11. Staying With What Matters (Even When It’s Not Working Yet)

Staying with something that matters can feel difficult when progress is unclear or results aren't showing up in the way we hoped.

It's can be hard to know the difference between commitment and simply pushing through, between staying with something and staying stuck.

In this episode, Patricia Ezechie explores what it means to keep showing up for something important, and why commitment often looks much less certain and much less linear than we expect.

 In this episode:

• Why commitment doesn’t look like a straight line
• How to know when to keep going, and when something may need a different approach
• What it means to keep going when something doesn't seem to be working yet
• How to recognise the difference between commitment and being stuck
• Why staying with something doesn't always mean pushing harder
  
  

A reflection for you:

What is something that matters to you right now, that you’re being asked to stay with a little longer?

If this conversation resonated

If this episode resonated, you might find it helpful to go back to the previous episode on choice, and notice how the two connect.

And if you’d like to continue the conversation, you can follow Proactive Empowered Careers  so you don’t miss what comes next.

Read the accompanying article here 

Transcript

I’m Patricia Ezechie, and this is Proactive Empowered Careers. A space for thinking about careers differently, not as something separate from who you are, but as an expression of you and the life you want to live.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to this week’s episode.

In the last episode, we explored the idea of choice, and what it means to move forward even when you’re not certain about what you’re moving towards. But recognising that you have a choice, making that choice, and then actually staying with that choice are not the same thing. And that’s what I want to explore today, the whole idea of commitment.

Commitment is one of those words we think we understand. We tend to associate it with focus, discipline, sticking to a plan, and following something through. We almost imagine it as a straight line. You decide what you want, you go after it, you stay consistent, and eventually you get there. But real life doesn’t work like that. Careers don’t work like that, and change certainly doesn’t work like that either.

We don’t just decide, and then everything unfolds as planned. Things shift. You change. Your energy changes. Your circumstances change. Your clarity comes and goes, and confidence rises and falls. You might try something and it doesn’t quite work, so you try again. You question yourself, you pause, and then you come back to it. Sometimes you move forward, and sometimes it feels like you’ve gone backwards. My own experience has often been three or four steps forward, and then one, two, sometimes even three steps back.

This is where commitment actually lives. It doesn’t look like certainty, and it doesn’t look like constant momentum. It often looks like repetition. Doing something again and again, not because it’s working perfectly, but because you’ve decided that it matters.

I remember someone telling me they had applied for 39 roles and hadn’t got the promotion they wanted. Their instinct was to stop. But the answer wasn’t to stop, it was to keep going, forty, fifty, even a hundred times if that’s what they wanted. But with one important difference. Not repeating the same thing blindly. Not going into interview after interview without changing anything. We know what that is, doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. That’s not what this is.

This is about learning. Noticing what works and what doesn’t, adjusting, refining, and then going again with more information. Commitment isn’t just persistence, it’s persistence with awareness. It’s staying with something that matters to you, while continuing to learn and adjust as you go.

This is where everything we’ve talked about so far starts to connect. Listening to yourself, trusting what you hear, permission, congruence, choice, all of that gives you information about yourself. What commitment allows you to do is use that information. To keep moving. Sometimes forward, sometimes back, but still moving.

For me, commitment is about staying in relationship with what matters to you, even when things aren’t fully clear, even when they’re not easy, even when it doesn’t look like progress on the outside. It’s the willingness to keep going because it matters. And that part is important, because we’re not repeating things without reason. We’re doing it because what we’re moving towards matters to us.

I also want to pause here and challenge something. The idea that things should come together more easily than they do. That careers should unfold smoothly, that progress should be a straight line, that if something is right it should work quickly. That isn’t the reality for most people.

For most of us, there are pauses. There is doubt. There are false starts. We change direction. We change our minds. There are periods when we feel certain, and other periods when we don’t. Most of us are figuring it out as we go, trying things, adjusting, coming back, and reworking. Commitment is what keeps you moving through that process.

And this is where resilience comes in. Commitment isn’t just about continuing, it’s about how you continue. Resilience isn’t simply about pushing through, it’s about staying in the process without losing yourself in it. It’s knowing when to keep going, and also knowing when something needs to change. When to pause, when to step back, when to adjust your approach.

Because there is a difference between staying committed and staying stuck. Part of resilience is being able to tell the difference. Is this something I need to stay with and approach differently, or is this something that no longer fits? That requires honesty, and it requires being in relationship with yourself.

Commitment without awareness can be exhausting. Repeating the same thing over and over again without learning leads to burnout. But when awareness is there, something changes. It becomes sustainable. You evolve with it. You make more informed choices. You decide what is worth continuing.

So commitment becomes something you can stay with over time.

In the next episode, we’re going to pause for a moment, because we’ve covered a lot in these first episodes. I want to bring it all together in a way that helps you see more clearly what you’ve already uncovered. Because sometimes, before moving forward, it helps to see where you’ve already been.

Until then, take very good care of yourself.

This has been Proactive Empowered Careers. If today’s episode resonated, subscribe so you don’t miss what comes next. And remember, your career isn’t separate from who you are, it’s an expression of you and the life you want to live.