Once, two brothers went to a highly successful person seeking life advice. The elder brother wanted to seek guidance for his younger sibling from this successful individual. Upon meeting, the successful man turned to the younger brother and asked, “What do you want to do in your life?” The younger brother replied, “I want to do many things that would make me successful.” The successful man then inquired further, “Are you committed or just interested in this?”
This question left the younger brother confused about the distinction between being committed and interested. The successful person then invited both brothers to return after three days.
After three days, the younger brother returned alone and sought clarification on the difference between being committed and interested in life. The successful person then explained to him the nuances of commitment versus interest.
Interest:
Interest means that you want a specific thing. You only have the desire to achieve that. It can be anything you want, and you will try to achieve your goal. A person who is interested in a certain thing or goal will only imagine it in his mind but often doesn’t take major steps to achieve it.
Commitment:
Commitment is that you will take every legal way to achieve what you are interested in. It is referred to by Cambridge University as “commitment, a promise, or firm decision to do something”. It is to dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to achieve your goal.
How can a person get to know if he is committed or interested? Let’s say if you are committed, then your first job is to write down your goals.
All the things that are written are valued like licenses, documents, certificates, etc.
If you want to become successful, then you have to be a written person. Our first mistake is that we only dream of becoming successful, but we don’t write it down. If you don’t write goals, that means you are only interested, not committed. That means you have interest but lack commitment.
Let’s say you want to get a very good result in your exam. Then you study a lot for several days, and after a few days, you don’t study anymore. You studied but you did not have consistency.
So it is important to be a committed person.
You are interested in swimming, designing, driving, etc.
But the thing is that can’t swim, design, or drive, that’s interest.
But writing down these things you are interested in or want to learn will give an invisible pressure to achieve that within a time. After the end of the year, you will see if you have got what you wanted.
Get in Discipline:
That successful person said to the junior brother that when he was young, his father regularly used to ask him during dinner time what he did all day, what he studied. But he was unable to answer his father’s questions. After that, he used to write his next day’s goals before going to bed.
He had pressure from his mind to complete those written goals before going to bed. So he showed his work which he completed throughout the day.
You should ask yourself, “What did I learn today?“
Doing this for some days is not enough. You should maintain regularity to achieve your goal.
So it is not that easy to write down things, but we don’t do that due to our laziness. It is good to be interested in certain goals. But to achieve these goals, you have to be committed. It will keep you in shape, and maintaining that regularly will make a difference to others.
