057 – Confession: I was a commitment-phobe

Change your perception of what you're looking at and everything changes.
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Hi, my name is Georgio Genaus
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And this is the how to do Life podcast.
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If you've ever felt that.
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No matter what you try, something is missing.
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Everything.
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Then you're in the right place.
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My anger is podcast is to begin filling in those blanks for you.
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So open your mind to get ready, because I'm about to show you an entirely different way to look at.
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Your life.
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And once you've seen it, you cannot see it.
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So let's get started.
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Welcome to another episode of the podcast.
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Yes.
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Now in this episode I wanna talk about making commitments and sticking with them.
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The reason being is because something that I experienced in my past and something that I get asked.
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A lot about.
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Is how to deal with being a commitment phobe, which is really fascinating to me, because when I was younger and it was something that I.
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Was wrestling with.
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I was convinced that I was the only one that was like that because the people around me.
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Tended to be comfortable with just making a commitment to some kind of an event or doing something, or following through with something, and had no concerns about it.
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They just follow through with it and get it done, whereas I would, um and ah, R and I would procrastinate and I would experience all kinds of different emotions about not wanting to do it.
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In fact, I'd experience a lot of anxiety too, and.
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And when I notice these differences between myself and other people, I really thought there was something wrong with me.
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But then also that I was the only one that was like that because I didn't come across anybody else that had issues with making commitments.
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And so when I eventually started getting into the work that I now do myself, I realised that it was just a mindset frame that I was struggling with.
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And there were experiences that I didn't know how to reconcile within myself.
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And so that was what was holding me back from being able to really shift out of that commitment foam state and feel more comfortable and relaxed about making commitments.
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So what that looked like, for example, with the commitment faux, the commitment phobia that I was wrestling with was ohh my calendar was empty.
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Whether it was, you know, back in the day, a physical.
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Notebook calendar.
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And then moving into the digital age, when I started using a calendar on my phone, like most people do now, I would keep my calendar empty there as well and it was a real reflection of the fears I had around making commitments and it wasn't limited to any particular area of my life.
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It was showing up in business in my professional life.
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It was also showing up in my.
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Personal life.
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And it almost felt like the moment I add something to the calendar, something became a concrete commitment that I couldn't get out of, and it felt like a trap.
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And so I wouldn't put it in the calendar because then it wasn't real.
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It wasn't this concrete thing that I had committed to that involved other people, which is really fascinating as a psychological avoidance that I was using when in reality that wasn't actually changing their commitment in anyway, not in any material way.
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Is what I found was a lot of what was fuelling my my commitment phobia or my fear of making a commitment was that I had pain associated with whatever the commitment was.
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Now, if we sort of frame making commitments through the lens of going on a journey and arriving at a destination, we tend to think of for those of you that struggle with making commitments or find yourself procrastinating around commitments.
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We tend to think of the thing that we're scared of being either the journey or the destination.
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Now it depends on how you're looking at everyone's slightly different, but what's really interesting is inevitably, whichever of the two that you're anxious about, whether it's the destination of the event or what needs to be done to the lead up to the event being the journey one of those two, you have associated pain with.
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Now that pain.
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Tends to be perceived as a trap.
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So you feel trapped by either the journey, all the destination and as long as you perceive either of those circumstances to be some form of a trap to you, you will experience the desire to avoid making the commitment, because we tend to, if we look at it through the.
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Journalistic animal mind, where we chase pleasure and avoid pain.
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Anything that you perceive to be a trap, you tend to associate pain with and anything that you associate pain with.
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You tend to want to avoid by default unless you train yourself to lean into pain by, you know, transcending these two states of the mind.
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But what's really interesting is that when you realise just how much your desire to avoid pain is associated with being trapped by whatever the commitment is, you can start to dissect what's going on in your mind.
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You can start to sort of pull it apart.
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It becomes manageable.
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It becomes malleable and you can start to see the components that are contributing to why you're feeling the way you're feeling, and so and becomes a really interesting exercise to explore what the underlying fear is, because I haven't found anybody that doesn't have some kind of perceived trap with making a commitment.
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Who is a commitment phobe?
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So when it comes to relationships, for example, you may find that the idea of being in a long term relationship with somebody intimately.
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Is a trap.
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It may mean that you're suddenly obligated to do all the things that they want to do, or you're suddenly you're freedom of being single is being taken away from you.
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You don't have.
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Those.
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Options anymore, because you've got to consider somebody else.
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And what they want and what their schedule is like as well.
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And so we tend to look at when we're scared of making a commitment in relationships, we tend to look at our freedoms being taken away as a feeling of being trapped, whereas as long as you're single, you're the one that runs the show.
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You have all the freedoms and you get to decide whatever.
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You.
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Want to do because there's nobody holding you accountable to a commitment that you're making.
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Now the same is true with financial commitments.
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This is a really interesting one that I see quite regularly.
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Whenever I'm tackling money, mindset or financial.
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Strategies with people.
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Not that I'm a financial services professional, but inevitably comes up in the sessions where people are wrestling with something financially in their lives.
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One of the consistent themes that I see that people wrestle with for those who have accumulated some kind of consumer debt are won't include a mortgage in that.
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But think personal loan car loan credit cards or these buy now pay later services like after pay as it paid um whatever other services are out there, there are many of them now.
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Or they don't have a savings, a cash savings accumulated in a bank account somewhere, wrestling with either of those two things.
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It's because for them, committing to paying down the debt or committing to putting a savings plan in place where they're putting a portion of their income.
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Tired every time it comes in feels like a trap.
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And so because they've got a trap associated with that plan, financially, they just rather not do it because it's so painful, which is what keeps them in the spending debt, lack of savings cycle.
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And can't.
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They can't seem to break out of it.
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It's because unconsciously there's a perceived trap.
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Well, there's a perceived trap with.
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Running a budget and living by a budget.
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To the best of their ability.
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And the same is true when it comes to business dealings or hiring people or even applying.
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For a job.
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If you're the applicant, you may actually get the job offer, but you're scared to follow through with the commitment and you back out.
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Or you may be scared to even go through the process of applying for jobs because you've got this fear of what making a commitment to an employer make means to you.
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And what that looks like and what it means to be a part of a team or a company.
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However, big or small it may be.
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Me and for business owners, you might be having some kind of commitment issues with hiring somebody to come in and make them full time, if that's what you actually need and you're not comfortable with taking people out of a part time.
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Status.
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Or maybe you're wrestling with some kind of commitment with doing a business deal with somebody that's a, you know, five to seven year contract where the you know the two businesses are working together and collaborating on a particular product or service line.
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It's really fascinating to see how people wrestle with different levels of commitment and not.
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All of it.
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Inevitably stems down to some kind of perceived pain.
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And when you realise that there's an unconscious pain there that's trying to be avoided and you know consciously, the best thing to do is to overcome the fear of the commitment, then suddenly you've got these tools of, like, OK, I can actually start to pull out or draw out what this unconscious fear is.
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Inspect it and get a better understanding of.
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It.
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Because when you develop an understanding of what's going on in your unconscious mind, it empowers you to make really conscious and aligned decisions that lead you to the destination that you're trying to get to.
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Now if we look at the various fees that people may experience when it comes to making a commitment.
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It's really fascinating to dig into this, at least for me.
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Um, because I find these things fascinating.
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But what's interesting is when you stop and think about it, I want you to do this.
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If you're someone who struggles with making commitments, is ask yourself whatever user recent example, if it helps you, or use a current example.
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If there's one that you're struggling with, and ask yourself if you were to make a commitment in this.
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Situation.
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Or with these people or with this person.
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What is your imagination?
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Tell you will happen if you make that commitment.
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Now it's probably going to be something negative, something painful, and so I want.
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You to explore that.
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Don't avoid it.
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Don't.
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Resist.
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What?
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That pain is just let it come up because I want you to become.
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Consciously aware of it.
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What's the story that your unconscious mind is holding on to that is telling?
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You.
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And this will happen if I commit.
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And you'll find that there's probably a really interesting narrative in there.
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So what do you imagine will happen?
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What kind of painful outcome do you expect to experience if you make the commitment in this case?
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And then ask yourself whatever comes up is that the worst case?
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And if it's not, I want you to explore what the worst case scenario is.
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What's the absolute worst case scenario?
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If I make this commitment, what am I totally and utterly scared of experiencing?
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If I was to make.
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This commitment.
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And you'll find it a be something like.
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Someone's going to intimidate you.
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You've got to be in the presence of someone intimidating or someone's going to criticise you or you're going to deal with some kind of rejection.
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Someone's going to put you down or belittle you.
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Or maybe even humiliate you.
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Or it could be that a group of people will humiliate you and criticise you.
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Or maybe you'll be ostracised and kicked out of some kind of group or family unit or business.
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Whatever it may be, you're perceiving some kind of negative outcome that typically involves other people, but it doesn't have to.
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And so you really want to fish that out.
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It may take you a few minutes.
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It may take you 20 minutes to really be.
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Honest with yourself?
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And draw that out. But once you pull it, you'll know it.
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You'll know you've hit whatever this unconscious thing is that you're struggling with.
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Another one I'll give you really quick example that has just come to mind, which is when it comes to giving up a habit of some kind.
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So giving up spending in a certain way, giving up vaping or smoking, or gambling or drinking or, you know, illegal drugs, whatever it may be, um, the conversations that I've had with people over the years is they struggle with the idea of actually giving it up.
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But they know it's the best thing for them and for their health, and they can't quite reconcile the two.
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What I've found inevitably.
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Is that it's because they perceive that letting go of whatever it is, whatever that behaviour is, whatever that habit or substance or external source of whatever it is, whatever that is at this scared of letting go of, they perceive being without that as some kind of painful experience or trap.
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So there is associated pain or negativity with the idea of not having it.
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So inevitably, the unconscious mind is like, well, gonna hold.
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On.
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To that, no matter how much you consciously try to let go of.
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So if that's the case for you, explore that too.
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What's the worst case scenario?
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If you let.
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It go.
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And be honest with.
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Yourself.
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And you'll find that it's going to bring up the thing that you're trying to avoid. The pain you're trying to avoid by holding on to it.
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Now it's important for you to really explore what these unconscious views are, because you can't change anything unless you can see it.
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I found myself saying this a lot.
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You cannot change it if you cannot see it.
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When something is unconscious.
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By definition, it is in your unconscious.
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You are not consciously aware of whatever it is, and so you want to spend time making the unconscious conscious and by doing so you're shedding light on the dark corners of your mind, and by doing so you then enable yourself to feel this general sense of empowerment that you can actually do something with.
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These experiences you can do something with these emotions.
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Do something with these beliefs.
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And then by having conscious awareness and light on whatever the issue is, you suddenly feel more empowered.
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Like Okay, I know what's going on.
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It's not just sort of some puppet master sitting in the back of my mind pulling on all these different strings, making me feel certain ways and behave in certain ways.
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It's actually me, just couldn't see what part of me was actually influencing that.
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I also want to address something really quickly too.
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Is that sometimes there can be what's known as secondary anxiety.
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Our secondary anxiety is essentially, if you're somebody who's experiencing anxiety or panic attacks, you can actually develop anxiety about having anxiety or panic.
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This was something I went through years ago when I was dealing with a lot of anxiety and I was having panic attacks.
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I started developing so much anxiety about having anxiety attacks or panic attacks in public or social settings that that was part a huge part of what was influencing my fear of making a commitment to something, because the moment somebody asked me to attend some kind of an.
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Event.
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Or, um, go and hang out or go.
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And catch up with.
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Somebody.
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The first thing that would immediately go through my mind was what if I experience an anxiety attack with panic attack in that environment?
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In that event with that person.
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And for those of you that have experienced anxiety attacks and panic attacks, they're not pleasant.
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They're not necessarily something you want to experience generally, and certainly not out in public because I can feel really scary and humiliating.
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And So what had happened was I developed this secondary anxiety that okay well, what if I get angry like I'm getting anxious about anxiety?
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And it would start to influence my decision.
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So I stopped making commitments because especially well ahead of time because I was worried.
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That.
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I kind of felt like it taking time bone from an anxiety standpoint.
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And who knows?
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Like one day it's just going to go off and I'm going to have to wrestle with it and it's going to affect the event.
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And so I wouldn't make a commitment and I would say things like can I let you know or I'll let you know closer to the date.
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And sometimes I would wait right up until the very last minute to decide, and it was a bit of a coin toss.
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It was like 5050.
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I'd either say yeah okay.
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I woke up feeling good.
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I feel like today's gonna be a fine day.
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I won't experience anxiety.
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Let's go to this event and in other settings I would wake up in the day and be like there's no way I'm.
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Doing.
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This like I'm I don't feel like I can handle it.
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And maybe because I would experience anxiety in the lead up to the event, knowing that it was coming, that I would just stay away from it.
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And ironically, back then I'm dealing with a lot of IBS issues, so a lot of digestive challenges which would make me very nervous about whether or not I'd need a bathroom until I developed secondary anxiety about that.
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Which would influence whether or not I'd show up to events and and the IBS, ironically, was just a symptom and side effect of the anxiety we tend to need to go to the bathroom when we're feeling very anxious and dealing with a lot of cortisol, which is how our body deals with it and processes it out and the.
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Hoody.
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And because I wasn't actually able to get to the core of the underlying anxiety that was creating the cortisol, that was disturbing my gut, which was creating a secondary anxiety.
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It was easy for me to just wait until the day and I'd be very selective about the foods of that I ate because I felt very sensitive to different types of foods and I didn't want that to disturb my gut, which would create anxiety while I was at an event.
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And it was just incredibly layered.
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That'd be secondary.
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Tertiary anxieties that I'd be resting with at the time, so familiar.
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It's just easier to not make it a make a commitment.
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And so by working through and drawing out these unconscious fears of what I was anxious of, it was actually helping me become consciously aware of why making a commitment was such a difficulty for me.
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Now 1 of Fast forward before I give you.
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Some insight as to how to shift.
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This.
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Today.
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I live by my calendar.
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I can't imagine functioning in my day to day life without my calendar, and I've got it on my phone.
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I've got on my computer.
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It's.
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All online.
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It's in the cloud.
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But I can't imagine doing it.
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Everything goes into my calendar and the reason for that is there's so many different things that.
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Are going on.
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Coaching Sessions group coaching calls, interviews, meetings. You know, personal gatherings, personal events, appointments and sessions and all kinds of stuff that I've got to manage.
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It all goes in the calendar because I I need the calendar to remember those things so I don't have to.
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So I can't imagine doing that and so I try to make commitments well ahead of time.
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Way ahead of time were and that is very unlike the way I used to be, and it's not out of anxiety.
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I'm not scared that if I don't make the commitment now.
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Something will fall through.
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It just makes things feel managed and structured.
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Otherwise I could lose total track of time and.
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And um where I need to be and what my commitments are.
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So the first thing I can check if someone asks, are you available at this time?
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On this day, I can pull out my calendar and say yeah, definitely and not double book myself, which I know a lot of people do.
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And I have a feeling that's because.
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They're.
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Concerned about commitments and then not putting it in their calendars or managing it from a time standpoint.
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Now this contrast of the way our operate now is dramatically different to the way.
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You used to operate.
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It's it's like two different people and it's kind of strange people around me that knew me back.
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Then.
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Who know me now on the way to operate because it's so very different.
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The reason is I pulled out all of these unconscious fears 1 by 1.
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Little by little, and I did the best to work through each and everyone of them, so I was no longer concerned about making a commitment because I knew that the life that I was trying to create.
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For myself.
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In all areas of my life, in my profession, in my business, in my finances, in my relationship with my wife and my daughter, my relationship with my family and required being comfortable with making commitment.
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Otherwise, if you don't stick with something long enough, if you're not committed to something long enough, you're not going to get enough traction in anything to see a result and to see a significant outcome.
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And so if you're avoiding commitments, you're making all these micro commitments to a lot of different things in your quite scattered and nothing gets the devotion and focus that you can give it, which yields some really miraculous results in life.
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Just think of the compound effect when it comes to finance and building a savings account.
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It requires long term commitment to build savings for the compound effect to kick in, but most people give.
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Up.
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Before they see the compound effect to kick in and start to take the reins.
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And really expand your wealth.
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That requires a long term commitment.
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Same is true for anything in your life.
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In fact, there's a whole book that's dedicated to understanding how the compound effect from finance can be utilised when it comes to our habits and our behaviour.
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The book's called the compound effect by Darren Haha.
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Three, and it's a short book and it gets right to the point about showing you the impact of how various habits can have an impact on if you stick with it long enough, they have their own compound effect and we see it with diet, with exercise, with relationships, with finances, with your career shows up in all areas of your life.
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So then the question becomes, how do we work through it?
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How do we shift the anxiety around making commitments well?
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Once you've worked out what these unconscious views are, what it is that you're scared of, let's say you're scared of being humiliated publicly by somebody in particular.
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That's where your mind goes and I know it sounds irrational, but the unconscious mind isn't necessarily rational.
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So let's just.
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Assume that it's a concern about being humiliated.
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If you.
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Your fear about what happens in the future is based on some experience you've had in the past.
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So it's not random, it's coming from some very specific scenario that you've had to navigate.
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Now what we want to do is we want.
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To trace that back.
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And you want to ask.
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Yourself.
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What event or when in my life did this occur originally?
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What was the biggest event that this occurred at or what is the most recent or the earliest event where I was experiencing some version of humiliation?
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Now you may find it's related to school.
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I know there was one particular instance I had to work through when it came to.
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Being humiliated.
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In grade 6.
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I didn't complete my math.
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My mathematics homework and like I was supposed to, and it was because I felt challenged by it, was difficult.
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And I was ashamed to ask for help.
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And so the following day.
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When I went back to.
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Class.
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The teacher asked who had completed their homework and who hadn't.
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And there were two or three of us that hadn't out of the class of about 30.
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And she asked the three of us that hadn't to stand up.
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And now here in Australia, Grade 6 is right before Grade 7 and Grade 7 is where high school.
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Starts.
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And I later learned I when I worked through it, I had the realisation that what she was trying to do was prepare us for the pressures that come with high school, because high school is very different to elementary or primary school.
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But she was trying to.
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She asked us to stand up and then basically just laid into us, criticised us, put us down, judged us, and as a result we were feeling very small and the reason why it had especially affected me was because I felt like I had a really strong relationship with that teacher.
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She was very much supportive of me and felt like I was doing a great job.
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I was in.
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The teacher's pet by any means, but.
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I just felt like.
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I was doing well at that point in school when school was quite a.
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Struggle for me.
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And what was really interesting for me was my memory was she kept looking at me while she was delivering the criticisms and putting us down.
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She wasn't looking at the three of us, but she just felt like she kept targeting me.
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And so I had to work through that and then I realised what she was trying to do was prepare us for high school saying, you know, it's not going to be so easy in high school.
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You're not gonna get away with not doing your homework and not getting with your your accountability done.
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You've actually got to get things done and so that was something.
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That.
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I was internalising, but I remember feeling a lot of anxiety to the point where it kind of felt like the floor was moving under me.
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And FL public because these were all my friends and my peers like these are all some of my best friends at the time that she was doing this in front of.
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So what I did and this is what I.
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Want you to.
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Do with your experience.
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Is look at what are the upsides?
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What are the benefits?
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What are the gifts and the lessons and the teachings that you would taking from that experience in that moment that maybe you weren't necessarily appreciating at the time, but we're certainly there and available for you to unpack and explore?
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Explore what that is.
00:25:56
Say what's going on there for me?
00:25:59
I learned that I can handle all of that attention, and it didn't actually crush me.
00:26:03
I also realised that my teacher actually was demonstrating that she cared about.
00:26:07
Me.
00:26:07
Because she didn't care about me and what I was going to do with my future.
00:26:12
She would have said.
00:26:13
Ohh well okay.
00:26:14
Too bad you didn't get your homework done.
00:26:16
Fine, whatever.
00:26:19
But I take you that cares as much as she did, and I know that she did.
00:26:25
She demonstrated a lot of that in that moment.
00:26:29
Maybe not in the most effective way, but it was certainly there.
00:26:33
So I knew that I was being valued.
00:26:35
She valued me enough to actually pull me up.
00:26:37
And say hey you.
00:26:38
You can actually do more than what you've currently done.
00:26:41
I know you can because you've been demonstrating it, so this is a disappointment according to the standard that you've set for me to gauge you on.
00:26:49
And I hadn't lived up to the standard that I had set.
00:26:53
So I realised a lot.
00:26:54
There were actually a lot of gifts from that experience and she was preparing me.
00:26:58
She was also showing me that I can handle being criticised in front of a group of people and take it.
00:27:03
I didn't breakdown into tears.
00:27:04
I didn't have a meltdown.
00:27:06
Yes, I felt anxious and I felt there was a lot of unwanted attention on me.
00:27:12
But I sat down afterwards and I got onto it.
00:27:17
I got on with it.
00:27:18
I got back to my work.
00:27:19
My friends weren't making fun of Maine.
00:27:21
They weren't criticising me.
00:27:22
They were showing a level of understanding.
00:27:26
So I want you to do the same.
00:27:27
I want you to find whatever the experience is that you've associated pain with, whether it's humiliation.
00:27:33
Maybe there's been some kind of rejection.
00:27:35
What would the gifts?
00:27:36
But would the benefits?
00:27:37
What would the upsides?
00:27:38
What were the positives that came with that experience and list out as many as you can explore the best of your ability and the reason I suggest this is because like all of what I share is we tend to.
00:27:54
Perceive painful experiences as only being negative with no positive.
00:27:59
I'm not trying to get you to swing the pendulum in the other way.
00:28:01
I don't want you to go all the way into all positives and no negatives.
00:28:04
There was certainly negatives in that experience.
00:28:06
So we want to bring it back into the centre, right?
00:28:09
That centre point is actually really important.
00:28:12
So by getting back into that centre, what happens is.
00:28:16
You start to experience a sense of gratitude for the fact that it was both equally supportive but also challenging.
00:28:23
It was helping you and when you realise an experience that you once judged his painful or hurtful was actually helping you and was a gift, it becomes difficult for you to experience pain and fear about it.
00:28:35
And then what happens is if you don't have pain associated.
00:28:37
With this past experience.
00:28:39
You no longer.
00:28:39
Have the fear of it happening again in the future.
00:28:42
So do these exercises extract what these fears are?
00:28:46
Trace them back to where you had heavily emotionally charged experience somewhere in your past, and then start looking at the upsides.
00:28:54
What were the benefits and the?
00:28:55
Upsides.
00:28:57
That will start to transform your view on that experience and will make you feel less scared about making a commitment in the future because you won't have that pain associated with the commitment anymore.
00:29:09
Now for bonus points, this would also help is you can actually go back and look for moments that you perceived that you made a commitment and it became painful that committing to someone or some event actually led to some kind of pain.
00:29:24
So you want to look for the upsides and.
00:29:26
The benefits of that experience too.
00:29:28
What was the upsides of you making that commitment?
00:29:31
Nowhere.
00:29:31
We the upsides of the pane, but what would the upsides of making that commitment?
00:29:35
But with the upsides that you gained from and be specific if there was a specific event and it led to some kind of business opportunity.
00:29:41
Me.
00:29:42
Because you made that commitment, you know, and that business opportunity turned into revenue or some relationship or something that was important to.
00:29:50
You list that out.
00:29:52
Look at the upsides of it.
00:29:55
And the reason I want you to do that is because that will help you start to breakdown and take some of the negative association away from making a commitment and start associating some positives with making commitments and by doing so, you're bringing the scales back into balance and you start seeing things more objectively and what that again allows you to do is make commitments moving forward without experiencing so much fear.
00:30:19
So I encourage you to do this.
00:30:21
You'll be surprised at how powerful it can be.
00:30:23
It sounds really simple and you might be doing it in your head while you're listening, but take the time to sit down and spend 30 minutes.
00:30:32
Do the exercise explore it.
00:30:35
Because I know that if you actually do the work, you will get the benefits of doing the work sitting here in intellectualising it with me.
00:30:41
Why?
00:30:42
You're listening to me.
00:30:43
It doesn't do the same thing as actually sitting down and doing it.
00:30:46
Okay.
00:30:47
So if you committed, ironically, if you're committed to overcoming your fear of making a commitment, do the work and a promise you it will pay dividends.
00:30:58
The things that you want to create for yourself, the things that you deserve in all areas of your life, are on the other side of making significant commitments to yourself and to other people.
00:31:08
So go and do it.
00:31:09
The guy go do amazing work because I promise you you'll get the benefits of doing so of making that commitment and following all the way through to it.
00:31:19
Anyway, that's my spiel.
00:31:21
I'm commitment phobia and finding a way to reinvigorate our desire and our ability to make commitments and promise you.
00:31:29
You'll start to see some really cool results in your life.
00:31:34
I hope you got some value from these episode.
00:31:36
Thank you for tuning in.
00:31:38
Thanks for listening or watching.
00:31:39
Please make sure you take the time to leave a review because it's a significant vote of confidence to others that are coming across the podcast.
00:31:46
And.
00:31:47
You're essentially saying to them invest some time in the podcast.
00:31:50
You'll get something valuable from it.
00:31:53
So thank you for being here.
00:31:55
I appreciate you sending you a lot of love.
00:31:58
I'm Giorgio Genaus, see you in the next episode.
00:32:00