ac·count·a·bil·i·ty
1. the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable

ac·count·a·ble
1. subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; responsible; answerable

Understanding Who or What you are Accountable to Helps Establish Responsibility

A big step of learning self discipline is understanding who you are accountable to. To whom do you report and justify your actions? Why do you want to be more disciplined in the first place? It’s important to know that you own the outcomes of your decisions and behaviors. Every decision you make either takes you closer to your goals, or farther away. You need to be accountable to yourself for accomplishing your goals whether it’s weight loss, financial independence or whatever your goals are. Part of being accountable is reporting, explaining, answering, and justifying your actions. That’s where discipline comes in. If you skip out on your last lap running, or last rep of a workout – you’re only cheating yourself. If you splurge on a large desert, you’re only setting yourself further back. These are conscious decisions that need to be made with your end goal in mind.

Good Data is the Best Way to Hold Yourself Accountable and Understand Impact of Behavior

The next part of accountability is reporting. Reporting and measuring go hand in hand. Whether you’re tracking your weight, calories, financial budgets, strength, or spending limits, you absolutely have to report and visualize progress. Data is hard evidence. The more data you have, the easier it is to hold yourself accountable. You can’t argue against good data. If I track how much my company is making last month compared to this month, I see progress. If I track how many calories I eat today vs last week, I can correlate progress. Data doesn’t have an emotional attachment or an emotional investment. It is literal and concrete. Tracking everything is a great way to hold yourself accountable. It’s a forcing function that brings your goals to the front of your mind with every decision you make. If you have to enter onto a budget that you spent hundreds of dollars on the latest smart phone, you probably will rethink how “useless” your old phone really is.

Reporting and tracking are the behaviors to hold yourself accountable for your actions. Remember, the whole point is to model behaviors and outcomes. If we strive for the best, we need to be able to own ourselves at our worst. Simply put, this means holding yourself accountable for your actions. When you’re late for work, you can blame hundreds of factors – red lights, school zones, traffic, and needing gas just to name a few. Ultimately though, the school zone wasn’t late for work, you were. Same with working out or eating right. Again – every decision you make either takes you closer to your goals, or farther away.

Celebrate Wins and Move Past Misses

Be accountable to yourself and measuring your progress will allow you to celebrate your successes. Every time  your weight goes down, ever time your blog gets more visitors than last month, every time you pay off a credit card – celebrate those wins and know that they come from hard work and self discipline.

Be accountable to yourself. Own your losses and celebrate your wins. Success comes to those who work for it and want it. Eric Thomas says “when you want to be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” In order to breathe, I imagine you’d work pretty hard. I think anyone would put most things to the side if they needed to breathe. That’s what it takes to learn self discipline. It’s not easy, but it’s what separates you in a crowd.

– Tim

Photo Credit: Michael Gil;