Month 3:  Accountability

Welcome back to our Success in a Year Program, 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 nobody's held you accountable to these things has been the main reason you haven't done it.

Let's take a month to really build a system of accountability so that moving forward, from now and beyond for the rest of our lives, we will be held accountable to do the things that we already want to do and now we're just going to make sure we 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 fail the test.  You fail the exam.  You fail 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.

This could be your parents, this could be your kids, your brother or sister, friends, neighbors, your coworkers, 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 they actually going to do this?  Are they a credible personality or are they a huge flake?"  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 our life so that we're not just doing this once to achieve a goal for the sake of achieving a goal, but we're going to start holding ourselves accountable in all areas of life because it's going to make us happier in the long run.

We're going to start following through on things more often and we won't allow ourselves off the hook and we won't allow ourselves to get lazy.

Action Steps

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 our 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 Success in a Year Program with? 

Show them what you're going through and do their own goal setting and their own vision setting and you can become accountability partners for them.

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

Once you've done that, pick the person and list your reasons for choosing them.  You want to make sure that in your mind you've crystallized why this person is the right fit.  You might want to look at some of the things they've already achieved.  You might want to look at their high standards of living or some of the things they do on an ongoing basis that kind of model to you that this is the kind of person I want to be around.

Also, think about how you can help each other.  Yes, this person can hold you accountable and you can hold them accountable, but there's going to be additional benefit now that you're going to be working together.

Maybe they have some skills you can leverage or vice versa.  Maybe you know some people that can help them in their lives.

So it's going to be a multi-dimensional process here.

Finally, you want to approach them and fill out an accountability partnership agreement.  It could be just a simple document that basically lists how you're going to hold each other accountable.

It might be a weekly meeting, it might be phone calls, it might be things you're going to do as consequences if you don't follow through.  If your partner says they're going to do something and they don't, what do you agree to hold them accountable to doing?

Sometimes these things can be pretty drastic, sometimes they'll be very subtle, it just depends on how you choose to work with your partner.

The key thing is this final point here and that is to sign the document.  There's been tons of research, tons of studies done on this that show that when you sign your name to something, instinctively you are more likely to follow through on it.

If both you and your partner sign this accountability partnership agreement, then, A, you're both way more likely to actually continue your accountability agreement, but, B, following through on the things that you choose to hold yourself accountable for.

Finally, you want to discuss your goals with your accountability partner.  Agree to some deadlines with them, and this happens pretty much every week.  Sometimes people do this multiple times a week.

But you really want to open up all of your goals.  Open up all of your visions and really share freely with your accountability partner everything that you're trying to do. 

There's no room for holding back here.  This is somebody you trust, and they're going to have to trust you. 

But you want to discuss all of your goals, and they'll often see holes in your strategy or they might see opportunities that you missed and vice versa.

So when you have these open discussions then you can start agreeing on deadlines, and like I said in the previous step, agreeing on consequences if those deadlines aren't met.

Make sure you discuss your goals on an ongoing basis.  This entire accountability step can ultimately change your life, because now somebody else is looking out for your well-being and you're looking out for theirs and it creates an amazing dynamic and amazing relationship and ultimately gets you where you want to go.