How Ego, Accountability, ​and Doubt Relate

“Once you’re actually willing to take blame when you are wrong. And leave your ego at the door, and your insecurity of being judged by someone else… well then you can start living.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

Accountability is something that truly does drive whether you will be successful or not. And I don’t just mean successful professionally, but in your relationships with others and yourself. Taking responsibility for the things that went wrong, the mistakes that shouldn’t have been made but were, and even simply taking responsibility in your behavior and reactions. Identify where you went wrong and don’t be too good (egotistical) or afraid of admitting that you made a mistake and that you were wrong. You have to be your own advocate, and be self aware enough to understand how to take ahold of your life during the times that feel like everything is spiraling. And I think ego and accountability have a correlation because a lot of times, a large reason why people avoid accountability is, in fact, their ego. It’s about getting into a mindset where you have to learn to leave ego at the door and humble yourself, especially to achieve whatever it is you’re after. No matter how big you get, no matter the level of significance you think you hold on this planet, you are still surrounded by human beings who deserve to be treated as such. You’re not too good for anybody, or any experience, and you’re surely not too good to endure struggle, failures, and hardships. Get a hold of yourself, humble yourself, and be accountable for your behavior.

Above all, one of the most important things that can help with being more accountable and ditching the ego is by not being fearful of judgement, criticism, and doubt. We all are so caught up in a mindset about living for the kind of impression we can make on other people, and while this is damaging for so many reasons, the reason this is most damaging regarding getting better about accountability is that you can’t be more accountable for your failures, issues, and struggles if your overall concern is what other people will think of that. You have to understand that people love to criticize others when they fall because it makes them feel better that someone else is struggling as they are. People are really broken mentally and emotionally, they think that by making a mockery of other’s failures, that they are building their own lives up, it’s actually quite the opposite. That being said, you cannot waste your whole life holding onto words from broken people. As Mr.Vaynerchuk says, “If you spend any amount of time to hate on someone you must be broke emotionally. It’s such a weakness, hate is such a weakness. That person is very weak and think they’re strong.”