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When I met Lauren, her head was in a knot around things she wanted to do, but felt like were too big of a commitment.

I asked Lauren what the word ‘commitment’ meant to her.

“It’s a trap”, she blurted.

I knew what she meant.

After 3 years of living out of a backpack and only buying one way airfare, the idea of commitment had once freaked me out too.

Lauren then told me how she had a “commitment phobia” and that she knew she had to “deal with it”.

But when I settled in London, it didn’t take any therapy to change things for me.

In fact, today commitment is one of the most powerful tools I have – and I use it often.

Fearlessly too, I might add.

Like me, Lauren was afraid to make a commitment because she thought that it meant she would be stuck living a particular life.

Like a 55 year old accountant who hates his job and has hated it for the past 30 years and is only doing it because he’s been doing it since he decided to…at 18 years of age.

(Dude…at 55, do you really want to trust an 18 year old with decisions about how to live your life? WTF!?)

Lauren thought that once she had decided on one thing, then she would be ‘stuck in a commitment trap’.

So I told her:

The commitment trap is an illusion.

Commitment is not about being trapped in anything, especially in a particular way of living your life.

Commitment is the decision to stop considering alternative options.

It is the willingness to choose a particular direction and move towards it, despite external influences to the contrary.

Commitment is NOT the abandonment of your heart. It is a tool which liberates your deepest truth.

When you commit, you may at some point choose to change your heading, but the winds will not change it for you.

In commitment, there is no trap.

Instead there is freedom that comes from following the heading of your heart’s desire – your true north.

Lauren got it.

Fearlessly, she then made a decision that changed the course of her life forever.

Just a few degrees can change everything…when you are willing to truly commit.