Wow, everyone wants me to do things I don’t want to do…life is not much fun having to follow thru on other
peoples desires. Why can’t I just do
what I want, when I want to do it?
As parents we go from being a cop to a coach to a consultant. Early in a
kids life they do something wrong and get punished. As they grow and do
something stupid we coach them on doing the right thing. Then as they become adults
we parents sit on the sidelines awaiting an opportunity to offer our sage
advice on whatever issue is raised by them.
As a business person, we wrestle with deadlines forced on us, with right/wrong decisions to be made without
enough data or time to properly evaluate the situation, and the list goes
on. The business person forces things
thru the system to “make it work”…they get it done in a way that becomes
expedient.
As a student there are different pressures. Students have a more entitled
feeling about life…usually the burdens of making a living, raising a family,
and following a call to action are not upon them. Students have huge stimuli challenging them. They
feel “that my life sucks” more than any group.
So where is this article going? How does accountability fit into
whether I am a parent, business person or a student?
The underlying thread of being a person is different from being a dog, cat or fish. People are accountable for their actions…nothing
else are.
Simply stated lets consider 6 types of accountability:
- I won’t be held accountable
- I’ll be accountable to myself (Most popular)
- I’ll be accountable to my friend (2nd most popular)
- I’ll be accountable to a person I respect
- I’ll be accountable to a person for a specific issue that they agree to hold me accountable for
- I’ll be accountable for my actions and:
A. Have agreed to real pain/burden/ ( like: financial, emotional, time, etc) for non-performance
B. Have a nice reward for actually performing
C. Both A and B
Look at all 6. Can you say you use all of them? Most of us hang around levels 1 -3, some go to 4. It takes real guts to desire
accountability levels 5 and 6.
You may remember the commercial from UPS “If you really need to get your package there by 10am…) UPS held
themselves accountable and built a system around making sure your package
arrived at its destination on time.
Business build accountability systems, governments do the same.
But what about us, regular people…what is your personal accountability system? Mine used to be duck, bob, and weave…commit nothing as all I wanted was
someone to show me the way to preserve my time for myself. While this was very selfish, it enabled me to
“live my life the way I wanted.”
Discovering life was not fun with this method of operating, I found a way to do a better job of feeling good
about myself. I found that the more
things that I held myself accountable for and got done, the better I felt… and
so did those around me.
Ouch…this was painful. But when I finally got into realizing that life is about accountability and that all I was doing was avoiding it, I
decided to make a change in my life.
This simple view allowed me the flexibility to
determine what level of accountability I desire for the task at hand. Helping people with accountability issues became
one of the reasons for a new business called Path2Success4me. P2s4ME helps people develop the good inside
them and put it to work in a way that resolves many personal and business
issues. It does provide a unique path to
find purpose in life. You might find it
helpful, so please check it out at www.path2success4me.com