Commitment

Today's talk is called Commitment. It's reading a chapter in a book. So you know, I read every morning and it talked about commitment. It's a goal setting book. I thought that was worthy of discussing. So many times people say they're committed, but it's really just a feeling. Like they kind of want to do something but they're not truly committed. It reminds me, since you guys are all such Star wars fans of Yoda, telling Luke when he's trying to lift the ship out of the swamp, he says, I'll try. And he says, there's no try. There's only do or do not in life. When you're committed, there's no half assed commitment. That's an interest. Like I'm interested in that girl. Maybe we'll move in, we'll see how things go. Hell, we'll get married if she wants to. That's not commitment. When you decide to get married to somebody and, or raise kids. We'll talk about that in a second. You need to be committed. There's no point in half assing that kind of stuff. If you're gonna tell someone you love them, if you're gonna walk down the aisle with them and try to spend the rest of your life with them, relying on feelings isn't gonna cut it. Just like when you're working out, if it's raining and you're like, I don't think I'll work out tonight, it's raining or it's really cold, I don't feel like getting off the couch. That's not commitment. Yeah, that's, that's feeling like you should, you know, but it's not good enough feeling to get you to do that. When you get married, even in your careers, but especially when you have kids, you need to be committed. And commitment means a lot more than dealing with somebody. When you feel like it's, you know, it's that next level of I'm going to do this, I'm going to do what it takes. There's going to be good days, there's going to be bad days, there's going to be times like I just don't want to do it. But you tell yourself, you know, I'm committed to this relationship, I'm committed to this maybe career, I'm committed to these kids. And you just do it whether you like it or not. That's just what being adult and being a responsible adult and being a member of our family means. You do the hard things even when you don't want to. And you think life is tough now, Try having a spouse when you both have careers and those careers can pull at you, money can come up and then people think, oh, I'll solve this problem, let's have kids. And we all want to have kids. But that's next level commitment because those are next level problems. Just the stress, lack of sleep, finances and issues that can come up with children. So you have to be committed to your spouse. Kind of gearing us towards that to have a long marriage. You know, we were married 28 years, have been married 28 years last month. Like I said my speech about that, it's not all easy. I didn't jump out of bed every day saying thank God I'm married, nor did mom. But we made a commitment to each other. I had a good role model in my parents always being married. Even though my dad was a hard ass. You think I'm a hard ass? Grandpa was ten times my speed. But then mom had, her role model was when her parents got divorced when she was 21, right when we got engaged. They were kind of waiting for that. A lot of people do that when they wait till their kids get in college, you know, milestones like that and they, and they separate. And she didn't want that, she didn't like that, that really they ended up getting remarried. They had gotten married so young, they had mom and they were in 17, so that was a tough gig. But whenever you make a commitment to somebody, go through with it. I mean, do everything you can to make that commitment work. Because marriage is tough, divorce is tough. Having kids and being divorced is just, it's horrible. After coaching all those years and seeing the consequences of divorces and how they fought over kids and the pettiness and all that, if you decide to have children, you better be committed for the rest of your life. Because whether you like it or not, I tell you guys this. When you sleep with somebody, you have a kid, you're attached to that person for the rest of that child's life. Unless you're some serious crazy sociopath, you leave their life. But for most people you're going to be with that, see the other person at kids birthdays, I mean until they're 18, you're paying for them. They fighting over them through college. Then when that, when your child gets married, you're gonna have to see them there grandkids. It'll be a fight for most people the rest of their life. So you need to be committed to making your marriage work once you decide to have children. I mean I expect that for marriages, but much less when you have children and most people aren't, so many people are. One toe in. You'll get married and think, well, if it didn't work out, I always get divorced. I just don't understand that. We had some friends. We had a friend who had a long term affair, ran his business in the ground, got debt in his wife's name and their house's name and thought all this was okay. And the wife took him back. If that was my daughter, I would drag him behind the barn, beat him to death with a fucking shovel, bury him and his name would never be mentioned. That's not commitment, you know, that's not the kind of people that you want in your life on either side, a man or woman. But that just shows you the level of or lack of commitment that most people have in today's society. Versus we have other friends that have been married longer than we have like 30, 32 years, they've been married since college or we have some friends have been dating since they were in elementary school and have been married about 30 years, but they've been together like 40 something years and they're our age so it can be done. But all it takes is that next level of commitment. Not feelings, not interest, not, I'll give it the old college try, but we're going to make this work. Come hell or high water, we will work through anything. You know, there might be a few things, but we're going to work through things. And if you're committed, those odd things like infidelity and money issues and all that shouldn't happen if you're committed to one another. It's when someone doesn't care about someone, I just, it always blows my mind that they treat their spouses and it can be either side. It could be men or women. But the truly committed people end up with great marriages, great relationships. They don't drift apart. You know, we talked about some of this. You make it a purpose to love your spouse, to have your spouse be your best friend. Your spouse is your secret weapon in business. There's lots of things that a solid committed relationship marriage can do to make you successful and your children and give them the role models like that that they need. So I wanted to talk a little about commitment because it's so lacking in today's society. Everyone's just kind of half assed in the world as they go through and then wonder why things don't work out and they're not willing to go the extra mile and do the hard things when they are hard, so hopefully that helps.