Accountability was never something you and I asked for, but rather something that we endured as children, teens, and young adults. As it was forced upon us by adults, most of us unconsciously grew to resist and resent accountability altogether.
Then, when we turned 18, we embraced every ounce of freedom we could get our hands on, continuing to avoid accountability like it was the plague, perpetuating a downward spiral into mediocrity, developing detrimental mindsets and habits such as laziness, deflecting responsibility, and taking short cuts—hardly a recipe for success.
The link between success and accountability has been proven to be irrefutable. Virtually all highly successful people—from CEOs to professional athletes to the President of the United States—embrace a high degree of accountability. It gives them the leverage they need to take action and create results, even when they don’t feel like it. Without it, we’d have a lot more pro-athletes skipping practice, and CEOs spending their days playing Angry Birds on their iPhones.
Accountability is the act of being responsible to someone else for some action or result. Very little happens in this world, or in your life, without some form of accountability. Virtually every positive result you and I produced from birth to age eighteen was thanks to the accountability provided for us by the adults in our lives (parents, teachers, bosses, etc.) Vegetables got eaten, homework was completed, teeth were brushed, we bathed and got to bed at a reasonable hour. If it weren’t for the accountability provided for us by our parents and teachers, we would have been uneducated, malnourished, sleep-deprived, dirty little kids! Nice way to reframe it, right? Accountability has brought order to our lives and allowed us to progress, improve and achieve results we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Now that we are all grown up and striving to achieve worthy levels of success and fulfillment, we must take responsibility for initiating our own systems for accountability (or move back in with our parents). Becoming accountable to someone other than yourself is the best gift you could give your future success. Don’t pass up another opportunity to see how far you can grow.
D.R. Whitson is a Time & Financial Freedom Coach with expertise in creating Self-Managed Businesses through his experience of founding over 20 “start-up” companies and as a founding member of the “John Maxwell Team,” with over six billion dollars in revenue and 3,500 associates.