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Commitment

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Improvised meditation lesson with Central American friends in Honduras in 2019.

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Commitment is at the root of the kind of disciplined action that turns good intentions and promising ideas into transformative changes in your life and in society. I was lucky to have been raised in a family that greatly valued commitment, and the seeds planted at an early age have been incredibly helpful in various areas of my life.

 

In my family, academic and athletic performance were important. So early on I learned the value of investing time in ways that would reap benefits in the future, both as a student and as a basketball player. While I will never be the NBA basketball star that I dreamed of becoming as a teenager,  getting up at 5AM everyday to practice before going to school started to build a useful skill. What has commitment brought me in life?

 

The area in which I have most benefited from the ability to persist is in my meditation practice. After a stressful year directing Costa Rica's innovation policy, several friends suggested that I go to a 10-day silent meditation retreat, and so I did. During the first few days, observing my breath in silence was definitely an act of commitment, but by the end of the retreat I knew that meditation was going to become and important part of my life. Since then I have been working bit by bit on building a stable meditation practice. Even the 1st day after the retreat, once I returned to by hectic life, it was hard to focus for even 5 minutes! For several months it was a daily struggle to decide to prioritize time on the cushion over thinking, strategizing and acting. 

 

Over the next few years my commitment to building this muscle has allowed me to cultivate a stable habit of spending at least an hour a day enjoying contemplative practices. This has definitely been the cornerstone of the transformation that has emerged in many areas of my life. All thanks to my deluded desire to play in the NBA :)

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