Bloom Your Mind

Ep 109: Commitment

• Marie McDonald

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Recently, we celebrated my parents' 50th anniversary, which means they've been together for half a century! If you think about it, their relationship is an idea they made real and stayed committed to it for 50 years and counting. 

Those lovebirds made me ask the question: what is it really that makes our ideas a reality? Is it luck? Is it talent? 

In this episode, I talk about the most common beliefs people think about, and why commitment will make your ideas real above all else.

No matter what your goals are, may this episode inspire you to go after your dreams with more belief in yourself and your beautiful blooming idea.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • How commitment, resilience, and perseverance makes ideas real
  • Using the regenerative design cycles to make a clearer path for your goals
  • How failures can become a way to make changes and improvements 
  • Why it’s important to think about your commitments, why you made them, and to make sure they match your goals

Mentioned in this episode: 

How to connect with Marie:

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Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Hello everybody and welcome to episode 109 of the bloom your mind podcast and happy new year. If you're listening to this in real time. 

I gave some sort of like ideas about 90-day goals and three-month cycles in the last podcast episode, cause I know a lot of people are focused on the new year as a time to kind of start over and I shared my thoughts on that. And you know I had this family discussion on the first day of the year. 

We were all in the car we're driving to this beach called Torrey Pines by our house, which we love when we do hikes at. I actually do hikes most weekends there, sometimes with friends, sometimes with family, sometimes by myself, and I was asking my family, you know cause it's like a half hour ride way there and the way back. We were doing some sort of like reflections on the year, and I asked my kids and my husband like. 

We took turns, all sharing what we thought about these questions, and we talked about what were the people and experiences and communities and things that we did, that we experienced, that we were around last year that gave us positive feelings, which fed us energy back. 

And if you've listened to the regenerative design episode, or designing a regenerative year, you know how much I think it is important to choose to put our energy into things that give us energy back and how we use a regenerative design cycle in the Bloom Room and in my work to make our ideas real in a regenerative way and to reflect on when things break down, which part of the cycle is breaking down and how can we tweak and iterate instead of throw things away or feel shame or failure. 

How can we tweak things and make the energy out match the energy in, and how can we say no to things that don't give us energy back? So, I was asking these questions to my family what are the things that are, you know? 

In this question, it was basically asking them what are the regenerative things that you've been a part of? Who are the people that are regenerative to you? What are the communities, what are the experiences that are regenerative to you and y'all? 

My family is close and we spend a lot of time together my two kids, my eight-year-old son, my 12-year-old daughter and my husband and I have been together for 15 years, right, but hearing each member of the family express what was most significant to them in terms of giving them energy, giving them positive feelings and experiences was surprising for each one of them, which I thought was so cool. 

You know we know each other as well as you can know people, but it was surprising to hear what they said and also really clarifying to hear what they said to the next question, which is you know what are the people? 

Experiences, ways you've spent your time, communities, things that have drained your energy, gave you negative emotions and feelings, and so to hear each one of them reflect on that really helped me understand where they're at and like how I can support them. 

And, of course, it gave me space to share with them what's giving me energy, what's feeling good and what's not, plans around, what we're going to do more of, less of, and start and stop doing, and there are start, stop doing, do more of, do less of, and there are lots of different models of this. A couple of people have actually sent me models of this this year and every year they send me these kind of end of year things, because they know how much I love to reflect, and so in the bloom room we always use this model that is about regenerative energy and whatever reflection you do, whether that's something that you've done every year. I used to follow my CEO. 

Glenn trip used to do this great reflection a set of questions that he would send out when I was working in the design thinking world and the innovation world, education world, and he would send those out to us, and we would do those. And there's lots of different models out there, but I highly recommend this reflection on the energy in, the energy out, and then using that to determine what you're going to focus on next in your life. And the point here of sharing this with you is that even when you know people really well, or even if you think you know yourself really well, taking the time to actually answer the questions always brings up a lot of new insight. 

You know, another thing that I just experienced after an incredible holiday season was my parents' 50th anniversary. So, there we are in this beautiful outdoor venue, and I did a lot of the work to put on this event for them, so I had been integral in all the planning of this right and it's the day of, and we're under these Oak trees and the. You know, there's this like light dust. In Southern California is always smells and feels like home to me. 

There's a beautiful pond and the lights like reflecting off the pond and I'm looking out and I'm standing up to give a speech with my husband and I'm looking out there like kids hanging from the branches of the oak trees, the light shining off the water. There's these, you know, flowers, this beautiful dessert table and all of these faces smiling up at me to celebrate my parents having been together for 50 years of partnership. 

I was describing to my eight-year-old son he's like what are we doing? And I'm like I was describing it to him, and he was like okay. And I was like wait, but to put this in context, you've been alive for eight years and he's like a fully formed human, you know. He's like knows who he is, and I'm like you've been alive for eight years. They've been married for 50 years, half a century. He's like whoa. 

So, there I am, looking out across the audience, seeing cousins and my brothers and their beautiful families and nieces and nephews, and all these faces, you know, faces of people that were around when I was a little girl, we had this community. There was this couple. One of them was first generation Italian. The other one was born in Germany and immigrated here, English professor and a sculptor, and I see their faces and they're smiling at me. 

Later on, they told me these stories of taking care of us when we were kids while my mom went and hiked and ran and, you know, shook off the parenting. They told me those stories with tears in their eyes, right, just watching me up there as an adult and meeting my children, right. So, I see their faces out in the audience. 

I see friends that have played music with my parents for years, made music, made rock and roll or blues or folk music with them. There are people that get up and talk on the mic that you know were some of those musicians or go to my parents' church that my dad has built houses for. 

There are people out in the crowd, tons of people that my mom was a therapist, and they were her supervision group, right, they were people that she collaborated with as colleagues. Their grandkids are out there with holes in their tights, climbing trees and giggling and playing. Each of their children come up to the mic and give a speech from the heart. There are people in this audience that they've partied with and, in their younger years, and traveled with internationally. 

You know cousins and friends, and everyone in that audience experienced the ups and downs of the commitment that they made to each other, that they held for 50 years. So let me just say that, no matter how you feel about the institution of marriage, that's beside the point. 

You can feel you know there's lots of different opinions about that institution, but to them, they chose to marry each other, they chose to get married and then they chose to commit to it, and the thing that I see as so significant in this is the result that they created over time, right, as a result of that commitment. They experienced incredible return on being committed to that thing, and I saw the evidence of it in all of these people, this community that they shared their life with. That has witnessed them going through their life. 

But what I see in so many people who have an idea that they want to make real because what is a marriage? But an idea for a relationship for a partner that you're with your whole life, right, relationship for a partner that you're with your whole life, right. That's an idea, and they made it real for 50 years. 

And what I see so many people do is have an idea that they want to make real, but they think that the thing that's going to work to make the idea real is that they're going to be good at something right, that they're just going to have a natural talent at it right. But that is very rarely the case. That's not the thing that takes you 50 years down the road. That's not the thing that makes your idea real, because people are good at things and not good at things. 

But the thing that makes the idea real is the commitment to the idea, to the idea. People think that in order to make an idea real, everybody else has to get it or like it right, but that's not it. It's that you are committed to the idea. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. You can get feedback, you can get, you know, other people's opinions, but what really matters is your commitment. 

Sometimes people think that it needs to work the first time or that they need to experience a lot of success right away, and those are definitely not what will make your idea real. It takes a lot of failure to figure things out, and it takes things breaking down so you can fix them and come up with a better product or a better way of doing things or a better habit or a better relationship. It's got to break down along the way. Commitment is easy when your idea is the only thing that you have to focus on. 

Let's think about if all you had to do was be fit and stay in good health and that's it. We could all probably do that, I mean most of us, right? If all we had to do in our day was eat well and exercise, we could probably stay, you know, in pretty healthy form. But that's not true. There's so many things we have to do. We have to keep up with our lives, we have to keep up with our relationships, we have families, we have work, whatever. 

If all we had to do is keep up with our friendships, that's the only thing we had to worry about. Everything else was just on autopilot. We would have amazing friendships all the time, whether priorities compete with us, keeping up with people that we love and showing up for them and remembering what's going on for them, or being able to show up as our best self all the time. If our only thing was our career, I'm sure we could have very successful careers. 

Some people choose that, and some people experience that it's at the expense of other things like their health or their families or relationships. Same thing with partners, with long-term partners right, if it was the only thing we had to do. Those partnerships are pretty easy in the beginning usually, but then finances or careers or moves or other people or life logistics or children or whatever come into place. 

So, making an idea real is not about it being easy and it's not about it working right away. It's about committing to the thing. It's about saying no to other things that get in the way of that commitment. It's about failing. That's what it looks like is failing and going right, continuing to move on, failing and looking at what worked, what didn't work, tweaking, iterating and moving on, putting energy in and then sometimes lagging and losing confidence. 

It looks like losing belief in your ideas sometimes and creating your belief again and again when it's not automatically there for you. So, whether that's a commitment to a marriage or a partnership, like we're looking at with my parents, or whether it's a business I run my own business right now whether it's a health habit, whether it's a move or a career change. 

What will make it real above all else, is commitment to the thing. To carry you through the ups and downs and staying committed takes work, and it takes work especially when it doesn't feel fun or easy. And if you're having a question about whether this idea is worth it and you want to stay committed to it, look at the regenerative cycle. What is the energy that you get back? 

For my parents, it was kids. It was houses that they've built, it was this beautiful community. It was a million hilarious stories. It's the whole sea of faces looking up at them that has witnessed their life. It's being known, you know, by another human being through companionship for their whole life. For them, the energy they got back was very much worth what they put in. 

So, for you, my question today is what are you committed to and why? And that's what I've got for you this week. I will see you next week. 

If you like what you’re hearing on the podcast, you've got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts, and we apply them to real life. In a community where we have each other's backs, and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. 

I'll see you in the Bloom Room.