The Hidden Commitment Stalling Your Results
4-Minute Read
You solve hard problems daily. Why does this one outlast every strategy you’ve thrown at it?
You want it. You’ve said so out loud, written it down, built the plan around it. And it keeps stopping a few feet short.
So you add more: more hours, more outreach, more pressure. The distance stays exactly where it was.
Two parts of you hold different assignments. One wants the result. The other guards you from what getting it would mean. You are opening the door with one hand and holding it shut with the other, keeping you stuck no matter how hard you pull.
Find the commitment holding the door shut, and your full effort finally moves in one direction. What has stayed out of reach starts to draw close.
This week in The Grip, we bring that covert commitment into the light, turning your long-running mystery into a decision you can make.
why founders stall on goals they want: incongruence between conscious desire and subconscious receptivity
What Is a Competing Commitment? The Hidden Commitment That Works Against a Stated Goal
Wanting is the conscious half. You can name it, plan for it, and put it on a calendar. Receiving runs on a different system, underneath.
One of the greatest sources of frustration you can ever experience is the incongruence of being open to receiving your desires consciously while being closed to receiving them subconsciously.
It means you will subconsciously find ways to keep out of your life the very things you consciously desire.
A founder I coached wanted to clear $200,000 a month. He built toward it but kept missing the mark. When we dug into it, we discovered one question underneath getting in the way: “Who am I to have that?”
He consciously wanted the $200,000, but subconsciously didn’t see himself as the person to achieve it. And his actions followed that deeper belief.
This pattern has a name in organizational psychology: a competing commitment. It's a hidden commitment, held alongside a sincere goal, that guards against an outcome you fear.
Your behavior then works against the goal you stated. Your words say you want it, and your behavior says you don’t.
A competing commitment is the part of you closed off to what you consciously want and is the source of your stalled results. So how do you find it?
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How Do You Know If You’re Subconsciously Closed to Receiving? Body Tension When Offered a Compliment, Help, Money, Attention, or Pleasure
Start with your body. It reports closure before your mind does.
Notice what happens in your body when you are offered something: a compliment, help, money, attention, pleasure. Tension is a strong indication you are subconsciously closed to receiving in general.
Watch for the compliment you wave off. The help you decline. The fee you discount. The pleasure you cut short.
Each one points to a competing commitment. Often it's a disempowered story about who you are or what receiving means. Sometimes it's simply unfamiliarity. Either way, closure in general carries into the specific: when you're closed to receiving in general, you're closed to the thing you desire by default.
How to Practice Receiving Daily: Notice Tension, Exhale, Relax, and Say Thank You
The key to receiving is congruence. And the key to congruence is practice.
Practice receiving. Every day.
When offered a compliment, help, or anything else, notice the tension and contraction in your body. Then breathe in. As you exhale, feel yourself relax as you say thank you and receive whatever is being offered.
Train your body to relax and enjoy as you receive. With practice, your body starts to feel energized when receiving. This is an indicator of subconscious openness.
A leader I coach saw it happen. A client emailed her about the hope her work had given them. Her old response would have been to close the email immediately; compliments freaked her out. This time she stopped, read it, smiled, and let the acknowledgement land. That automatic response changing is the signal that things are changing at the subconscious level.
Consider this practice your training wheels for building a habit of receiving in general.
“Your words say you want it, and your behavior says you don’t.”
3 Questions to Find the Competing Commitment Behind a Stalled Goal
Practice loosens the general closure. The specific desire you've been chasing may be held by something more particular, so go after it directly.
These three questions expose the competing commitment that may be keeping your conscious desire out. Once you locate it, you choose whether it stays or goes, and new results become available.
Pick one thing you want and haven't received. Answer these in writing, in order:
What is it you really want, and what do you do to not get it?
What is the downside to getting what you want?
What is the upside to not getting what you want?
The first question puts your behavior on the table. Questions two and three name what not receiving is doing for you. Whatever it protects you from, or allows you to maintain, is likely the competing commitment keeping the door closed on what you want.
Use my client’s $200,000 goal as an example.
What he did to not get it: delayed action, resulting in lost business.
The downside of getting it: an identity that felt foreign or undeserved.
The upside of not getting it: staying the person he already knew how to be.
Now the pull in two directions makes sense. Once you can see the competing commitment, you have a choice in what happens next.
Your desire isn't being withheld from you. A commitment incongruent with receiving is shutting your desire out, and once you see it, you decide whether it stays. Your mission can only grow as fully as you're willing to receive. As receiving becomes familiar, comfortable, and even enjoyable subconsciously, there will be a material difference in how easily and quickly you attain what you want.
Today, answer the three questions about one desire that has stalled. Then say thank you to the next thing offered, and let it land.
key takeaways
Why does a goal keep stopping a few feet short? A hidden commitment guards against an outcome you fear, so your behavior follows the commitment instead of the goal you stated.
How do you know you are closed to receiving? Notice body tension when offered a compliment, help, money, attention, or pleasure.
How do you find the hidden commitment? Answer three written questions: what you do to not get it, the downside of getting it, and the upside of not getting it.
WORK 1:1 WITH BECKY
As a self-mastery coach, I help mission-driven founders accelerate desired results without sacrificing what matters. If that sounds like good news, REACH OUT to experience how 1:1 coaching can empower you to be the masterful leader your mission requires.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.