Today’s topic, public commitments. Hi, I’m Doug Holt with Author of Your Own Story, and this is your Daily Growth Hack, where each day we give you a tip, trick or insight to help you uplevel what we call the Five to Thrive that is your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, and your business.
Now when I’m talking about public commitments, what I’m talking about is putting yourself out there. Taking a goal, a dream, or even a small task and making it known publicly. Now, the restaurant industry figured this out many years ago. They used to have a real big problem with cancellations of reservations. They used to typically say you’d call up a restaurant and you’d say, “Yes, I’d like a reservation for six please,” and they would simply say, “Hey, call us back if you change your mind.”
Many people didn’t, and so one restaurateur figured out quickly that if he actually asked for a public commitment, and ask the individual, “Hey, if you can’t make it, will you call me back?” The person would say obviously, “Yes, I will,” making that public statement.
Now, it’s a one on one statement, that’s still a public statement. They found that cancellations dropped dramatically, not cancellations but even no-shows dropped dramatically. Now, you can take the same tip and apply it to your life.
I use this with my coaching clients and I use it with myself. Take a goal, a dream or something that you desire and say it out to the world publicly. Take these daily growth hacks, for example, these daily growth hacks take a lot of time and a lot of resources to produce yet I made a public commitment to produce over a year’s worth of daily growth hacks for free and give them out to the world.
Now, by making this public commitment, it has pushed me in doing this. Now all my excuses, the lighting is incorrect, the sound is incorrect, I’ll have to produce these in my office because it makes it easier for me to be the author of my own story, yeah, that’s not the perfect environment is incorrect. I can make all of these excuses but instead I hung it out as a public commitment, I made this public commitment to my colleagues, I made this public commitment to friends, and I put it on social media.
Essentially, painting myself into a corner where if I didn’t produce these on a daily basis, people would know I was lying. People would know I’m falling short of my goal. Also, this allows the people around me to rally around my cause, to support me.
You see, I have a family. I have work. I run five different companies so it’s very easy for me to say, “You know what? I don’t have time for these daily growth hacks,” or, “I can’t do this.” Now, I’ve made this public statement and now I have the support of my wife, the support of my family, the support of my colleagues, the support of my employees to take the time to produce these for you.
This is an easy hack that all of us can use yet very few of us take the opportunity to do it. Why? It’s scary. What if we fail? “Doug, what if I mess up? What if I put this goal out to lose ten pounds in 90 days and I don’t do it?” That’s okay. You’re striving for it. To me, what’s not okay with being the Author of Your Own Story is making excuses of why you’re not doing it. Falling short of trying to achieve your goals.
You see, I don’t care if you don’t hit a goal, as long as you’re working towards it, as long as you tried. If you tried to hit a goal, you’re going to become a better person along the process.
I’m going to ask you this today, look at your Five to Thrive. Take out your journal, write them down. What are your goals in those five areas? Now, if you’ve gone to authorofyourownstory.com and take in our free seven-day course on how to jumpstart to becoming an author of your own story, you’ve already worked on your 30-day game. This is a fantastic experience. What I’m going to ask you to do is take it one step further. At all your five areas, publicly tell people what you’re striving for. If it scares you to put this out there, all the better.
Doing things that scare you are the things that allow you to grow. Growth is outside of your comfort zone, not inside it. Make your public commitment. One of my public commitments is to be able to speak conversational Spanish within 90 days.
Another one of my commitments is at 40 to play competitive sports again. Another one of my commitments is to grow my fifth new business to generate over a hundred thousand dollars each and every month within 90 days.
I tell you this because these are public commitments. Any area of relationships within 90 days, I plan to produce a book for my child that he can read when he’s older. These are my public commitments and I’m making them publicly to you. Now that you know, you can rally around me.
You can even say that these are ridiculous. It doesn’t matter, I’m putting this out publicly to the world and I’m asking you to do the same. Look, if you need a safer place to jumpstart off of, go to the Author of Your Own Story community where people just like you are making these public commitments on a regular basis where you can be supported by like-minded individuals who are here to encourage you to live the life of your dreams.
Make your commitments today, make them publicly. This will help you to achieve your goals. That’s it for me today. Make sure you go out and make those public commitments. I can’t wait to see them.
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