The Power of Accountability
Let’s talk a bit about a time in my life when I wasn’t the most accountable guy.
Back in my teen years, like many guys when they’re that age, I believed the world revolved around me. Whatever I wanted to do or was doing was the most important thing going on, it really didn’t matter what others thought.
There are two times that I was extremely unaccountable that stick out the most in my life.
When I Wasn’t Accountable
The first was is still a bit tough to swallow at times but to give some background, my grandma (who if you don’t know, raised me for my high school years and is my best friend) well she and I have close birthdays so we normally just do one big dinner to celebrate.
Well turns out that on my 19th birthday, I had a different plan. We had planned for a few weeks that we would have our birthday dinner after my baseball game on Sunday. Sounds like a normal thing to wrap up the day with a family dinner right?
Well, young Tommy wanted to do something else. Instead of telling my family “hey let’s just reschedule since normally I hang with the guys after a game”, I just ditched them completely. The game ended and I turned my phone off. Not because I was running out of battery but because the plan was to drink at a few bars in town to cap the win.
Normally not a bad thing but this night turned into a pretty drunken Sunday Funday, to only come home to a pretty pissed off family. To me I didn’t think it’d be a big deal, to my family, it just showed how much I didn’t care about them.
Now the other time in my life was more of a consequence to myself than others. As I’ve mentioned, I wasn’t the best college student. It turns out that due to a very poor performance in my freshman year, I was on academic probation. Now instead of handling what I needed to in the summer, I just ignored it.
Next thing I knew it was September and the Sunday before the first day of classes. I made my dad drive me all the way to Milwaukee only to tell him at the dorm entrance that I wasn’t allowed at school.
Not the best way to start off my sophomore year and it ended up with me just working that semester before transferring. (Oh yeah, and 40 grand in debt from a school I didn’t graduate from…)
Now I could spend the next 10 minutes just telling similar stories but let’s get into how being unaccountable impacted me in those early years.
How Being Unaccountable Impacted Me
I’ll speak from my perspective but a lot of us younger guys just typically aren’t accountable. As I mentioned, we think the world is ours and that we’re invincible (if you’re a guy listening to this, just think of the stuff you did back then…)
Although it might be somewhat normal to be unaccountable at that age, it definitely impacted me in a pretty bad way.
The first one being regret.
Unaccountability turning into regret
That story I told about my grandma’s birthday, well that’s been one of my biggest regrets. Not because she isn’t with us anymore (I still take her money in cards every weekend) but it’s potential memory I could have had with her that I don’t.
Regret is one of those things that’s tricky to understand. Some say to live life with no regrets and that everything happens for a reason and maybe that’s true but I know I’ve had times in my life when I wish I did something different or that I would have followed through on what I said.
That could be just me living in the past but I see it as an opportunity to learn from that past instead.
The second negative impact was that I ruined a few relationships by not following through.
Unaccountability impacting relationships
I’ve had multiple romantic relationships that ended because I just outright sucked at being accountable.
Now that doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to work out but I know the reason they didn’t was because I would lie, makeup excuses, and not be there for them when they needed it. To me, these are pretty clear signs of someone who just can’t be counted on.
Again, this could be me living in the past but it taught me the power that being flaky can be. People won’t trust you, won’t rely on you, and likely won’t want anything to do with you if you continue to be that way.
Enough of the sob stories though, let’s get into what being accountable means to me and why I believe it’s extremely important.
Let’s begin with what being accountable is to me.
What I Believe Being Accountable Means
Simply put, I believe it’s being your true self. If you say you’re going to do something or be somewhere it’s because you feel that it’s what you should be doing.
Now, this also means that you have to get better at saying no to people or things that don’t mean much to you. A bit cutthroat I know but think about it. If you’re trying to live the life you want and be who you believe you are, why would you do something or be with people that don’t align with that if given the choice?
Yes, you still have to do things you don’t want to or be around people you don’t want to be hanging with but when given the option, old Tommy would’ve said yes and then just not done it. Now, I’ll just say no. Same amount of effort but at least my true self is what’s leading that.
To get into why I believe it’s important to be accountable, I think this breaks into two pieces. Being accountable to others and yourself.
Being accountable to others
Each has their own reasons on why it’s important but with others, this is truly showing that you care. You care about the relationship you have with the other person, you care about what they are asking of you, and you believe it’s worth doing.
The more you continue to show up the more it proves you are who you say you are and the more you either build new relationships or strengthen old ones.
Just think of the time that you asked that old friend of yours to show up to an event, only for them to say they’ll be there and never actually make it. I’m guessing you weren’t too pleased and thought twice before counting on that person.
Now with yourself, it’s more about how you see yourself.
Being accountable to yourself
If you continue to say “tomorrow is the day that I start to eat healthy” or workout or whatever you keep pushing off but never do, my guess is that your self-esteem is pretty shot and continues to be the more you put off that thing you keep telling yourself you’ll do.
I’ve been there many times. You keep asking yourself why it’s so hard to be accountable to your own word and then wake up the next morning thinking the same thing.
Now on the flip side, if you say you’re going to eat healthy and then do from there on out, you build conviction in what you do.
You don’t second guess the decisions you make or what you’re doing in life. You start to go full steam ahead because you know if you put your mind to something and tell yourself this is the action I should be doing, you do it.
This goes straight into point 3 which is being accountable to yourself clears up a lack of direction in life.
Clear up any lack of direction in life
It’s so easy (and normal) to feel like you have no clue what you’re doing, especially when you’re young. Trust me, I’m trying to figure out the bills from my dental insurance and I still have no clue what’s going on.
The more you just act and follow through on your word though, the less you question the direction your life is headed. You trust yourself that the decisions you’re making are for the better, even if in the time it might be nerve-wracking.
If you’re like younger Tommy though, you’re asking “how the heck do I start to be more accountable if I haven’t been up till now”? I’ve asked that question a few thousand times, so let’s chat about how I started to turn the tables.
How I Started To Be More Accountable
Although all of this might sound like an easy turnaround, it takes time to actually make a shift in the way you act. It’s not just a light switch that you can flip on and off at any point. You have to put in some serious work and stick to it if you want to see some change.
The first tip is pretty simple in thought but a bit tougher to put into practice.
Tackle the most important task first
Start with tackling the most important task first and track that progress. Let’s say you’re like me and wanted to get in better shape.
What’s the obvious thing to do? Well working out would be a great place to start. But if you’re also like me, normally I would push this to later in the day, and well today I’m just extremely tired so tomorrow I’ll work out.
Fine to say that for a day but those days blend together pretty quickly.
Instead, tackle that workout in the morning. Check it off the list, feel good about yourself, and go on with your day. Trust me, I know this isn’t easy but what helps, in the beginning, is applying the “don’t miss two days in a row” strategy.
Give yourself grace if you miss one day, we’re all human, life get’s crazy at times, but never let that one day turn into two days in a row. Know that if you skip one day of the task you’re working on that the next day it’s going to be the first thing you do.
Find an accountability partner
The second tip is to find an accountability partner and that could be just one person or a whole group. The key with this is you have to find someone or a group that will actually hold you accountable and the best way to do this is to find someone who has something on the line as well.
I’ve had many times where I’d ask my sister to text me if I didn’t do something or call me out if I continued to do something I didn’t want to but when she had nothing she was working on, those texts were less frequent.
Now the times that we both said: “hey I want to work on this and you want to work on that, why don’t we put a bet in place and the loser has to buy the other whatever dinner they want”. You can guess that in a competitive family, we were a lot more accountable when there was a winner and a loser.
Now eventually the goal is to graduate from needing someone else but it certainly helps at the start.
Attach negative motivation
Moving into the third tip, attaching some negative motivation to when you aren’t accountable.
Now Tommy why the heck would I punish myself? Well, I’ll tell ya, it’s a lot easier to follow through if you don’t allow yourself to go out to your favorite dinner spot in town until you are accountable.
This one can be a bit tricky because if you aren’t accountable to what you’re working on, well sometimes you also aren’t accountable to that negative motivation.
You can just as easily go out to dinner to that spot without being accountable to what you said but then what happens? You guessed it, we go back to what I mentioned early and you start to feel your self-esteem take a major hit. Then we’re back to tips 1 and 2.
The first two tips are when you’re struggling the most. The negative motivation comes in when you’re starting to feel some momentum but want to keep something on the line.
Now wrapping up with a few things. The first one is to give yourself grace as I mentioned before but be careful with this as it can easily be a slippery slope. One day or event of being unaccountable easily turns into two and into three before you know it.
You have to be okay with giving people the opportunity to call you out when you’re not being accountable. It might suck but it helps with that slippery slope and stops it before you turn into a snowball rolling down the hill. Let that accountability partner know that you want them to be extremely hard on you when you mess up, not to make you feel bad but to help you move forward.
And lastly, commit to a time period and then actually commit to it. It’s easy to want to say, “I’ll work out every day for 90 days” but if you haven’t workout the past 30, let’s just say I’m placing my bet against you.
Commit to a week, then a month, and so on until you feel yourself doing it no matter what. Don’t just commit to one time period, commit to one and then set another.
And with that, this ends another episode of the Progress Journal. As always, I appreciate you taking the time to listen and if you’re looking for additional resources, take a stroll over to my personal website for additional resources under the blog I wrote on this topic.
If you also could be so kind to rate this podcast and give any positive or negative feedback, I’d truly appreciate it. I want to continue to work on being better and showing up for you guys and that feedback truly helps. Until next time, peace.
