This marks the fifth day of my personal transformation. For the video of this blog click here.
What struck me as interesting was that true accountability needs to tap into a primal part of your brain. The idea of holding a more perfect ideal above ourselves and beyond our reach is an instinct that seems to be at the core of our existence. Consequently, I have incorporated into my core commitment a ‘check-in’ process with God. Religious exercise or not, this action of holding yourself responsible to check in with an entity bigger than yourself is powerful in keeping you on track.
For those atheists or skeptics, you have a few alternative options. You could pretend. You could look to your potential to reach a higher level of consciousness and enlightenment. Seek the third eye chakra, meditation, the universe, or perhaps just a mentor. The point is that a higher ideal than yourself to check in with morning and night is powerful.
The second method is what I’m doing now: holding myself accountable to other people. I’m pretending that I have a massive following, and everyone is expecting me to publish my awesome progress. This isn’t remotely true, and it never will be, but it serves as a great psychological trick. I got this idea when I ran into an athlete named Rich Roll. He went through a transformation, became a tri-athlete, and now owns a farm in Hawaii and eats awesome food. He probably has a massive following, makes lots of money, and is living his best life. I had this thought: Wow, he has created such an image of himself that he could never go and pig out on a hamburger. If someone caught him, his whole street credibility would be destroyed. What incredible pressure! So I now use this as a mechanism to keep myself honest when it comes to making and keeping life-changing commitments.
The third accountability mechanism is identifying a clear metric that can represent or at least summarize your success. I’m always on the quest to identify some representative number, achievement, or measure that will be a key indicator of my success. A scoreboard for your transformation. I have had many of these over the last few years, and they do change after I have achieved a milestone. Placing in the top 10 of a 50-mile ultra-marathon was one of my goals once. Yes, I achieved it. In my mind, if I could achieve that, then I would have met all my health-related goals or at least been well on the way. I have a personal goal to write 20,000 blogs. For that to happen, I have to write one a day until I am in my late 90s. Perhaps on the last day of my life, I will be typing my 19,999th blog. Who knows? However, this metric requires me to be consistent, dedicated, and live long. All of which are aspirations of mine.
Any personal transformation journey must accompany a serious consideration, implementation, and frequent review of accountability. Motivation comes and goes, but accountability will always keep you making progress and getting at least the bare minimum done. Hopefully, these three methods can inspire you to establish your own accountability methods so that you can make and keep your commitments.
