here and now. They constantly tell you exactly where you are and guide you farther.

Buoys are built a lot like lighthouses. They are anchored to the bottom by your beliefs, they have a structure which is your vision, and they have lights which call you to their purpose.

When Dr. Russ kayaked around Long Island he arrived at nine lighthouses and passed countless buoys. What he learned was that the buoys made the hardest days easier, because there were small, attainable objectives all along the way. Every buoy he passed left him feeling accomplished and energized — and you can imagine how valuable that shot of energy was on a day requiring 40 miles of paddling in rough seas.

Goals should be big and audacious and live in the tower of your lighthouse. Commitments are for doing right now.

Before you make a commitment, ask: is this commitment helping me to P*R*O*G*R*E*S*S?

• Purpose — What is the purpose of this commitment?
• Ready — How ready am I to do this?
• Objective — Does this commitment have a measurable objective?
• Gradual — Is this commitment gradual enough?
• Realistic — Is this commitment realistic?
• Exact — Is this commitment exact enough?
• Schedule — Is this commitment on a schedule?
• Sustainable — Is this commitment sustainable?

Sustainability deserves special attention. For your commitments to work in the long term, you need to live them. You need to be confident and comfortable that these are things you will likely do for as long as you have to — in the case of true lifestyle change, that may mean for the rest of your life. By definition, commitments that are not sustainable are abandoned.

Ask yourself whether you can envision a world where your commitments have developed into lifelong habits that form the behaviors which define you. When habits are consistent with how you define yourself as a person, they require little effort to maintain.

Schedule at least 45 minutes a week to write and review your commitments. Then read your commitments every day — reading them keeps you on track and helps you remember what you actually committed to do.

Rate your readiness and your confidence out of ten. Anticipate the barriers you will face and write down how you plan to eliminate each one. Keep a grid and check it off every time you complete the commitment. You would be surprised how motivating it is to earn the right to put a check on that grid.

You cannot fail unless that is what you choose. You choose failure when you choose not to learn from something that does not go your way. When you choose to learn, you choose to succeed.

Your initial plan might fall flat. So what — as long as you remain open to restructuring, reformulating and re-engineering your plans, you will not fail. If your plan is not working, you are not the problem. The plan is the problem. Focus on fixing that.

At the end of the week, ask: did I accomplish this 100%? If you did, celebrate. If you did not, no good ever comes from beating up on yourself. What happens when you beat up on yourself is that your energy and confidence decrease — and then your capacity to make new, bold commitments goes down with them. You end up lowering your expectations, lowering your commitments, and maybe giving up on making them at all. Then nothing happens.

So if it was not 100%, how much of it did you do? 40%? 60%? 80%? If you are not sure, guess. Then celebrate that.

Sometimes your real accomplishment is hidden and you need to go find it. Write a list of what you DID accomplish on the way to the commitment. (Thanks to Blair Singer and his program Little Voice Mastery for this technique.)

Say you committed to walk a mile three days last week, and you actually walked a half mile on two days. That looks like falling short. But now you know exactly how long it takes to walk half a mile, which helps you plan better. You felt great afterward. You got your wife to walk with you and had good conversation. You stopped snacking before dinner on the days you walked, because you walked right before dinner. Your stress dropped. All of that would have stayed hidden if you had not looked.

For extra value, record yourself talking about what you did accomplish, then listen for where you light up. If you get excited about an achievement that was not part of your objective, chances are that was your real desire — your subconscious wanted it. That is an excellent way to find new directions for your commitments.

Finally, list at least three lessons the commitment taught you. Lessons that tell you that you are an idiot, that you suck, or that you are not good enough do not count. They will not help you progress, so they are useless.