On commitment and letting go of disappointed idealism

Does the thought of commitment make you shake inside? For example, when you hire a person or when you give someone responsibility for something important, does it raise major fears inside you? Do you obsess on whether or not the person will be successful or not, or whether they deserve the responsibility in the first place? Do you worry whether the person will make you look bad?

If so, you may be looking for the perfect employee and unable to accept that you are working with a real, flawed human being. But when you decide to empower someone at work and give him or her responsibility, you have to commit to the process in the real world - the imperfect world where people make mistakes, fail, learn and grow. When you are ready to commit to this kind of relationship, amazing things begin to happen, says Carol S. Pearson, personal and professional growth expert and author of The Hero Within.

Once you give up your rigid ideas about the world, says Pearson, and learn to deal with it - and even like it the way it is, with all its flaws - you will experience the world in a new way. Accepting people and the world the way they are might sound like you are giving up on working on improving things, but that’s not Pearson’s point. She says instead, you gather strength by giving up the pose of the disappointed idealist. It also means giving up the notion that people are not enough the way they are, and that the world is not enough the way it is. You still work to make improvements, but you let go of the need to be disappointed.