Commitment vs. Expectations

Here’s an interesting item to note that I ran across over the weekend.

Commitment versus Expectations:

Whenever you’re facing a new challenge, an opportunity or a task to overcome, judge your commitment to overcome the task (what you will do) compared to what you expect to gain from it (what you will get). If you were to graph this out, imagine two vertical bars. The one on the left being your commitment, the one on the right being your expectations.

It stands to reason, when you think of it this way, your commitment (work) should be equal to your expectations (result), as shown in the graph. However, many people, especially some job-seekers, have distorted perspectives on their commitment versus their expected payout. Often (because we’re human) we seek the greatest payout for the minimum amount of work. But deep inside, we all know that just isn’t how things work. The free lunch always costs something, whether in dollars, time, integrity or respect. You just can’t get money’ for nuthin’ (No matter what Dire Straits told you).

But the comparison shouldn’t stop with just your job, either.

Let me pose a few interesting questions to judge your commitment to various things:

• If you didn’t get paid for it, would you still promote your company’s products/services to everyone you come in contact with?
• If your spouse/children never said ‘thank you’, would you still support them as much as you do?
  Many people say ‘yes’ to their kids, but hem-and-haw when it comes to their spouse. What does that mean?
• If you found a mistake on your company’s books that would never affect you, and if you fixed it, nobody would ever know–would you correct it anyway?
• If someone else takes the credit for a worthy cause you are doing, will you continue doing it?

If you ever compare your commitment and your expectations and find your commitment is too little, I challenge you to find a reason to raise your commitment rather than lowering your expectations. This discipline alone may bring you more satisfaction and joy than any other I know of. This is because this discipline will create success within you by your actions. As the saying goes:

Successful people do the things unsuccessful people don’t do, so they can have the things unsuccessful people can’t have.

Or, as Zig Ziglar put it:

“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.”