What If You Fail to Be Accountable?

Accountability: anything or anyone that helps you gain mental leverage to achieve the results you desire. —The Accountability Stop

I claim to be full of good ideas for personal accountability on this blog. But am I ignoring reality? How do accountability methods stack up against real life? Inevitably, we’re going to fail. We’re going to get up one morning and just not feel like doing what we said we would do. How should we react when we fail to be accountable?

In our work and family lives, often someone else steps in to enforce accountability. Demerits are issued. Pink slips are distributed. We receive stern-talking-tos and are invited to come-to-Jesus meetings. While negative enforcement isn’t necessarily the result, many of us labor under this expectation.

So is that what we should do for our personal projects? Are we supposed to beat ourselves up inside when we don’t keep our accountability promises? I’ve written previously that “should” is a good word. Is “didn’t” a bad word?

I’ll tell you what I (try to) tell myself. It will be OK. Don’t let it get to you. One failure isn’t the end of the world. Everyone is going to have them.

Be a Kid Again

The best advice for us is to have a toddler mindset. Toddlers see what their parents, siblings, and other toddlers do and they try it. They try to walk and talk and lift things. And they fail. They fail continually. They fail every single time for a while. And they don’t care. They haven’t attached failure to feeling bad. Instead, they have attached trying to feeling good. Some of that is external. Parents are infinitely enthusiastic for toddlers’ attempts and unconcerned, even happy, with toddlers’ failures.

Do toddlers experience all of these failures and decide walking and talking aren’t worth the effort? Somehow no. They persevere. They keep trying until they succeed. And the pattern of failures (_) and successes (+) repeats through early childhood.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ + _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ + + _ _ _ _ +

_ _ _ + + _ _ _ _ _ _ + _ + _ _ _ _ + + _ _ + _

_ + + + _ _ _ + + _ _ _ + + + _ _ _ + + _ _ _ +

+ + _ _ + + _ _ + _ + + + _ _ + + + _ + + _ + _

+ _ + + + + _ + + + _ _ + + + + _ _ + + _ + + +

+ + _ + + + + + _ + + + + _ + + _ + + + + + _ +

+ + + + _ + + + + _ + + + + + _ + + + _ _ + + +

+ + + _ + + + + + + + + + _ + _ + + + + + + + +

Maybe it’s inevitable that once our success rate at anything increases, then failure becomes a problem for us. We attach success to feeling good and failure to feeling bad. It gets entrenched in our minds that we shouldn’t fail. That may, in fact, be a reason we avoid our personal projects and goals all together. We know a new project will require a lot of failures. 

The first failures will just be failures to be accountable. We didn’t work on our project or habit when we said we would. That doesn’t mean we should give up on accountability.

Ideas to Try

How do we get back to a toddler mindset and attach trying to feeling good? Here are a few thoughts:

• Let go of results and outcomes, just focus on the process.
• Accept that failures are part of the process. 
• Think of each failure as a learning experience.
• Fail faster – as soon as we fail, try again. The faster we fail, just like the toddler, the faster we will start to succeed.
• If, after a reasonable number of attempts, we feel like our accountability technique isn’t working, then try a different accountability technique.
• Remember that we’ll get there. We will succeed. We’re just not there yet. “Yet” is a powerful word to maintain perseverance.
• Be playful. Shrug off the failure like we would missing a basketball shot.

These can apply to either failure to be accountable (not spending the time we intended) or our project itself (not making the progress or getting the result we desired).  

If you fail to be accountable, don’t beat yourself up. Get back up, dust yourself off, and try again.

What’s Your Account?

Do you have other ways to deal with a failure to be accountable?