After studying successful people for 30 years, and recently interviewing 50 of them for my book #FindYourFlame, I noticed something about the language the interviewees were using when they described their biggest successes. They were all radically self-accountable. It sounds obvious, yet it’s rarely practiced. How radically self-accountable are you? Just think about it. When you reach for the chocolate your promised yourself you wouldn’t eat, or find an excuse (to yourself) so you don’t make that difficult call, or back away from a difficult conversation at work; they are all situations where we fail to be radically self-accountable.
We all do it, but I don’t think we realise how often we do it – and the affect it really has on our performance, work and personal lives. What could you achieve if you made no excuses, told yourself no lies about your performance and really learned from your mistakes?
I come from a background of elite sport. Although I hung up my professional dressage jacket over 20 years ago, I still train at a high performance level, and I’ve noticed that when I’m on my horse, I’m radically self-accountable. No sloppy errors. No excuses made. No internal back-chat to myself. I’m prepared to by shouted out by my coach, slammed by the other trainer teaching the working pupils on the area and ruthless with my assessment of my own performance (I’m based at a facility where the training is Olympic level with world class expectations). I’m delighted when the comments are harshest, because I get to see fault of my own I missed myself and don’t have to pull the learning out of a load of fluff. It’s direct, honest and brutal. And I relish it. But do I do that in every area? Of course not. I put off sales calls, eat cake and miss my yoga for various nonsense reasons. So, why it is so hard in other areas of life and work?
I think it’s a decision. But decisions start with awareness. If we don’t realise how much we do it, we aren’t going to be able to break the pattern. Yet, the rewards of doing so are massive. Get your head round it and you can achieve almost anything. Want to lose that weight? Just be radically self-accountable. Want to make that money? Want to get promoted? You can do anything when you decide to notice and intervene with radical self-accountability every time you are about to cheat on yourself.
Just try for ONE DAY being radically self-accountable. Every time you shirk something you should do, reach for something you know you shouldn’t eat or drink (and don’t really want to eat but previously would have given in to), or avoid something you know you should really do – change it. Notice how many times you self sabotage your own success in some tiny way.
When you see how it stacks up, practice radical self-accountability for a day and feel the incredible sense of achievement that winners feel in sport. Those moments are addictive – long after the competition is over. It’s the feeling that you know you have given your best and shifted upwards. Olympic levels of success come from Olympic levels of self-accountability – and if like me -you aren’t good enough to make final the cut in your chosen sport, you will become the person that can choose succeed in any field of endeavour. Try it. Radical self-accountability. See what happens. I think the results will surprise you.
