Accountability

We all know what accountability feels like. It’s that struggle between doing what we want in the moment vs taking actions despite how we feel towards actually getting results that we want. To become accountable we must submit to a process of improvement, planning and committed decision-making. Being accountable to measurable steps along the way in a consistent process of progress. The end result of our pursuits is the greatest form of accountability.

Did we achieve what we set out to accomplish? Did we take steps today towards achieving, or did we shirk our responsibility?

All our actions (or inactions) can be scrutinized through the lens of accountability. Accountability at the end of a day, a week, months or years. Eventually we all come to account for our actions.

What causes one to avoid accountability, is ironically the same thing we receive precisely because we delay accountability. Pain. Discomfort. Difficulty.

We avoid accountability because we wish to remain comfortable, we wish to remain pain-free, we wish to take the easy way out. After all, when we are beholden (accountable) to something, someone or something, be it a process, a job, a system, we are not free, right? Every human wants to be free!

And therein lies the dichotomy. To be free is to limit accountability, right? The less we HAVE TO DO, the more we are free to do the things we WANT TO DO.

I’ve actually found the opposite to be true… if we delay the thing we HAVE TO DO we inevitably and eventually stop having the ability to do the WANT TO DO.

Every time we delay actions in submission to our fleeting emotions, we are delaying pain today for 10X pain tomorrow (or at some point in the future).

Today is always the ideal day to do the actions in submission to a process of accountability. The process can’t wait until tomorrow, today is what counts. And when we are called to account for our actions, in the form of our paycheck, in front of the public or some other way, we will understand clearly (if we didn’t already) our responsibility to take accountability seriously.