The Act of Being Responsible
ACCOUNTABILITY – The Cambridge Dictionary defines accountability [1] as – “the act of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it.” In other words when you are accountable for your actions you are the one that gets the pat on the back when things turn out right and you are also the one who takes the heat when things go bad. YOUR ACTIONS ARE ON YOU AND YOU ALONE.
Stop blaming others and other things.
Before I wrote this, I had made the video below. This is what got my attention to steer towards this subject.
Making a Shift
When you go to sleep at night and close your eyes. You are the only one there. Such is life. You may share your life with many others. And those “others” may change as life rolls on. But your actions are your own. Yours and yours alone.
Whether you want to lose weight. Gain weight. Get a promotion at your job. Sink a three-pointer. Gain muscle. Earn a degree. No one is going to do this for you. You may have a great support system. But in the end, this is on you.
And a lot of times this means that you need to make a shift about how you view the world. Is everyone really out to get you? Can you NOT get a break? STOP IT!!!!
He Handed Me the Plan
Many years ago, when I was first investigating whether an Occupational Therapy degree was right for me or not. I was fortunate to land an interview with a counselor at Temple University. He sat with me and my wife and laid out all the prerequisites I would have to complete before I could be considered for their program. (BTW at that time they were getting 300 applicants a year for only 30 spots). Prerequisites that would take about a year to complete before I would even be considered. We walked out of his office and got into an elevator to go home. The doors closed and my wife turned to me and said that she was so sorry about the news. That I would have so much work to do. I turned back to her in shock! And said, NO! NO! Not at all. He just told me what I needed to do. He just handed me THE plan. I’m doing it!
Many other hurdles came in my way. (a story for another day) But 5 years later I had my OT degree.
See it is in your perspective. If you are always going to lean towards the dark side, then you will always find a way to get around what you really do not want to do. At least be HONEST with yourself.
In the future we are going to look at discipline. See. Discipline along with accountability are EXTREMELY powerful.