I stand for something. Now what?

Standing for something means making a commitment. You give your word, you promise that you are going to be in action of something and live in the light of the desired result. This commitment will demand a lot from you. It will take you to places where you have never been before. It will let you experience the ups and downs of discovery and feel the jor of learning. It will shape you as a person and guide you to spiritual maturity.

Stepping into a commitment includes the following:

• committing 100%

I have been told many times that in this whole commitment business 99,9% is just not good enough. I believe that my teachers were right. You may not notice the difference at first. You may get in action and successfully go through first challenges. However, sooner or later, this 0,1% or even 0,0001 % of doubt will show up and put your commitment (and with it your whole life’s mission) in jeopardy. When absoluteness is missing, doub sneeks in. It steals devotion and dedication. It sabotages the result. If you want to play on a high level, accessing the space where marvels happen, you need to be prepared to give 100% and beyond. This is the power of you word – for more, read Don Miguel Ruiz (the book “The Four Agreements”).

• always being in action

Standing for something without taking real action is idle talk, and it does not get you any far. Consider this: your vision/dream/cause is most probably a remote goalpost, which you cannot reach in one jump. Your journey is most likely to unfold step by step, with occasional bigger steps and level-ups in between. Therefore, see it as a journey. It is as much about the road as it is about the destination.

When you lack something – knowledge, a competence, a character trait, or simply time or money – remember that this is not as an excuse to abandon the mission. See it as a stimula to grow. Capacity can be built, competences can be developed, and knowledge can be gained. I believe that coaching has a lot of tools to support you in this. My favorite coaching tool is asking questions, for example: “What needs to be place for me to accomplish this?” Or “Who do I need to be to achieve this?”

• facing criticism

If you stand for something, I can guarantee you that some people will not like it. Some will try to talk you out of pursuing you dream, operating killer phrases like “Get real” (what is real, and why do you think that your ‘real’ is more real than my ‘real’?) “You are such a dreamer” (is this bad?), “This is not possible” (how do you know?) and so on. Some will criticize your cause because they love you and do not want to see you hurt, others – because they envy you, or feel that their conventional beliefs are threatened by you, etc, etc. The reasons are numerous. This is a different topic entirely, and I promise to come back to it in the future. For now, I want to underline one thing: every person who has th guts to actually stand for something has to face criticism, judgement, and misiterpretation. It is better to know this upfront and start getting ready.

Your decision to live a life of contribution will require you to give it all and embrace it all. So get in action, ask questions, plan, strategize, network, research, learn, discover, celebrate, rock the world, think big – and prepare for an adventure of your lifetime!