Putting Our Souls in Charge of Our Commitments

I had the pleasure last weekend of meeting a local author whose book, The Practicing Mind, is one of the top sellers on Amazon.com. Tom Sterner was the featured speaker at a local spiritual center where I was promoting an upcoming workshop. I loved his talk and so hurried to buy his book after the service.


Having just finished reading it, I feel confident in recommending The Practicing Mind as a powerful manifesto for developing focus and discipline as a path to inner peace. Tom’s writing is clear and thoughtful and his guidance is eminently practical. As synchronicity would have it, the timing of the book showing up in my life is quite perfect, as I’ve committed to increasing my own levels of focus and discipline this year in the areas that really matter to me.

And I got another surprising benefit from Tom’s book – the impulse to write this blog post, inspired by a story he shares in an early chapter. He tells us about the decision he made at a certain point in his life to take up golf. He chose to honor and support this newfound commitment with golf lessons, which he approached with great dedication. It was immediately clear that the students in the class who practiced regularly made significantly more progress than those who did not.

One of the students whose skill did not progress was a woman who had signed up for golf lessons because she was in the corporate world and felt that playing a decent game of golf would further her career; she would be able to participate in the strategic planning conversations and spontaneous brainstorming meetings that arose regularly on the golf course. Now let me be clear about the fact that I have no idea who this woman was, or anything at all about her inner life. But Tom’s description of her reminded me of many people I’d met in my own corporate career who pursued golf for just that reason. And I remembered the pressure I’d felt to do the same.

While Tom made the valid point that committed practice would have yielded better results for her (and the also valid point that most of us don’t really know how to approach practice as anything other than a chore, thereby depriving ourselves of an opportunity to surrender to the process and the moment), I saw something else in the story. I was reminded of how essential it is to choose our commitments based on what we are truly called to do – not because we’ll possibly advance our career, but because the very doing of it expresses, in some fundamental way, who we are.

I’ve seen time and again that what creates true fulfillment in life is what we create, give and experience that arises from our strengths and passions. We naturally serve others in bringing forth the brilliance within us. But so often we make commitments based on what we think we should do to get ahead, leaving our deeply held longings in the dust of our hurried race to the future.

I can remember thinking years ago, with heavy resignation, that I should learn to play golf. Everyone who was at the highest levels of the company played golf; it seemed to be a requirement for making it to the top. Yet golf had no inherent appeal to me, and the one time I tried it I was miserable. I’m sure if I was skilled at it – a skill requiring committed practice – I would have enjoyed it more. But without the inner desire to experience myself as a golfer, I had no willingness at all to practice. None. I could have tried forcing myself to just do it, but I did not.

Thank God. Because that would have been a complete waste of my talents and skills and natural desire to help others through my teaching and writing. Learning to play golf in a misguided attempt to further my career would have been a choice arising from my ego’s need to fit in and prove that I was a team player worthy of greater titles and benefits. It would have been false, soul-denying and inherently depleting. I might have become an adequate golfer, but I wouldn’t have become who I am deeply called to be.

I agree wholeheartedly with Tom that a devotion to practice is essential for living a rich and fulfilled life, whether we’re practicing golf or meditation or writing or changing how we think about things. But we need to choose what we’re practicing wisely. And that’s why learning to recognize the inner voice of our soul is so important, because the soul’s longings point us unfailingly toward our highest potential and deepest satisfaction. That’s their purpose. Our authentic longings are deep and penetrating. They’re an ever-renewing energy source that powers our ongoing devotion to practicing whatever we need to practice to become our highest and best selves.

My soul's longings to teach and write and discover the deepeset truth of who I am keep me focused in a way that merely deciding to do something does not. They are patient and yet lovingly relentless, reminding me again and again to reorder my priorities to align with them. And when I do, I experience myself as clear and powerful and worthy. Life becomes lighter and yet more purposeful at the same time. Our longings are the gateway to our genius, calling us to try, to explore, to cultivate, to practice. And practice becomes the path of inevitable growth and expansion into the person we wish to become.

So let’s dare to put our souls in charge of our commitments. And then let’s really commit, full out, with the loving devotion our souls dearly deserve.