Personal Accountability: Hold the Line

“Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.” It can be so easy to sit on the fence and not be clear about your intentions. This could be in your decision making or being slow to commit to something. Keeping things fluid appears to be in vogue, but this is not always good.

Recently, I visited a natural bird sanctuary, which was situated in some native forest close to a city. Without intervention local native species couldn’t survive and flourish in this forest, as it was easy access for lots of predators. A decision was made to put a pest proof fence around a large portion of the forest. Once the fence was in place, a large-scale trapping, tracking, and monitoring program was embarked upon. When there was confidence of very low predator activity within the fenced area, many native species were released to populate the newly fenced forest habitat.

Now you can visit and see several species thriving, some that were in threat of extinction.

The fence has been breached a few times due to trees falling on it during severe weather events, fortunately the regular monitoring allows repairs to occur quickly and pests to be eradicated.  

We all allow things into our lives, in intentional and unintentional ways. Some are good and some are not. If we are not intentional about holding ourselves to account, like the pest fence, and monitoring our activity, we can allow unwanted visitors in.

These include:

·         Toxic people

·         Bad habits

·         Behavioural and character dysfunction

·         Unhealthy beliefs, cultural bias, and world views

 “Keeping the bad out requires more than fences”

 Personal accountability needs to be intentional. This intentionality acts like the pest fence but is only effective with tracking and monitoring. Even with these measures in place, they can be disrupted by key life events.

 Some key points in maintaining personal accountability.

  ·         Owning decisions

-          Deciding on something is better than making no decisions because this enables a baseline to work from. When you own something, you free others from the burden of blame

·         Points of accountability

-          Surround yourself with trusted mentors who can hold you to account for your decisions and keep on track for your actions

·         Measure progress

-          Journal your intended actions and measure your progress. Write down things that help you to be accountable and need reinforcing https://www.effectiveinfluence.com/blog/progress/improvement/measure

·         Identify red flags

-          Understand what might breach or affect your accountability. Example: A person drinks too much and becomes inappropriate and disruptive, they know that this is a red flag and impose a drink limit on themselves.

 Each of us has an allocated portion of time in our lives and we get to choose how we live them. The question we need to ask is “What are we doing with our life?” The time we have can be filled with many things, a bit like a water reservoir, but to let something new in we must let something out.  

  My 5 Learnings:

·         I need to be true to my word and let my yes mean yes and my no mean no

·         I need to be intentional and committed to my personal accountability

·         There are many bad things I can allow in my life if I don’t hold myself to personal account

·         I need to identify red flags and put procedures in place that I can be accountable to

·         My life will get filled up with something and I can choose what it is

The decision to be intentional about what we allow into our lives requires us to be self-aware and have clarity around who we are. https://www.effectiveinfluence.com/blog/clarity-more-than-mirrors

 My 3 Questions for you:

·       What are you allowing into your life that is not helping you?

·       How do you hold yourself to be personally accountable?

·       What do you need to let go of to create space for something new?

“Each day you are leading by example. Whether you realize it or not or whether it’s positive or negative, you are influencing those around you.” ― Rob Liano

If you need help with personal accountability, or if you have questions, please talk to me. I would be happy to chat with you and help.

Remember daily to, “Find value in your influence”

Written By: Paul Fawcett.