The Difference Between Interested and Committed

There’s a world of difference between being interested in something and being committed to it.

A few years ago, a friend asked me to go hunting. It sounded interesting, so I borrowed a gun, got a license, and woke up at 3 a.m. I drove to South Carolina, climbed into a deer stand, and waited. We never saw a deer. I never fired the gun. And I’ve never gone hunting again.

That’s because I was only interested. I was curious enough to try it, but not committed enough to stick with it.

Commitment is different. Commitment is when you put structure around something so that you do it whether you feel like it or not. The best marriages, the strongest teams, and the greatest athletes aren’t just interested; they are committed.

This daily Optimistic Outlook newsletter is a commitment. I don’t always feel like writing it, especially on weekends when I’d rather be doing something else. But I made a commitment to myself and to you to show up in your inbox every weekday morning at 6:30 a.m. through the end of this year.

Inky Johnson takes it a step further. He calls it a concrete commitment:
“Staying true to what you said you would do long after the mood or feeling that you said it in has left.”

It’s easy to say yes when you’re excited. It’s much harder to keep saying yes long after the feeling fades. That’s precisely why commitment is such a powerful differentiator, because commitment is what carries you when your feelings fade.

I don’t know what your concrete commitments are, but I do know this: they will shape your future far more than your interests ever will.

Most people quit too soon, not because it wasn’t worth it, but because they were only interested. Commitment is what makes you stay long enough to see the reward.

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