Moxie and Personal Accountability

Accountability: anything or anyone that helps us gain mental leverage to achieve the results we desire.

—The Accountability Stop

I know people who are formidable and command attention. They take up space. Others describe them as a “force of nature.” They state an intention and I know it’s going to happen. They have moxie.

I admire these people. I aspire to be like them. I’m related to some of them. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I tend to be the guy in the background of the photo. I don’t take center stage; I’m usually a supporting role or chorus. Literally and figuratively, I look down the road to predict how to stay out of people’s way; I avoid situations where I need to assert myself.

Is There a Problem?

One supposes this is not really a problem. Every office is filled with supporting staff. Every volunteer organization needs people who will do the grunt work that needs done. Not everyone is a leader.

But when it comes to our personal desires and aspirations, we can’t be supporting characters. We must take the initiative ourselves or we will forever live inside our small comfort zone. We will live lives that others choose for us.

For those like me who naturally gravitate to routine, comfort, and letting others call the shots, personal accountability can give us the mental leverage to accomplish what we want for ourselves. When I’m averse to doing something I want because wanting doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, I can create accountability for myself that forces me outside my comfort zone. 

Developing Moxie

But beyond that, I would suggest that the people who have moxie developed it. Regardless of whether moxie was an innate personality trait, it was developed through the very techniques of accountability that we talk about on The Accountability Stop. Like most personality traits, it starts early in life:

• Parents, through carrot and stick accountability, likely both, made them accountable to stand up for themselves.
• Kids in school create a social order, whether they want to or not. It’s a de facto accountability group. But the kids who most successfully keep commitments and hold others accountable for all the things that have nothing to do with schoolwork are the ones who develop moxie and develop as leaders.
• Teachers who demand accountability model the concept of moxie for their students.

If moxie is learned as well as innate, then we can learn it at any time of our lives. We can develop personal moxie through personal accountability. We can address the fact that we’re stuck in our comfort zone by finding an accountability buddy, finding a phone app that helps us start a habit, finding a class to hold us accountable for a result, or by using any number of other techniques. 

Fake It Till You Make It

The more practice we have with using accountability to take risks and get outside our comfort zone, the easier it is to take on the next project and push ourselves further. Personal accountability helps us fake moxie until we have it. Maybe we won’t ever be that person with moxie every time they enter the room. But we can be the star of our own lives and forge our own path when we need to.

What’s Your Account?

Do you have moxie? Do you want to develop it? Do you think accountability is the path to get there, or am I making a bogus claim?