Alin

Anyone can make a decision, and feel completely certain in the moment. But people break vows they fully meant all the time. The game was never in deciding. It’s in keeping the same decision long after the certainty that created it is gone.

There is a gap between our aspirations and our capacity to reach them. We say strong commitment, absolute commitment, but the word already means done, settled, no negotiation. The reason we keep reinforcing it is that our commitments are almost never actually absolute. We can conceive of the absolute, but executing it is a different story.

Habits only work while your environment holds still; change the conditions and they vanish. A commitment doesn’t depend on your environment; it reorganizes your environment around itself. That’s why habits maintain a life you already have, but only commitment can build a new one.

The moment you allow yourself to skip, skipping becomes the default. A rule for bouncing back sounds reasonable, but it just turns you into someone who’s permanently recovering. You keep coming back on track until one day you don’t.

Every excuse is built on a true fact. That’s what makes it so convincing. The lie isn’t the fact — it’s the line you draw from the fact to “therefore I couldn’t.” We hide false meaning behind true facts, and because the fact is real, the whole excuse feels true. All excuses are false by nature of their existence.

Commitment is a generator, not a battery Commitment doesn’t run out, because you’re not drawing from a reserve — you’re the generator. The decision you made once doesn’t carry you; what carries you is the energy you regenerate in the moment, every time. The question is never “do I have enough left?” It’s “am I generating it right now?”

The invisible value outranks the visible Every goal has two layers: the visible result, and the invisible act of showing up to produce it. Most people chase the result and ignore the showing up — but the showing up is what builds the person, and the person is what produces every result after. Win the invisible and the visible takes care of itself.

Isn’t it interesting that the word commitment sounds absolute — yet it almost always needs a strengthening adjective. Strong commitment. Absolute commitment. Ultimate commitment. The word that should need no qualifier constantly demands one. That says everything about how well we keep them.

Some think they have to save their relationship when in reality they have to save themselves from it.

We fail to honor our commitments because they were never real. There is a big gap between our aspirations and our capacity to fulfill them

We are finite creatures who speak in absolutes. Decision. Commitment. Vow. Devotion. Forever. We invented these words to bridge the gap between what we aspire to and what we’re actually capable of.

A coach is trusted more than a friend.

Some people never learn and never change not because they can't but because they don't want to.

Past consistency does not guarantee future consistency but it makes it more likely.

Own your weakness with strength.

Attachment is not the problem. The purpose can be. Narcissistic women engage in a parasitic relationship (where one benefits at the direct cost of the other). They attach and drain energy, resources, and sense of self, using sexuality as weapon. The host shrinks; the parasite grows. Healthy women engage in a symbiotic relationship (where both benefit from the relationship). They attach too but it's to support, empower and bring peace to the man. The man grows, and the woman grows along with him. Same attachment. Different purpose.

Sometimes, even if you don't perform great, what really matters is that you show up.

Every time I look back and I’m not happy with how I handled a situation, I remind myself it matters who shows up.

@RayDalio This great advice applies in relationships and marriage before anything else. Hiring the wrong person is never as devastating as marring the wrong one.

The most important thing you can do is understand that hiring is a high risk gamble that needs to be approached deliberately. A lot of time, effort, and resources go into hiring and developing new employees before it’s clear whether or not they are good fits. Months or even years and countless dollars can be wasted in training and retraining. (For example, every person you hire requires you to hire others to support them. I call this the "1.6 effect.") Some of those costs are intangible, including loss of morale and a gradual diminishment of standards as people who aren’t excellent in their roles bump into each other; other costs from bad outcomes can be measured all too easily in dollars and cents. So whenever you think you are ready to make someone an offer, think one last time about the important things that might go wrong and what else you can do to better assess those risks and raise your probability of being right. #principleoftheday