I’m going to be telling you about making decisions and why it’s important to stick with them. Something I will say ahead of getting into this is if the decision was one that was harmful but bad for you or maybe harmful for other people feel free to just ditch it. If it’s a bad idea, don’t follow through on it. I’m talking about where you’ve made a commitment, you may be, promising something to somebody else and withdrawing from that now is going to cause either you or them some sadness or distress at home. For example, a friend invites you to spend some time with them and you say ‘yes’, you commit to it but you then get another special opportunity, which is better or much more fun – what do you do?

This better offer might be a once-in-a-lifetime offer but you’ve already made a commitment to somebody else I would like to suggest that you stick with your original commitment unless you’re able to have like a conversation with someone whom you say actually you should come to or you know let me explain this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’d really like to go can we make this up another time but if doing that is going cause distress to this other person because you drop them in favour of something that was more pretty and shiny then I would say that’s not okay.

If you promise somebody something like ‘I’m going do this on this day at this time. I got you, I got your back’ if you make that kind of a promise to someone don’t bail out. Don’t break your promise because you can’t be bothered or because you forgot. If you enter into something like a trip, there are going to be certain boundaries, limitations and rules that surround you, that you, have to accept because when you enter into that kind of environment, you’re agreeing ‘yeah I’m going to accept these rules I want to be here’. You cannot then get upset when you set outside those rules and boundaries, you cannot get everything your own way. 

Here is the ‘why’ part of why you must stick to your decisions and commitments. When you have that experience where you kind of hit something and go ‘oh no, I think I’d rather be here instead’ but you decide to stick to your original commitments anyway it teaches you how to cope with the circumstances that you had already accepted. Something quite beautiful can also come out of that when you allow yourself to accept those difficult situations that you would rather just drop in favour of something better when you accept them, it causes you to become more creative in your thinking because your brain’s going to have to go ‘oh no, I need to be able to cope with this, I’d rather wiggle out of it to be quite honest but instead, I’m going to have to cope’.

On an emotional level, you’re going to get more creative with how you start to manage your emotions but you might also start to come up with some new and resourceful ways to be able to cope within the parameters of that situation. Within the situation itself, it’s going to cause you to think in a different way because instead of running away from it, you’re actually going to go ‘alright, let’s see how we make this work’.  Let’s make the best of it because you’ve stuck with what was your original commitment the original thing that you’ve decided to do. 

The other important thing about doing that is it provides you with a really important resource for when you are older. In my experience in life, I have come to find that some of the most unpleasant adults that I’ve met are the ones who have always been able to get their own way. It’s not okay to be that way, people need to be able to trust your word when you say ‘I’m going to do this’! When they trust their belief in you, there will increase their respect for you.  It’s about you becoming an authentic person. Someone that we can trust someone that we believe has integrity and that’s what I want for you.  I want to know if you can commit to a decision if you’re one of those people that genuinely mean what they say and promise.

By Gemma Bailey
www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org