3 Commitments

The following three commitments are made to yourself, not to someone else. They serve as the foundation upon which vibrant relationships and healthy community are based.

Authenticity: Be yourself. Accept yourself. Trust yourself. Live authentically.

Do not try to live up to other people’s expectations of who or what you should be, or to your own imagination of what someone else's expectations might be.

“Happiness is not finding the right person; it is being the right person.”

“You must accept yourself so fully that you are willing to act on it, to actually act the way you are.” - Frank Natale

Intimacy: Tell the truth about what you are experiencing in the present moment.

Be willing to be vulnerable by being open and honest, with yourself and with others.

• "Truth" is always expressed with "I" statements ("I feel", "I think", "I believe) rather than

"You always..." or "I think you should...." Blaming and accusations are not truth-telling.

• Truth is always about feelings, rather than theories and/or beliefs.
• Truth is always present tense, rather than past tense. (Truth-telling is not about "confessing"

past “secrets” or making future projections.)

“Speak out of truth, not out of habit.” - Alisa Miller

“If you don't tell the truth, you're in an entanglement, not a relationship.”

- Frank Natale

From Risking, by David Viscott

“If you are not honest with yourself, you are missing the best part of you. The honest you is easy-going, undefended, safe, self-accepting, vulnerable, human and therefore lovable.”

“Being honest saves time and energy because you don't have to think much about how you will react or what you should say....If others cannot tolerate the truth, it is not your problem; don't make it yours by altering the truth.”

Accountability: Accept full responsibility for your own, immediate experience. This commitment is a recognition of the liberating power and freedom inherent within our ability to choose.

• If you are not happy with your current experience, it is not someone else's fault.
• Unhappiness is the result of how we have interpreted and reacted to our current experience,

and we can always make new choices within the present moment.

• Freedom and responsibility are flip sides of the same coin.
• Responsibility is simply our “ability to respond” to the choices other people make.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms
– to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
 - Viktor Frankl