Welcome back to my “Success in 12 Months” Series, and now we’re into month 3.  The topic of month 3 is accountability.  Holding yourself accountable to the things you know you want to do.  You really want to have these things and you really want to achieve these items.

But you haven’t done them yet or you’ve tried and failed in the past and the lack of accountability, the fact that no one’s held you accountable to these things has been the main reason you haven’t done it.

 

We’re taking a month to really build a system of accountability so that moving forward, from this point forward, you will be held accountable to do the things that you already want to do and now we’re just going to make sure you follow through on them.

 

Why Accountability?

What does accountability have to do with success?  The short answer is everything.

 

If you’re being held accountable by a person or multiple people and there are other people on the line waiting for you, expecting for you to deliver, you are 100 times more likely to get it done than if nobody knows about these intentions whatsoever.

 

Think about when you had a deadline at work or even back to your school days when there was a test coming up or there was an assignment due. 

 

Something was expected of you.  There was a person or people waiting for you to get this thing done, and you either got it done or you didn’t.

 

If you got it done, you were able to hand it in on time and you got your mark or feedback or whatever it was.  If you didn’t, then you usually felt the pain.  Somebody telling you, “You didn’t get this done.  You failed the test.  You failed the exam.  You failed the course.”  Or maybe you lose your job or get a demotion because you didn’t follow through on the thing you were supposed to do at your job.

 

When things are expected of us, we naturally follow through.  Unfortunately, if we just expect it of ourselves, we tend to let ourselves off the hook because we’re naturally lazy.  Our minds want to let us be lazy and our bodies follow suit.

 

You can instantly boost your accountability.  You can bring accountability into your life by announcing your goals, your intentions, your dreams, whatever it is that you want to achieve, to your social circle.  To as many people as possible in your life.

 

These people could be your parents, your kids, your brother or sister, friends, neighbors, your coworkers, even people on Facebook.  It could be anybody who follows you, who’s a part of your life.

 

As soon as you intend to them something you want to do, now you’ve made it a little bit more public, haven’t you?  You’ve raised the stakes here, because instead of you just saying this thing in your mind of “I want to achieve X, Y, Z,” now you’ve actually told other people.

 

Now they’re actually paying attention saying, “Are you actually going to do this?” As they say this, they are wondering if you a credible personality or if you are going to flake out.  You don’t want to be seen as a huge flake.  You don’t want to let other people down.

 

That’s the whole purpose of this month, is to start fostering and building a mode of accountability into your life so that you’re not just doing this once to achieve a goal for the sake of achieving a goal, but you’re going to start holding yourself accountable in all areas of life because it’s going to make you happier in the long run.

 

You’re going to start following through on things more often and you won’t allow yourself off the hook and you won’t allow yourself to get lazy.

 

Your Weekly Action Step: Who’s Your Accountability Partner?

The actions this month are actually quite simple, but the profound effects over the long term will really change your life for the long run. 

 

First of all, we’re going to talk about taking some time to think of people who could potentially be your accountability partner.

 

You’re going to have to brainstorm.  Who else in your life is success-oriented, is goal-oriented, is on the same kind of path as you?  Who is somebody you could share this work you’re doing with?

 

Show them what you’re going through and they can do their own goal setting and their own vision setting and you can become accountability partners with them.

 

You want to start thinking about people in your life.  Do that for this first week and really sit down to think about who would be the best fit for that.

Next week, I will present your next exercise to help you with being accountable. In the meantime, I invite you to share with me your progress throughout your program. Share your thoughts, insights, inspirations and results with me in the comments section below, or you can shoot me an e-mail and let me know what’s going on. Let’s get a conversation started!

Your partner in accountability,

James