commitment is the only secret knowledge
everything else is just a distraction // Conquer Avoidance course is live!!!
Any time you ask anyone particularly skilled what their ‘secret’ is, they will probably tell you that it is the thing have done consistently for a very long time. They may attribute all their glory, success and power to this thing. They might say it is the answer to everything they wanted, needed and desired. But it is typically not The Thing itself that is magical, but the person’s devotion to it. Their commitment—the consistency of showing up repeatedly with the belief that it was going to help them.
seeking without instead of within
When we are in a state of disarray, confusion, or insecurity, we can begin to attach to The Thing they cited, thinking that it is the secret knowledge—instead of paying attention to the underlying message. We fall for the illusion that their specific workout routine, diet, career, partner-archetype or religion is the Path to this internal freedom and ease they seem to possess. We start to think that it is the components of their commitment that will save us from our discomfort instead of the principles of the commitment. But doing this (attaching to what they do instead of how they approach it) misses the essence of what they are telling us: that the true secret knowledge is to simply commit to something. And as long as that commitment is directionally positive, over time, it will give you what you want, and you will stop seeking secret knowledge outside of yourself, because you will have arrived at a more fundamental remedy to all of the existential worry that can rise up in those moments of feeling uneasy: choice.
find novelty where you are
After recently choosing to finally, fully commit to living in the city I am now in, I have found (and sought out) new depths and dimensions of experience here that I was completely blind to before, unwilling to engage in because I was convinced that I could only find those experiences elsewhere. Now, I am leaning into the idea that I can create pretty much any experience I want in any city if I’m intentional enough. Currently, I’m sitting at an oaky bar, surrounded by handsome waiters making beautiful drinks. There are tapas and canned dishes swirling around me, behind me, over me, in front of me. There are glasses of cava and rosé being poured next to me while fresh mint gets stuffed into extravagant cocktails in front of me. Loud, relaxed belly laughs are being released from the patrons behind me. There is a juiciness to the vibe here, something sweet and delectable, drenched in European energy and squeaky clean of any semblance of Toronto, despite it sitting squarely in the heart of it. I’ve had moments in Europe nearly indistinguishable from this one. I could easily be in Paris or Barcelona, tucked into a corner of some tapas bar, scribbling into my journal the same way I am now. If I squint and blur my vision, even the aesthetics give me déjà vu; the only thing that tugs my mind to presence is that everyone is speaking english and I am a 5 minute walk from my permanent residence. But absent of those hints, I could be in Europe for the afternoon!
As I now edit this, I am sitting in a café not far from the bar I wrote about above. I’ve ordered a sparkling water with lime and a cortado; the order* I would place religiously at my favourite café in Mexico City (*substitute a suero for sparkling water :)). This café here reminds me dearly of that one. Similar tables, seating, coffee, music, vibes. It gives me wisps of the feeling I had there: ones of safety, of coziness, of home. I am starting to collect a constellation of places in my current home that remind me of feelings I’ve had in other cities. And I am beginning to realize that I don’t need to go anywhere else to experience the joy, resonance and even the culture I crave—a craving that used to take me much farther than a five minute walk from home.
Now that I am committed to being here, I am invested in finding all of the pockets that give me experiences I previously assumed were only available to me elsewhere. In other words: I am more interested in creating the experience I want where I am, instead of endlessly seeking it outside myself, wondering if the next spot I go to will satiate all of the desires I think I cannot find where I am. Because when you’re in that mindset—that willingness to indulge in the fleeting nature of seeking, of believing that what you want is somewhere new instead of where you are—then you never get all that interested in what you have, in what is in front of you, waiting to be explored.
seeking feels hollow; commitment feels dense
My observation is that novelty doesn’t satisfy desires all that reliably, and that true meaning cannot be hacked by seeking. Paradoxically, I’ve found that commitment can be an outrageously novelty-filled adventure . Commitment contains what you could never get by going wide; benefits that can only be experienced by going deep into something. This brings to mind a quote from an interview with Steve Reich, where he discusses his observations from committing deeply to making music:
“If you pursue any one thing in this world and you really get into it, you're going to find the universe there. You find that in religious thinking, and you'll find that in philosophical thinking and it's true. Whatever you pursue, if you really begin to pursue it thoroughly, and you really get into many, many aspects of it, instead of dealing with "one" simple thing, it flowers out and blooms and begins to get into areas you never would have imagined were possible to get into.”
If according to him, the universe can be contained in a single commitment, surely we can find everything we’ve already experienced, which is only a tiny fraction of the universe, in the thing we commit to. Or at least, we might be able to. The suggestion that it is possible seems reason enough to try. Which has made this one of the most pressing questions I am exploring—not how many new things can I experiment with, but how much dimension can I experience from experimenting with just one thing?
This pattern played out beautifully with one of my 1-1 clients, who came in seeking all of these things he thought he didn’t have. But what we discovered by honing in clearly on what he genuinely wanted was that what he was (unconsciously) seeking was simply showing up with greater devotion to what already existed in his life. His work. His faith. His health. He just wanted more of what he had, but that desire was masked as wanting more of what he didn’t have. By focusing on what he already had, the desire he came in pursuing disintegrated, and was replaced with greater peace, focus and enthusiasm towards what he already had.
I wonder how often many of us are under a similar spell: thinking that what we want/need is somewhere else, when in reality, it is already woven into the natural fabric of our lives, but we are so busy looking for it that we never see it right in front of us. Or, said differently: we have what we want, but we just haven’t noticed yet.
But it is not so easy to commit to what you already have, because where is the novelty there? This is, in my opinion, just a marketing issue for commitment: it does not appear sexy because it doesn’t seem new. Commitment doesn’t invite in wonder, awe, and inspiration like novelty does. Commitment seems like something you already know, something that can feel like ‘settling’ to stop at, to sink even deeper into.
In many ways, this is a fair evaluation of commitment: it is a sense of devotion to something you already have (or something you have the option of having). It isn’t pure novelty. For commitment to emerge, there needs to be some degree of existing interest towards the thing.
But in other ways, this is quite a shallow view of commitment: it ignores the fact that new levels of detail come to light the more you focus on something. New meeting points for you and the commitment emerge. The more time you spend with something or someone, you find new ways to connect, meet, grow and intertwine more deeply. While on the outside, it might look like nothing has changed, your inner world could have grown in ways you don’t need anyone to see and validate to know are real. A committed life can look aesthetically consistent while being deeply internally novel, and the inverse is true for a novelty-dense life: it might look rich and satisfying, but it can easily feel inwardly hollow.
It’s easy to fear the mundanity that seems to accompany commitment: same city, same partner, same house. It’s easy to think that this is boring, suffocating, bland. But this demonstrates an ignorance to what commitment actually is: a platform to build your life from. Novelty has the opposite effect: it looks sparkly, shiny, bright, alive, seductive. It looks dimensional and exciting, but it can keep you from developing a deeper connection to self over time, because you get so used to seeking what you desire without instead of resourcing upon yourself from within.
be careful what you seek
A number of my friends quit jobs that weren’t nourishing and went on excursions around the world in pursuit of this notion of seeing the unseen and finding what they didn’t have at home. They were under the impression that there was something they lacked that they could only grasp by going to new places. But they quickly learned that this was not exactly the case, and that their problem couldn’t be solved with more flights, hostels and beautiful scenery. Across the board, the top reflections they came home with were: novelty gets old fast, and home is pretty damn good.
My reflections after my own journeying towards glorious oases of novelty that I believed stored all the secrets I couldn’t find at home left me with similar reflections: novelty is cool, beauty is nice, new experiences are special, but there is nothing like the warmth of your parents’ hug or a deep belly laugh with friends you’ve known since you were six years old. Sure, the mountains and the ocean are intoxicating; but no amount of them will match the feeling of being held by the warm hug of community, of being deeply rooted somewhere where you feel safe, around people that truly love you. No amount of luxury or beauty can compete with the deep, visceral comforts of home. We sometimes only learn this by going away, by foregoing commitment for novelty, and then coming back to the realization that: yes, home really is pretty damn good.
In arriving at this reflection myself, I realized I could be pretty much anywhere, and it wouldn’t really matter as long as I committed to it fully and didn’t poison my experience with a constant analysis loop of whether this was the right place for me. I chose to be in Toronto because my family and friends are here, and I love my family and friends. I also realized that despite Toronto’s many flaws, it does a pretty good job of being a city. I can find almost anything here with a pretty mild degree of agency. And above all: I decided that it doesn’t really matter where I choose, as long as I make a choice. I realized that the commitment is what matters, and that within commitment, I can find nearly all the novelty I desire.
I have noticed that when I don’t decide, I feel distracted and preoccupied with optionality, focused on how disappointing my environment is—largely because I haven’t committed to it, and thus haven’t made the effort to fully engage with it.
When I refuse to make a decision, I end up irritated (unconsciously at myself, consciously at the world), wondering why my environment can’t just give me what I want! The answer, of course, is because I don’t know what I want, and refuse to define such a thing. If I did, it could easily give me what I want. But it’s more convenient to blame the external conditions I’m in for my own dissatisfaction than to admit it is because of my lack of clarity, decisiveness and commitment to defining and seeking out what I want where I am.
commitment is the juice
As one of my wise clients said: the thing about compounding is that you need to give it time to do its thing. If you do the opposite, only seeking gratification in the short-term, you’ll fry your dopamine system and lower your baseline sense of joy, making it even harder to reap the rewards of commitment. But really feeling into the experience of true devotion makes it so much easier to be where you are, to appreciate the riches of the present, and to stop thinking that there is some secret knowledge out there waiting for you that will unlock some experience that you can’t access where you are.
commitment as an endless well of novelty
I wrote once about how the ultimate source of novelty is commitment; because it takes you to depths of intimacy that are hard to reach when you are constantly recalibrating to something new. Because you become the source of novelty, and the freshness you find in your commitment depends on how devoted you are, it comes from you investing even more deeply into what you’ve chosen. How much fun you are having and how much you are learning becomes a function of your own willingness to craft your experience consciously; from your capacity to give yourself what you want. Which comes from your ability to detect what you want and act on it, which is made possible by your willingness to sit with your desires, absent of distraction and stimulation—and genuinely listen to yourself. And then: make a choice.
The secret knowledge is that the richness of your experience is a function of the depth of your commitments. Everything else is mostly a distraction wrapped in the aesthetics of secret knowledge, without the substance to support it. All of the gains I’ve accrued in my life have stemmed from commitment, probably because anything works if you stick with it for long enough; and nothing works—no matter how good the method—if you give it up. So, commit more, seek less, and you’ll find all the secret knowledge you desire! Or at least: this seems to be where I’ve found all of mine :)
This is the first in a multi-part essay series on commitment, consumption and creation. Subscribe here to get the next part:
Work with me 1-1: I help people discover their true desires and align their actions with their values to cultivate a life that feels true to them. This unfolds through a guided process of conversation, introspection and conscious action. Learn more about working with me here.
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Related essays you might enjoy: find novelty through commitment, avoidance & expression, resistance & regret, compatibility and connection, why is modern dating so hard?. You can also find me on Twitter/X + by email at isabel@mindmine.school — and let me know if anything especially resonated from this essay in the comments! <3
Absolutely love this and such good timing for me to read this beautiful reminder. Reminds me a bit of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, but with a different twist.
I just had my 6th wedding anniversary and that’s probably where I have experienced this concept most clearly and undeniably. It’s really surprising how much novelty there still is, and how much I feel like we’re still at the beginning of something together, and we’re only going to grow in depth and experience together as we age. It’s really fun, and most of what we’ve done together (various communal living situations, lots of unconventional life choices, now a big career pivot for both of us to continue to be able to steward land that we’re on) wouldn’t have been possible in a less committed relationship or in an open relationship. (No shade on those situations though!)
I saw on Twitter that you’re a cancer. In astrology, cancer rules the 4h and the 4h is all about the home and family