How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 381

When the going gets tough, the tough get going!
If you take a stand that is visible to others, a drive arises to maintain that
stand in order to look consistent. Public commitment makes people
stubborn:
A hardened smoker desperately wanted to stop smoking. She made a list
of all the people who she really wanted to respect her, then got some
blank cards and wrote on the back of each card, “ I promise you that I
will never smoke another cigarette” and signed it. She gave or sent the
cards to her family, friends and boyfriend. Stopping was the hardest
thing she had ever done, but every time she thought about having a
cigarette, she pictured how all the people on her list would think of her if
she broke her promise. She never smoked again.
If you write your commitments on paper you tend to live up to what you
have written down as written commitments require more effort to make
than verbal ones