Accountability Matters

There seems to be a concept gaining popularity that essentially states we are not responsible for our lives. We are not responsible for our actions, we aren’t responsible for our results and we aren’t responsible for each other.

This space is not big enough to enter into the speculation on where this idea has come from, and frankly, I’m not sure that it matters. What I want to address is how you, as a person who wants to be successful and contribute to the world, has to do to avoid failing victim this type of thinking.

Among youth, I see this trend manifesting in everything from grades, to money, to how they treat each other. While MOST young people are hard working, kind and generous people, there are SOME who walk around with an attitude of entitlement. They seem to think that the world owes them something. They think they DESERVE the iPod, the new car, the trendy clothes and whatever else their heart desires. There seems to be little notion, among this group, that these things come as a result of hard work and are not handed out to anyone who decides they want it.

Adults too, are falling prey to this flawed thinking and the results are serious. As much as we’d all like to blame the global credit crisis on irresponsible big banks, each of us is as much to blame. If we were better prepared to handle changes, it wouldn’t have been the issue it has been. Instead, because people think they DESERVE to have everything they want, they have mortgaged themselves into oblivion, maxed out credit cards, and continued to spend without any regard for what would happen if anything went wrong.

What’s my point? All of these issues should be teaching us a very important lesson about the importance of accountability. One of the universal laws of life is that in one way or another, eventually, we will all be held accountable for how we behave. If we commit crimes, we’ll go to jail, if we overspend, we’ll have financial trouble, if we don’t pay the mortgage, we lose or house. There are consequences for actions. Yet many still try to live in make-believe world where there aren’t.

But what if Instead of living in fear of the negative consequences of bad decisions, we started to live with a focus on the positive consequences of good choices? What if instead of not opening bills in the hopes that maybe they’ll go away, and then having to dig out of a deep hole, we were proactive in managing our money and looked forward to the positive consequence of being debt free? What if instead of dreading the fact that we’re getting fatter (more than 50% of North Americans are now obese) and then stick our heads in the ground and continue to stuff our faces, we made a plan to eat better, move more, and looked forward to the positive consequence of slimming down and being in better health?

So why aren’t we more accountable? Surely most of us WANT to live well, do the right thing, make good decisions and be responsible. So why don’t we; because we don’t make ourselves accountable. It is all too easy in today’s world to avoid consequences. Yes they will catch up with us eventually, but we can evade them for a long time, sometimes years. Witness the thousands of 55-75 year old people still working. Not because they want to, but because they have failed to properly prepare for retirement and have now discovered that they simply can’t afford to. They weren’t held accountable for how they were spending and not saving, until it was too late.

In many cases school works the same way. Students fail to do the work and study necessary to learn what they need to learn, but our school system advances them through the grade levels anyway. Students get the message that there no real consequence for not working because hey, I’ll go to grade 11 next year anyway. And then we wonder why they don’t get it when a few years later, they realize that they can’t operate that way in the workplace.

So what can you and I do to deal with the chronic lack of accountability in our world? Probably not much. But we CAN make ourselves accountable. We can realize that if we ensure that we make ourselves accountable for our actions and our results, that we will end up more successful, happier, fulfilled people. How do we do that?

There are a few ways that you can create accountability in your life. Here are my favourites:

1) Get a Coach: Most people think coaches are only for athletes, or maybe people in the depths of crisis. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the successful people I know get coaching in some form or another. They realize that a coach can help them by seeing things they cannot see, giving an unbiased opinion on issues, and most importantly by keeping them accountable to themselves. A coach is a great way to be sure that you execute on the goals you set. Learn more about coaching at: (http://www.MarkBlackSpeaks.com/coaching)

2) Create a Mastermind Group – Gather a few colleagues, friends or ideally people who are even a little further ahead on your path than you are, and get together to talk. Meet once a month or maybe more frequently and keep each other posted on your progress. Share you goals and objectives and keep each other ACCOUNTABLE to working on them.

3) Find an Accountability Partner – Find a colleague or friend who you trust, respect and can count on. Set meeting once a month or every two weeks. Share your goals and plans and the actions you plan to take to accomplish them. When you meet each week, ask each other if you have done what you said you would do.

Whatever you can do to hold yourself accountable to yourself is valuable. When you become truly accountable for your actions and your results, your results will improve.

Partnership had Power

I'm a solo-preneur. I work alone. My 'business' is a one-man operation and I am rarely afforded the luxury of having someone else to talk to, bounce ideas off of and encourage me to push myself.

This has advantages and disadvantages. Certainly it's nice to be able to set my own schedule, make my own decisions, and otherwise be my own boss. The downside is that it can get lonely all alone and without someone to push us, challenge us and critique us, it can be very easy to get settled in our ways and cease to grow and improve.

That's why this year, I have taken an active decision to partner with people, both in and outside of, my industry, in order to help me grow, change and improve. I'm working in a master-mind group with other speakers and though leaders to share ideas, bounce ideas off each other and hone my skills.

I'm working with a group of other speakers/authors on a joint-venture project so that we can mutually promote each others' ideas, products and services to each others' clients and thus spread our reach beyond our personal sphere of influence.

Finally, I'm also working with a mentor who is where I want to be, to help guide my actions in order to achieve the success that I'm seeking.

Today I want to ask you, what are you doing to partner with others to raise your level of success? Are you employing the wisdom, experience and contacts of others to help you grow and improve? If you're not, I encourage you to take that step. Seek out other like-minded people and start a master-mind group. A group of people who are all interested in self-improvement and professional development. They might be from the same field, but they need not be. All that matters is that they are all interested in getting better and that they are willing to invest time and energy to achieve those results.

Call a few people who you think would make good mastermind group partners and schedule a meeting. You can meet once a month, once a week or a few times a year. What's important is that everyone be invested in improving, both themselves and the other members. You will find you can help each other and collectively you will achieve much more than you could have alone.

Good luck! And keep me posted. Let me know how it goes.

Are you at your limit?

Limitations, or more accurately, perceived limitations, play a large role in our ability to realize our potential and achieve our goals. As a starting point to learn about how perceived limitations affect our lives, I'd ask you to consider this questions, "what would you do if you couldn't fail?" Seriously think about that for a minute...

Do you have a long list of things flooding your brain? Is there a litany of things that you haven't done that you'd like to do but haven't because you had some "good reason" why you couldn't? It is exactly in these things that you will find the sneaky power of limitations affecting you. Chances are good that whatever you have written off as "impractical", "impossible" or "unlikely" are only thus because you have decided they are. Today I want to encourage you to reconsider.

Now I don't want to be seen as getting carried away here. I will grant you that there are limitations. We all live in a physical world that physical world does have some limitations. And as physical beings we also have some physical limitations (not that most of us will come close to reaching them). The problem is not that some limitations exist, but rather that most of us never test them. Knowing we have limits, some of us make the choice to live lives steering far clear of those limits. We choose to use those limits as excuses not to push ourselves.

For example, what do you think you are worth? What salary are you making today? What is the maximum salary you can envision yourself making? Chances are good it's within 100% of what you make now. So if you make $40,000 you might be able to see yourself making $80,000-$100,000 one day, but you'd have a hard time imagining yourself making $300,000. Why is that a problem? Because you are placing artificial limits on yourself that need not hold you back.

The point isn't about money. You can be perfectly happy on $40,000, some are happy on much less and some are miserable with much more. I'm not meaning to imply that money is the key to happiness, but just that our mental perceptions have the power to hold us back from becoming all that we can be. Case in point, Ted Williams, the homeless man from Ohio who last week was living on the street, but since being 'discovered' for his great voice, has already recorded a commercial and appeared on the Today show (http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7808698-homelessness-to-fame-for-ted-williams-nbc-2nd-chance-as-announcer-and-then-i-can-tell-you-what-the-kids-are-doing).

Granted most of us will not have such a dramatic transformation of our life circumstances, but the ARE possible, if you believe they are. Probably the most powerful example of expectations shaping reality for me comes from the world of running (no surprise for those who have been reading my blog and newsletters for a while).

You may be familiar with the story of Roger Banister. If you aren't, Roger Banister was the first man to run a mile in under 4minutes. Until he did it, hundreds had tried and failed. The record had stood for years and some scientists had even released research declaring it "physically impossible" for a human being to run a mile in under 4min. It just couldn't be done... until Roger Banister did it. What's more amazing than Banister's feat, which is an accomplishment in it's own right, is that AFTER Banister broke the 4min mile mark, more than 5 people went even faster in the next 10 years and MANY others also broke the 4min mark.

But that was impossible wasn't it? Of course not. It was perceived to be impossible. Like going to the moon, splitting the atom, and any other "impossible" thing that we as human beings have done, it was only impossible until we could make our mind see that it wasn't. Once the mind could get there, we weren't long behind.

So take a look this week at what is limiting you. Chances are good that it isn't really a limitation, just a perceived limitation. If you can get your mind around the idea that you can do it, than you can. Make 2011 the year you do something you used to think was impossible.