How commitment works
A guide to the basic mechanics of setting your mind to something
A big part of my work on clarity in recent years has been trying to find a vocabulary that works. Ever since my editor at The Face magazine made me read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language it’s been very hard to write anything without thinking about whether the words are simple and clear. George’s rules:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
That’s why, when I talk about being clear, I talk about needs and wants and ideas and work. And, as far as possible, I don’t talk about key performance indicators or intrinsic motivations or whatever else. Partly, it’s to keep it simple. Partly, it’s because I like using words I can feel — in the hope other people will be able to feel them too. If you talk about help, I can feel it. If you talk about collaboration, I can’t. And, partly, it’s because the other thing that was instilled in me working at The Face all those years ago, was how wonderful it is to make things that work for everyone. So, I try to keep things simple.
I have the feeling things get complicated when we end up using words we can’t feel. Maybe it’s because, when the words are totally abstract and theoretical (especially words like ‘abstract’ and ‘theoretical’), they can stay in some disembodied place — in a world where words just interact with other words, without ever being tested against the reality of the present moment. (This is how it feels when I read my old university essays.)
Quite often, I find myself wending my way down the rabbit hole of an online etymological dictionary, to try to break words open and see what was once alive inside them. Like, ‘initiate’ is made up of a word meaning ‘in’ and a word meaning ‘go’. And, when I hear that, it’s like “Oh… it just means ‘go in’. OK… I can do something with that.” It’s as if there are a tonne of words where I only use them because I learned how to use them by their context…and I never actually got to the root of what they mean. So, of course, I know how to use the word ‘initiate’, but maybe reconnecting it to a physical sense of ‘going in’ means I can feel it more.
And, in my obsessive following of etymological threads, it seems to me that the thread basically always ends up with something physical. So, ‘abstract’ comes from ‘draw/drag’ and ‘away’. (Which makes sense.) ‘Complicated’ comes from ‘folding’ and ‘together’. (Which makes sense too.) And, more and more, as I end up with these physical explanations (explain — from flatten and out), the more it feels like there’s a whole underlying logic that I can feel. Or, not even a logic — there’s just a recognisable physical world underneath everything. A world of folding and flattening and weaving and in and out and up and down. And — man — it feels like such a relief to get down to that level. Like, my brain has been having to make some extra effort to maintain a web of abstract words and has been having to think about how they all might fit together. But when it gets down to the level of flattening and folding and in and out, there’s no effort required. I can see what is being talked about. I know what it looks like when something is folded or flattened. I can feel it. My hands know how to flatten and fold — and they know how it feels. And just talking about flattening and folding, my hands almost prepare themselves to do those movements. Readying the muscles for this move and that. I feel it.
And when I teach people how to be clear, this is what I want them to learn. Not to leave with a whole bunch of checklists and guidelines and principles and theories… But to have that same relief of having a felt sense of how everything fits together. To find the physical reality that lies underneath the web of words we use to talk about who we are and how we are and what we’re doing and why.
How do you talk about what you feel in your body? You could talk about sensations or emotions. You could talk about conditioning. Or trauma. You could talk about compulsions or anxieties. But, it seems to me, that most of these words only label what’s going on. They don’t make sense of it. I want a way of talking about what’s going on that makes sense of it. A physical map. A logic of what happens and how and why.
So, over the years, I’ve been inventing terminology and seeing if it catches on. Trying to provide a simple language that makes it easier to make sense of and navigate the world of ideas and feelings and work and … everything. So, a very clear idea is ‘the perfect articulation of a need’. ‘Initiative mapping’ is ‘a way to see who is helping who with what’. And identity yoga is ‘a way to become more flexible with the stories we tell about ourselves’.
I have a particular soft spot for ‘identity yoga’ as a concept, because (hopefully) it does exactly that job of reconnecting something apparently abstract and theoretical with something physical, something you can feel.
The logic goes like this:
When you arrive at yoga class, you’re all bent out of shape and stiff and inflexible.
And the reason you’re all bent out of shape comes down to muscles.
Muscles are meant to be able to tense and relax.
That’s why they’re useful.
Because they can do both.
If all your muscles were only tense the whole time, you’d be immobilised. Likewise if they were relaxed all the time.
Being able to tense and relax your muscles is what makes you flexible.
So, at the beginning of yoga class, you find yourself confronted with all the muscles that are not so happy to move back and forth between tense and relaxed. Maybe you sit down a lot. Maybe you never do any backbends in your everyday life. (Why would you?) And (as far as I can understand it) that means you have a bunch of muscles that spend most of their time being really relaxed and a bunch of other muscles that spend most of their time being really stressed. So, those muscles end up not being so good at their job of tensing and relaxing as needed.
I guess the ideal state for a yogi is that all of your muscles are equally happy being tense or being relaxed — and very happy about moving from one to the other. The opportunity that opens up is a kind of limitless power of shapeshifting — pretzel twists and strong balances and inversions and all sorts. You get to use your body to its full capacity.
Now, identity yoga follows exactly the same principles — all of it — but applies to ideas, rather than muscles. And I genuinely think you can port everything you know about how muscles work and apply it to how ideas work. It seem to me that exactly the same physical rules apply.
The logic goes like this:
When it comes to telling stories about ourselves, there are certain positions that we favour.
I like to think I am a nice person and I am polite and I am successful (say).
And maybe there are certain positions that are just really useful most of the time in our daily lives.
Like, I am a respectable member of society.
Or I am liked by the people around me.
And being able to adopt those positions is as useful and practical as being able to sit in a chair or stretch to get something off a high shelf.
But… if we get attached to only those positions, then we become less flexible.
And sometimes it’s important not to be polite.
(Maybe your house is on fire.)
Sometimes it’s important not to be successful.
(Maybe you’re trying to do something you really shouldn’t be trying to do.)
Maybe it’s more accurate to say — sometimes there are things that are more important than being polite or successful.
And, if we’re stuck to one idea, then we end up not doing the thing that’s more important.
So, like normal yoga, the purpose of identity yoga is to become more flexible by adopting unfamiliar positions.
I am not polite.
I am not successful.
I am not a nice person…
Not for the sake of it — but because it allows us to be more flexible.
And being more flexible allows us to do what’s important.
So — the point is, ‘identity yoga’ is kind of a fun way of talking about something. But it’s also a literal bit of naming. Because I want to convey that our ideas work in exactly the same way as our bodies. I want to convey that understanding the physical world — understanding cause and effect — helps us to understand how our minds work. Because… our minds are not separate from nature and understanding nature helps us to understand everything.
Practising identity yoga is just a matter of saying I am and I am not.
I am successful. I am not successful.
I am free. I am not free.
And this is a physical practice.
Saying I am successful and meaning it, you adopt a certain inner position. Your body knows what successful feels like — or has a kind of physical shorthand for it. Maybe you stand up a little straighter. Maybe you fill your lungs a little more. Relax your shoulders. Something.
Saying I am not successful — there’s a different physical posture. Maybe a little deflated. Maybe you pucker a corner of your lip into a resigned smile. Maybe you look down and to the left. Maybe you dip your head.
There is a difference between reading out some words on a page and meaning it. The funny thing with I am is that it seems to be particularly hard not to mean it. Here’s how I am works:
Saying ‘I am’ is how we hold onto ideas.
Saying ‘I am not’ is how we let go of them.
It’s not even a phrase that really means anything. It’s not like ‘the blue horse’ or ‘the gigantic mango’. It’s not so much that it conveys information (like colour or size or whatever). It’s more that it has a function. It connects a piece of information to you. There is a thing — like, a quarterback in an American football game. And then there is me. And if I say I am a quarterback in an American football game, then I connect one with the other. I identify with the idea. And being a quarterback in an American football game is definitely an unfamiliar position for me. But, by identifying with it, I can’t help but feel how it might feel. And — turns out — I like it.
And the use of all this playful identifying and dis-identifying is that we get to try on different outfits. We get to play different roles. In normal yoga, the endlessly, effortlessly flexible yogi unlocks the limitless power of shapeshifting. In identity yoga, the same thing happens. My bias towards not being a quarterback in an American football game keeps me in my armchair typing in a laptop. But if, like the ideal yogi, I am as happy to entertain the idea of being a quarterback as not being a quarterback, then maybe I’ll go to the park. What starts as a practice of holding on and letting go ends up with having an open mind. That is the reward of knowing how ideas work. That is the reward of having a physical sense of what it means to hold on to or let go of an idea.
Yoga means union. It comes from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘yeug’ — meaning to join.
Identity means oneness. It comes from the Latin idem — meaning same. Which comes from the Latin ‘id’ meaning ‘that one’.
And to commit (yes — finally, we get to commitment) — to commit means ‘to unite’. From the Latin committere. From com “with, together” and mittere “to release, let go; send, throw”.
If we get beneath the words, the pictures are all the same. There is a kind of physical reality of how our feelings and our ideas and our actions flow one in to the other. And, in trying to describe that physical reality, I cobble together a vocabulary. Of needs and wants and ideas and flexibility and focus and initiative and clarity. And the intention is to show clearly how things work. The vocabulary isn’t important. The important thing is getting down to that level — at the very roots of our language — where the pictures are all the same. Not just to garner a kind of understanding of the principles of commitment. But to have an intimate experience of committing. For it to be as self-evident and obvious as knowing how to balance a cup of coffee on a table. Or to tie or untie a shoelace.
When you commit to something, you unite with it. You tie yourself to it. You hold onto it. When you un-commit, you separate yourself from it. You untie the knot. You let go. And the art of committing is as simple and straightforward as opening and closing your hand. To say I am doing this is to commit. To say I am not doing this is to let go. On. Off. Tie your shoelace. Untie your shoelace.
I can give you step by step instructions for how to commit. I can tell you how to make a commitment and stick to it. (You can read about most of that here.) But committing is really nothing more than learning to say ‘I am’.
Our identity is nothing more than the sum of all of our commitments. Every time we have joined two things together. United with something. Identified with something. Said “if I do this, then it means I have to do that”. Said “if I don’t do that, then it means I am such-and-such a person”. Said “no matter what happens, I am going to do that.” Every time we have taken two things and prioritised one over the other. “If I have to choose between x and y, I choose y.” Our identity is the sum of everything we’ve already said ‘I am’ to — and not yet said ‘I am not’. Everything we ever took hold of.
And commitment works by navigating that endless web.
If you want to understand commitment, then you have to become intimately aware of when you hold on and when you let go. To pay very close attention to exactly when you take hold of something — a new idea, a new plan, a new direction, a new ambition. To pay very close attention to exactly when you let go of something — an old dream, an old relationship, a previous life.
And part of that becoming intimately aware is knowing that the way you hold on and let go in your mind, in your body, is no different to any kind of holding on or letting go. Leaves falling from trees in autumn. A seedling pushing through the ground toward the sunlight.
There is power in commitment. And there is power in flexibility. Different kinds of power. The power of a rock standing fast and the river flowing around it. Or the power of long grasses blowing back and forth in a storm. To understand commitment is to understand the rock, the long grasses, the river and the storm.
For more on how to be clear, see www.howtobeclear.com.
