I’ve met very few people who genuinely have no idea what they need to do to improve some part of their life.

Someone who wants to become healthier probably already knows that exercising regularly, eating better, and getting enough sleep would help.

A business owner struggling to grow can often tell you exactly which calls they’re avoiding, which relationships they should be developing, or which parts of their business need more attention.

Someone who constantly feels overwhelmed can usually identify several things they’re doing that aren’t nearly as important as the things they say they don’t have time to do.

We usually know more than we give ourselves credit for.

Knowing isn’t always the problem.

Doing is.

The Motivation Trap

When we’re not doing something we know we should be doing, we often assume we’re missing motivation.

So we go looking for it.

We read another book. Listen to another podcast. Watch another video. Create another goal. Maybe we buy something that represents our new commitment.

And for a while, it works.

We feel motivated again.

But motivation has one major problem.

It’s a feeling.

And feelings change.

Think about something you’ve been putting off. There was probably a point when you were genuinely excited about doing it. You may have created a plan and promised yourself that this time would be different.

Then life happened.

Work became busy. You didn’t sleep well. Something unexpected came up. The weather wasn’t right. You weren’t in the mood.

Tomorrow seemed perfectly reasonable.

Then tomorrow became next week.

That’s what happens when motivation is responsible for determining whether we take action.

A Better Question

Instead of asking, How do I get motivated?, I think there’s a much more useful question:

What am I willing to commit to even when I don’t feel motivated?

That’s harder to answer because it forces us to distinguish between what we’d like to accomplish and what we’re actually willing to do.

Maybe you’d like to exercise five days a week, but you know you can consistently commit to three.

Then start with three.

Maybe you’d like to spend two hours every morning building your business, but your current responsibilities realistically allow you to protect 45 minutes.

Protect the 45 minutes.

We sometimes underestimate smaller commitments because they don’t feel ambitious enough.

But a smaller commitment that you consistently keep will take you much further than an ambitious commitment you repeatedly abandon.

This Is Where Accountability Matters

Accountability creates structure when motivation disappears.

If you commit to completing something by Friday, Friday doesn’t move simply because Wednesday was difficult.

At some point you have to look at the result.

Did you do it?

If you did, great.

If you didn’t, that’s not necessarily failure.

It’s information.

What happened?

Did you underestimate the amount of time required? Did another priority legitimately take its place? Did you fail to schedule the work? Did you procrastinate? Did you decide in the moment that something else was more appealing?

Those questions aren’t designed to make someone feel guilty.

They’re designed to reveal patterns.

And once we can see our patterns clearly, we can begin changing them.

That’s one of the most valuable things accountability provides.

It turns excuses into information.

Real Change Usually Isn’t Dramatic

We tend to notice dramatic transformations.

Someone loses 50 pounds. Builds a successful business. Changes careers. Completes a degree. Runs a marathon.

We see the result.

What we don’t see are the hundreds of ordinary days that created it.

Most meaningful change isn’t particularly exciting while it’s happening.

Someone decides what’s important.

They make a commitment.

They follow through.

Then they do it again.

Some weeks go well. Others don’t. They adjust, learn, and continue.

Eventually something that once required tremendous effort simply becomes part of how they live.

That’s consistency.

And consistency will take us places motivation never can.

Maybe You Already Have What You Need

If there’s something in your life you’ve been thinking about changing for months—or maybe years—you may not need another motivational speech.

You may not need another book.

You may not need a more complicated plan.

You might simply need to decide what you’re actually willing to commit to.

Make it specific.

Make it realistic.

Give it a deadline.

Then start building evidence that you can trust yourself to follow through.

Because progress doesn’t require us to wake up motivated every morning.

It requires us to continue showing up after the feeling that got us started is gone.

Dean

The post You Probably Don’t Need More Motivation appeared first on Realizing You Life Coach.

Most of us take commitments to other people pretty seriously. If we tell our boss we’ll have something finished by Friday, we find a way to get it done. If we tell a client we’ll call at 10:00, we’re probably calling at 10:00. When our family needs us, we rearrange schedules, move things around, and figure it out.

We don’t want to let people down.

But I’ve always found it interesting how differently we can treat the commitments we make to ourselves.

We say we’ll start exercising Monday. We’ll finally work on the business idea we’ve been thinking about. We’ll get our finances organized, start getting up earlier, make more time for our family, or begin working toward the goal we’ve been talking about for the past six months.

Then Monday comes and goes.

Nothing terrible happens. Nobody calls asking where we were. There’s no missed deadline notice in our inbox. Because no one else was depending on us, it can feel as though there wasn’t really a consequence.

I think there is.

The Quiet Cost of Breaking Your Own Word

The biggest cost isn’t the missed workout, the unfinished project, or another week of putting something off.

The bigger cost is what happens to the relationship you have with yourself.

Every time we make a commitment to ourselves and don’t follow through, we’re creating evidence. Eventually, if it happens often enough, we begin to question our own word.

We can buy another planner, create another goal, download another app, or announce that this time things are going to be different. But somewhere in the back of our minds, we’ve heard these promises before.

That’s one of the reasons I believe accountability is about much more than productivity.

It’s about self-trust.

Can you depend on yourself to do what you said you were going to do?

That’s a much bigger question than whether you checked everything off your list today.

Confidence Comes From Evidence

People often talk about wanting more confidence before making a change.

I’ve come to believe we sometimes have that backward.

Confidence doesn’t always come first. Sometimes confidence is the result of repeatedly proving something to yourself.

You decide you’re going to walk for 30 minutes three mornings this week.

And you do it.

You decide you’re going to spend an hour working on the business you’ve been talking about starting.

And you do it.

You decide you’re going to have the conversation you’ve been avoiding.

And you have it.

None of those things may look particularly impressive from the outside. But internally, something important is happening.

You’re creating evidence that your word means something.

You’re beginning to trust yourself again.

Make Fewer Promises—and Keep Them

One of the biggest mistakes we make when we want to change our lives is trying to change everything at once.

We create the perfect morning routine. We decide we’re going to exercise five days a week. We completely change our diet. We reorganize our schedule. We set three new goals and decide we’re finally going to finish the project we’ve been avoiding.

For a few days, it feels great.

Then real life shows up.

Instead of making ten commitments, I think there’s tremendous value in making one.

Make it realistic. Make it measurable. Make it important enough to matter.

Then keep it.

Once you’ve demonstrated that you can consistently keep that commitment, make another.

This approach isn’t as exciting as completely reinventing yourself on Monday morning.

But it works.

Accountability Isn’t Punishment

I think the word accountability sometimes carries the wrong meaning.

It can sound like someone standing over you making sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to do.

That’s not how I see it.

Good accountability isn’t about judgment, guilt, or perfection. It’s about being willing to honestly examine the commitments you’ve made.

Did I do what I said I was going to do?

If the answer is yes, keep going.

If the answer is no, the next question isn’t, What’s wrong with me?

It’s, Why didn’t I do it?

Maybe the commitment wasn’t realistic. Maybe something genuinely more important happened. Maybe you didn’t protect the time necessary to accomplish it. Or maybe, when the moment came, you simply chose something else.

There’s valuable information in each of those answers.

Accountability helps us stop hiding from that information.

Becoming Someone You Can Depend On

Coaches, mentors, friends, spouses, and business partners can all help us stay accountable. Sometimes we need someone outside ourselves who can see the patterns we’ve stopped noticing.

But I don’t believe the ultimate purpose of accountability is to make someone dependent on another person forever.

The goal is to eventually develop a stronger relationship with yourself.

One where your commitments matter even when nobody else knows you’ve made them.

One where you don’t need someone watching before you follow through.

One where you can look at yourself and know:

If I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to make every reasonable effort to do it.

You don’t build that relationship overnight.

You build it one kept promise at a time.

And perhaps one of the most important realizations we can have is this:

The person we’re going to spend the rest of our lives depending on is ourselves.

Dean

The post The Promises You Make to Yourself Matter Most appeared first on Realizing You Life Coach.

Realizing You Life Coach

One of the strange things about becoming an adult is how easy it is to build a life without ever deliberately deciding what you want that life to be.

We inherit ideas about success from our parents, schools, careers, friends and culture. We learn what a good job is supposed to look like, what kind of house means we are doing well, how much money we should want, what our relationships should look like and which accomplishments are supposed to make us proud.

None of those things are necessarily bad. The problem comes when we spend years pursuing them without stopping to ask a simple question: Is this actually what I want?

For much of my life, I did not ask that question. I was moving, but I was not particularly intentional about where I was going. After I became sober at forty, that began to change. I had to learn how to think about my life rather than simply move through it.

The Highway I Thought Was Life

I once described my earlier life to my mother as if I had gotten into a car, entered a highway and driven as fast as I could in one direction. That was what life felt like. Keep moving. Do what is in front of you. Find the easiest or fastest way through. Do not spend too much time wondering whether there is another route.

When I stopped drinking, it felt as though I suddenly noticed that the highway had exits. There were towns I could visit. There were other roads. There were different speed limits. I could change direction. I could stop. I could decide where I wanted to go instead of assuming the road I was already on was the only one available.

That realization was exciting, but it also created responsibility. Once you recognize that you have choices, it becomes harder to pretend that every part of your life simply happened to you.

What Do You Actually Want?

This sounds like an easy question. I do not think it is.

We are influenced by other people more than we realize. A parent may have a vision for our career. A spouse may have an idea of the life we should build together. A company may reward us for moving farther up a ladder we are not sure we want to climb. Social media provides an endless stream of people whose lives seem to be evidence that we should want more.

It becomes easy to confuse what looks successful with what feels meaningful.

I regularly ask myself whether my motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. Am I doing this because I genuinely want the outcome, or because I want someone else to see me accomplish it? Would I still want it if nobody knew I had done it? Has the goal remained important to me, or am I continuing because I once announced that it was?

Those questions have changed some of my decisions.

Changing the Plan Can Be an Honest Decision

I spent years working in information technology and earned a number of technical certifications. I liked the IT world, but eventually I recognized something about myself. I was more interested in the management side than the technical side.

I liked seeing the larger picture. I liked organizing work, solving problems, coordinating people and figuring out how to move a project from where it was to where it needed to be. Project management fit the way I naturally think.

I could have treated changing direction as evidence that I had failed at the original plan. Instead, it became evidence that I had learned something about myself.

That distinction is important. I do not believe we should change course simply because something becomes difficult. Difficult work can produce some of our greatest growth. But continuing toward a destination you no longer want just because you once chose it is not discipline. Sometimes it is simply stubbornness.

The challenge is being honest enough with yourself to know the difference.

Your Goals Do Not Need to Impress Anyone

We also make the mistake of judging our goals by how they compare with other people’s goals.

There were periods during my drinking years when getting out of bed and taking a shower felt like an accomplishment. Someone looking at that from the outside might have considered it almost nothing. From where I was standing at the time, it could require nearly everything I had.

At other points in my life, the goals became degrees, certifications, career changes, relationships, fitness and building businesses. The scale changed because I changed.

That is why I do not believe a goal has to be large to be legitimate. It has to matter to the person pursuing it.

We cannot see the full reality of another person’s life, and we should be careful about using our circumstances as the standard against which their progress is measured. The same applies in reverse. Someone else’s extraordinary accomplishment does not make your next necessary step insignificant.

Success Needs Your Definition

For a long time, I connected success heavily to career. A good job mattered. Education mattered. Certifications mattered. I am proud of those things, but my definition of success has expanded.

I have met people who society might not consider particularly successful. They do not have impressive titles or large amounts of money. They have enough. They laugh easily. They care about people. They share what they have. They seem genuinely comfortable in their lives.

I have also watched someone begin to see that there can be life after addiction. Being present for even a small part of that change can feel more meaningful than many professional accomplishments.

So who gets to decide which success matters more?

I think the answer has to be personal.

You Are Allowed to Reevaluate

Living your own life does not mean ignoring everyone else’s needs. We have families, relationships, jobs and responsibilities. Our choices affect people. Being self-aware is not permission to become self-centered.

It does mean recognizing that a life built entirely around other people’s expectations eventually becomes difficult to call your own.

You are allowed to stop occasionally and ask whether the direction still fits.

Am I happy doing what I am doing? Does this still matter to me? Am I pursuing this for myself or for approval? What has changed since I originally made the decision? What would I choose today if I were starting from where I am now?

You may discover that you are exactly where you want to be.

You may also discover that an exit you never noticed before is coming up.

It Starts With Knowing Yourself

Realizing You, for me, begins with learning who you actually are rather than who you think you are supposed to be.

That process never completely ends. I am not the same person I was at forty, and I do not expect to be exactly the same person ten years from now. Experiences change us. Relationships change us. Successes and failures teach us things we could not have known beforehand.

The goal is not to create one permanent life plan and follow it without deviation.

The goal is to become self-aware enough to recognize what matters, honest enough to admit when something no longer does and responsible enough to make thoughtful decisions about what comes next.

It is your life.

That does not mean you get to control everything in it. It does mean you should have a meaningful voice in deciding how you live it.

Before you start chasing the next goal, it may be worth asking one question first: Whose life are you trying to live?

It starts with you.

The post RYLC #4 appeared first on Realizing You Life Coach.

Realizing You Life Coach

There are very few things in life we completely control. We can work hard and still not get the promotion. We can apologize sincerely and still not be forgiven. We can try to help someone and watch them make a decision we wish they would not make. We can plan carefully and have circumstances change everything.

Over time I have become much more comfortable with that reality. I do not own other people’s reactions. I do not own the outcome. I do not own tomorrow.

But there is one thing I have come to believe belongs to me in a very personal way: my word.

Nobody else can give me my word, and nobody else can take it away. I decide what it means. I decide whether I keep it. I decide whether the things I say are supported by what I actually do.

For a long period of my life, my word did not mean very much. Rebuilding it became one of the most important parts of rebuilding myself.

When Your Own Stories Stop Being Trustworthy

During my drinking years, lying became part of how I got through life. Sometimes I lied to other people. Just as damaging were the stories I told myself. I could explain away my behavior, promise myself things would be different and convince myself that I was still the person I believed I was.

I thought I was a good person. I thought I had values. I thought I was someone people should trust. But my actions were increasingly telling a different story.

When I became sober, I had to confront something uncomfortable: I could not expect other people to trust me when I could not even trust myself in my own stories about my life.

I had to learn again how to be the person I had always claimed I was.

Keeping Your Word Starts at Home

Keeping your word was something I was taught growing up. Somewhere during years of drinking, I stopped holding myself to that standard. When I began changing my life, I realized that the standard had to begin with me.

If I told myself I was going to do something, I needed to take that commitment seriously. If I said I was going to be honest, honesty could not only apply when it was convenient. If I wanted to become dependable, I needed to demonstrate dependability in my actions.

I had made promises before. I would finish my degree. I would build a real career. I would be available for my son. I would stop taking the easiest route through everything. After sobriety, those ideas stopped being things I hoped would eventually happen and became commitments I needed to participate in.

I did not suddenly become perfect at keeping every commitment. I still am not. The difference was that my own word began to matter to me.

Self-Respect Is Built in Ordinary Moments

We often think of self-respect as a feeling: liking yourself, valuing yourself or believing you deserve good things. I think there is another part of it that is much more practical.

Self-respect is also demonstrated in how you treat the commitments you make to yourself.

If I repeatedly tell myself I am going to do something and repeatedly ignore it, I am teaching myself that my word is negotiable. Eventually “I’ll do it” becomes a phrase rather than a commitment.

The reverse is powerful. I say I am going to do something and I do it. It may be a very small thing. I do it again. Over time I begin creating evidence that I can depend on myself.

That evidence creates self-trust, and self-trust changes how you approach the next difficult thing.

Your Word Does Not Guarantee an Outcome

One of the hardest lessons in personal responsibility is understanding that keeping your word does not give you control over what happens afterward.

My relationship with my son taught me this in a very personal way. When I quit drinking, people sometimes told me how wonderful it was that I had quit for my son. I always corrected that. I quit for myself. My son had changed his relationship with me, and that helped push me toward the decision I needed to make, but he could not make that decision for me.

I also had no guarantee that becoming sober would restore our relationship.

I could take responsibility for my life. I could change my behavior. I could become more dependable. I could show him through my actions that I was trying to become a different person. Then he had the right to decide what he wanted to do with that information.

I took a step. He decided how to respond. Then I took another step. Over time, we rebuilt something together, but neither of us could own the other person’s part.

That distinction matters. Keeping your word is about your character, not about earning a guaranteed reward.

Compassion Does Not Cancel Responsibility

There is a danger in talking about keeping your word as if every missed commitment is a moral failure. That is not what I believe.

Life happens. We misjudge what we can realistically do. We get sick. Priorities change. We discover that a goal no longer fits. Sometimes we simply make a mistake.

Personal responsibility does not require cruelty toward yourself.

I believe self-respect includes compassion. If I miss something, I need to be able to look at it honestly without turning the event into a verdict about who I am. I can acknowledge that I did not do what I said I would do, understand why and decide what I need to do next.

Excusing everything teaches us nothing. Punishing ourselves for everything does not teach us much either.

Honesty sits somewhere in the middle.

Who Would Your Actions Say You Are?

There is a question I have learned to take seriously: if someone knew nothing about me except what I actually did, who would they believe I was?

That question removes intentions from the equation.

I may intend to be a supportive father. Am I present? I may say I value my health. What do my habits show? I may believe I am dependable. Do I follow through? I may say a relationship matters to me. Does the other person experience that in my actions?

We all have gaps between the person we want to be and the person our actions currently demonstrate. The point is not to eliminate every gap immediately. The point is to be honest enough to see it.

Once you can see it, you can begin doing something about it.

It Begins With You

I cannot make another person trust me. I cannot make someone forgive me. I cannot guarantee that hard work will produce exactly the outcome I want.

I can decide what kind of person I am going to try to be.

I can tell the truth. I can make thoughtful commitments. I can do my best to keep them. I can admit when I do not. I can correct what I can correct and learn from what I cannot.

The only thing I can truly own outright is my word.

That may sound small compared with all the things we spend our lives trying to acquire. I have come to believe it is one of the most valuable things we have.

Because when your own word means something to you, you have a foundation on which to build almost everything else.

It starts with you.

The post RYLC #3 appeared first on Realizing You Life Coach.

Realizing You Life Coach

Motivation gets a lot of credit for things it probably doesn’t deserve. We talk about getting motivated to exercise, motivated to change careers, motivated to save money, motivated to finish a project or motivated to finally deal with something we have been avoiding. When we are motivated, getting started can feel almost easy. The problem is that motivation is a feeling, and feelings are not particularly dependable.

I have learned not to build important parts of my life around the assumption that I will feel like doing them when the time comes. Some mornings I feel like exercising and some mornings I don’t. There are days when I am excited about a project and days when I would rather do almost anything else. If the plan depends on having the right feeling at the right moment, I have given that moment far too much control.

What has worked better for me is creating a process before the moment arrives. Decide what needs to happen, break it into manageable steps, remove as many unnecessary decisions as possible and make the next action clear. Then, when it is time to act, there is less left to negotiate with yourself.

This way of thinking is natural to me. I make my living managing projects, but I was a planner long before I ever had Project Manager in my job title. Looking back, I can even see that tendency during the years when I was drinking. Unfortunately, I was using it to support the very thing that was destroying my life.

We Are Always Building Processes

When I was actively drinking, I planned around alcohol constantly. If a liquor store was going to be closed, I needed enough alcohol on hand beforehand. If other people might be drinking with me, I needed to account for what they might consume. I would think ahead about what they could drink and what I wanted to keep for myself. The purpose of all that planning was simple: when the time came, I did not want to have to think. I wanted the alcohol available so I could simply drink.

That is not a process I am proud of, but it taught me something after I became sober. Human beings create systems around the things we repeatedly do, whether we recognize those systems or not. Some of those systems help us. Others make destructive behavior incredibly easy.

When I began rebuilding my life, I still had the same brain. I still thought ahead. I still liked breaking things into steps. The difference was what I began building processes around. Education. Career development. Exercise. Relationships. Projects. Commitments I had made to myself.

The skill had not changed nearly as much as the direction in which I was using it.

Willpower Leaves Too Much to Chance

Think about the familiar goal of exercising before work. If you wait until the alarm goes off to decide whether you are going to exercise, you have created a surprisingly complicated decision at exactly the wrong time. You are tired. The bed is comfortable. You start calculating whether you could work out later. You remember that you have a long day ahead of you. Within a few minutes you can build a very convincing argument for staying in bed.

Now change the process. The night before, decide what workout you are doing. Put your clothes where you will see them. Set aside the time. Put the alarm somewhere that requires you to get up. Remove as many decisions as you reasonably can.

You can still decide not to exercise. A process does not remove free will or personal responsibility. What it does is make the decision you already made easier to follow and the excuse a little harder to justify.

I use the same principle in project management. When crews are building cellular RAN sites, I do not want everyone arriving each morning and inventing the construction process again. The work is broken into steps. Different groups understand their responsibilities. Tasks happen in a sequence. If something gets missed, we can identify where the process failed and correct it.

Life is obviously more complicated than a construction schedule, but the principle still works. Repeated decisions can often become repeatable processes.

Break the Mountain Into Steps

One reason people procrastinate is that the thing in front of them feels too large. I am a list builder for exactly this reason. A large goal can feel like a mountain when I look at the whole thing at once. Breaking it into smaller pieces gives me something I can actually do.

Finish a degree is enormous. Register for one class is manageable. Get healthier is vague. Walk for thirty minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday is something you can put on a calendar. Build a business can become overwhelming very quickly. Write the first article is concrete.

The smaller step may not look impressive, but it creates movement. Once there is movement, the next step becomes easier to see.

This is also why I do not believe discipline is simply the ability to force yourself to do difficult things. Sometimes discipline is having enough foresight to make the difficult thing easier to begin.

Plan While You Are Thinking Clearly

There is a version of you making plans and another version who has to carry them out. The planning version is often rested, rational and focused on the larger goal. The version who has to execute the plan may be tired, distracted, stressed or simply not in the mood.

I want the clearer version of myself to do as much of the thinking as possible.

That means deciding beforehand. What am I doing? When am I doing it? What do I need? What could reasonably get in the way? What can I prepare now? What will I do if the original plan cannot happen?

Planning does not guarantee execution. Nothing does. But it reduces the number of opportunities to renegotiate a commitment simply because the moment became inconvenient.

I have learned to plan beforehand so that, in the moment, I am mostly left with doing it.

When the Process Fails

A good process is not sacred. It is a starting point.

If something repeatedly does not work, I do not think the answer is automatically to demand more discipline. I want to know why it is not working. Maybe the time is wrong. Maybe the steps are unrealistic. Maybe there is an obstacle we failed to anticipate. Maybe the goal itself is no longer important. Or maybe I am simply avoiding something difficult.

That is where accountability and process work together. The process gives us something specific to evaluate. Instead of saying, “I need to try harder,” we can ask what actually happened and make a useful adjustment.

In my professional life, a project plan changes as new information becomes available. I do not consider that a weakness in project management. Refusing to adjust a plan that clearly is not working would be the bigger problem.

I think we should give ourselves the same permission in our personal lives.

Motivation Is Welcome, but It Is Not Required

I like feeling motivated. Everything is easier when enthusiasm shows up at the same time the work needs to be done.

I just do not count on it.

If something matters to me, I would rather create an environment and a process that help me act even on an ordinary day when I am not particularly inspired. That is where consistency begins.

You do not have to become a person with unlimited willpower. You do not have to wake up every morning excited about everything you said you wanted. You need to understand what matters, decide what you are going to do about it and build a process that makes following through more likely.

Then do the next step.

Motivation can come along for the ride when it wants to.

It starts with you.

The post RYLC #2 appeared first on Realizing You Life Coach.

Realizing You Life Coach

The idea behind having an accountability partner seems simple enough. You decide there is something you want to accomplish, tell another person what you intend to do, and ask that person to hold you accountable. Knowing that someone will eventually ask about your progress is supposed to provide a little extra motivation to follow through.

Sometimes it works. At least for a while.

Maybe you tell your spouse you’re going to start exercising four mornings a week. You and a friend decide you’re both going to lose twenty pounds. You tell a coworker you’re finally going to complete the professional certification you’ve talked about for the past two years. Everyone starts with good intentions, and for the first few weeks there may even be some excitement around it.

Then normal life returns. You miss Tuesday’s workout because you slept poorly. Your friend has a bad week with their diet. Work becomes hectic and studying for the certification gets pushed to the weekend. The weekend becomes next weekend. Eventually the accountability conversations become less frequent, and before long nobody is asking anymore.

I’ve come to believe that the problem isn’t necessarily the accountability partner. The bigger problem is that we often misunderstand what accountability is supposed to accomplish.

Support and Accountability Aren’t the Same Thing

The people closest to us aren’t always the best people to hold us accountable, and that isn’t because they don’t care. Quite often, it’s precisely because they do.

Imagine telling your spouse that you’re going to get up at 5:30 every morning to exercise. One morning the alarm goes off after you’ve had a terrible night’s sleep. Your spouse knows you’re exhausted. They know you had a difficult day yesterday. Their natural reaction may be to tell you to get some sleep and try again tomorrow.

There isn’t anything wrong with that response. Compassion is an important part of a relationship.

Friends can create a similar problem in a different way. If two friends decide they’re going to lose weight together and neither one has a particularly good week, it’s very easy for the conversation to become an opportunity to make each other feel better.

“I didn’t do very well this week.”
“Neither did I.”
“We’ll start again Monday.”

That’s support, and support has value. But nobody stopped to ask why the plan didn’t work or what needs to change before Monday arrives again. Accountability requires a different conversation.

The Accountability Relationship That Matters Most

My view of accountability comes largely from my own experience rebuilding my life.

For many years, my word didn’t mean very much. I could tell other people what they wanted to hear, but more importantly, I could tell myself what I wanted to hear. Tomorrow I would change. Next week I would do better. Eventually I would finish my degree. Someday I would get serious about my career.

There was always another promise and another tomorrow.

When I became sober at forty, I realized that changing my life was going to require much more than simply not drinking. I had to become someone I could trust again.

One of the commitments I made to myself was deceptively simple: if I said I was going to do something, I needed to make a genuine effort to do it. I wanted my word to mean something again. Before I could expect other people to trust what I said, I needed to trust it myself.

That changed my understanding of accountability.

The most important accountability relationship I’ve developed isn’t with a friend, coworker, coach or significant other. It’s the relationship I have with myself.

Self-Trust Is Built Through Evidence

Confidence is discussed constantly in personal development. We’re encouraged to believe in ourselves, think positively and remind ourselves that we’re capable.

I’ve found that evidence works better.

If I tell myself I’m going to do something and then actually do it, I’ve created a small piece of evidence that I can depend on myself. If I do it again, I’ve created another. Over time those seemingly insignificant actions begin changing the relationship I have with myself.

The opposite is also true. If I continually make commitments to myself and break them, eventually I stop taking my own promises seriously. “I’ll start Monday” becomes something I say rather than something I believe.

This is one reason I believe accountability matters far beyond productivity. Finishing the workout, making the phone call or completing the project is important, but something else is happening underneath it. I’m demonstrating to myself whether my own word can be trusted.

That connection between keeping my word, trusting myself and respecting myself has become an important part of how I try to live.

It doesn’t mean I always do everything I intended to do. I don’t. Accountability without compassion quickly becomes punishment, and I don’t believe punishment is particularly useful for creating lasting change.

What matters is what happens next.

The Better Question Is Why

Suppose I planned to exercise four times this week and only exercised twice. The easiest measurement is two out of four. I missed my goal. But that doesn’t tell me much.

Why did I miss it? Maybe I became sick. Maybe an unexpected work obligation genuinely changed my schedule. Maybe four workouts weren’t realistic given everything else happening in my life. Maybe the workout plan itself was something I hated doing. Or maybe none of those things happened and I simply didn’t feel like getting up.

Those situations shouldn’t automatically receive the same response.

This is where honesty becomes an essential part of accountability. I need to be able to distinguish between a legitimate obstacle, a bad plan and an excuse. I also need enough compassion for myself to examine what happened without immediately turning a missed commitment into a judgment about my character.

“I didn’t do what I planned” is information. “I’m a failure” isn’t.

The useful question is: Why didn’t I do it, and what am I going to do differently now?

Goals Need Processes Behind Them

Another reason accountability often fails is that the original commitment was never specific enough to begin with.

“I want to get healthier.” “I want to grow my business.” “I need to get my finances under control.” Those are worthwhile intentions, but they’re difficult to hold anyone accountable for because they don’t describe an action.

If you want to get healthier, what are you actually going to do this week? If you want to grow your business, what actions are you taking? If you want to improve a relationship, what will you personally do differently? Eventually, a goal has to become something you can act upon.

This is probably where my professional life has influenced how I think about personal accountability, although I’ve realized that I’ve naturally thought in processes for most of my life. As a project manager, I don’t want a team arriving at a project site every morning and deciding from scratch how we’re going to accomplish the work. We define the steps, understand the sequence, identify responsibilities, anticipate problems and then execute the plan.

Personal goals benefit from the same kind of thinking.

Consider the common goal of exercising before work. If the decision about exercising isn’t made until the alarm goes off, you’ve created an opportunity to negotiate with yourself. You’re tired. The bed is warm. Maybe you’ll exercise tonight. Missing one day won’t matter. Tomorrow would actually be a better day to start.

Within a few minutes you’ve built an excellent case for going back to sleep.

A process removes some of that negotiation. Decide the night before what time you’re getting up. Know what workout you’re doing. Put your clothes where you’ll see them. Prepare whatever you need. When morning comes, there are fewer decisions left to make.

Planning doesn’t replace discipline. Good planning makes discipline easier.

I’ve learned that whenever possible, I want to make decisions beforehand so that when the moment arrives, I’m mostly left with doing what I’ve already decided to do.

What a Good Accountability Partner Actually Does

None of this means I think accountability partners are useless. Quite the opposite. Another person can provide perspective that is extremely difficult to create on your own.

The difference is in the role they play.

A good accountability partner isn’t there to police your behavior. They’re there to help you examine it. When you don’t follow through, they don’t automatically criticize you, but they don’t automatically excuse you either.

They ask questions. What happened? Was the plan realistic? What got in the way? Could you have anticipated it? Are you avoiding something? Is this still important to you? Does the plan need to change, or do you simply need to do something difficult that you don’t particularly feel like doing? Most importantly, they eventually bring the conversation back to what happens next.

That’s the kind of accountability I believe can help someone grow because it doesn’t transfer responsibility from one person to another. It helps someone become better at accepting responsibility for themselves.

I don’t think the goal of accountability coaching should be creating someone who permanently needs an accountability coach. Ideally, the process helps someone become increasingly capable of recognizing their own patterns, questioning their own excuses, creating better processes and keeping commitments without needing someone else standing over their shoulder.

It Starts With You

There are many things in life we don’t control. We can’t control another person’s decisions. We can’t guarantee outcomes. We can’t prevent unexpected circumstances from changing carefully constructed plans.

What we can own is our part: our decisions, our actions, our effort, our response and, perhaps most importantly, our word.

That’s why I believe the most important accountability partner isn’t ultimately another person. It’s you.

Other people can support you. They can challenge you. They can provide perspective when you’re too close to a situation to see it clearly. A good coach can help you recognize the difference between an obstacle and an excuse. But none of them can take ownership of your life for you.

You have to decide what matters. You have to make the commitment. You have to do the work. And when you don’t follow through, you have to be honest enough to understand why and decide what happens next.

Over time, something much more important than checking items off a list begins to happen. You start developing evidence that your own word means something. You begin trusting yourself again.

That, to me, is what real accountability is ultimately about.

It starts with you.

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On this Father’s Day morning as I sit here drinking my coffee I think back to my drinking days as a young Father.

I definitely wasn’t the best Dad in those days. I had other priorities still that seemed to take my focus.

One of the things that kept me about as sober as I could be was hiking. I have always enjoyed going on hikes. It’s a pretty good exercise to beat up the body.

My thought was I drink heavy enough that I’m beating my body up in that way so the beating from a good mountain hike just evened me out.

When my son got a little older he learned that if he could get me out the door for a hike I’d stop my drinking and he’d get “me” to spend time with. I definitely credit him with beginning to set me in the right direction towards sobriety.

When I had finally quit drinking altogether our “relationship repair” time focused around hiking. It gave us time to talk as well as just walk silently amongst nature together.

We created a yearly Fathers day hike in the FlatIrons area in Boulder.

If you ever want to know what sobriety feels like I’ll take you for a little hike there.

We would hike, sit in the back of my pickup and have a little picnic and then drive home. Without fail he’d fall asleep on that drive home and be surprised when we got home without him knowing it.

I miss those days. We had fun pushing ourselves physically, me mentally during my alcoholic battles, and eventually getting to know each other as Father/Son and eventually just 2 guys sharing time enjoyed together.

We don’t get to do those hikes as often anymore. Life has a way of changing faster than we think it will and hoping for it to slow down never seems to work.
What does work is being sober and present in the moment. Enjoying every moment that you do have together creating the memories. Listening and paying attention to your loved ones through not just hiking together but sometimes just in the silence of walking together and being there supporting the other.

I have long loved the story of “Footprints in the Sand”. Even during my drinking days I knew that during my worst of times I was being carried through until I could learn to walk on my own. It took me 23 years to learn how. I didn’t do it on the beach, I did it through the mountains with my son.

Now I hike with my wife as well but will always remember how my son helped me begin to see the path I couldn’t find.
Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there learning to walk the correct paths in life and to all of those that have set the example for their families on how to live life.

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I’ve seen people pick up their first drink and never struggle with addiction. And I’ve watched others, myself included, spiral out of control, desperate to stop but utterly unable to. No amount of reasoning, pleading, or willpower could change that.

I tried to quit countless times, but it never stuck. When people asked if I was going to stop drinking, my standard response was always the same: “Someday, just not today.”

But then came the night that changed everything.

I had just finished a three-day drinking binge and was supposed to go back to work the next morning. I knew I needed to stop—I had lost nearly everything—but I couldn’t figure out how. I drank until I passed out.

At some point in the middle of the night, I woke up and whispered into the darkness, “God, what does it take for me to quit?”

And then, I saw him.

My dad stood at the foot of my bed. He had passed away in 1991. This was October 2008. Great, now I’m hallucinating, I thought.

He looked at me and asked, “Do you want to know what life is really meant to be, instead of how you’ve been living?”

I just stared at him.

“Well?” he asked. “Do you want to know?”

I finally managed to say, “Yes, I do.”

He smiled, and then he was gone.

I sat up, unsettled. This was different. I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I went to my recliner, where my shot glass and bottle of vodka sat. Normally, I’d have poured myself a drink immediately. But I didn’t. I felt like hell, and I knew a shot would make me feel better—but for the first time, I didn’t want it.

I turned on the TV. The show Intervention was on—the exact moment when they were trying to convince someone to go to rehab.

Should I try again? Rehab didn’t work last time.

Just then, I accidentally knocked my wallet off the table. It hit the floor, and my insurance card slipped out. When I looked down, the back of the card was facing up: “Have a problem with drugs or alcohol? Call…”

I hesitated. It was 2 a.m. Maybe I’d call later.

Then I noticed something on the TV. Almost the exact same message. A hotline number.

This is weird.

Still unsure if this was real or if I was just drunk and dreaming, I decided to call.

A woman answered, her voice warm and kind. She asked for my insurance info and told me she’d find the best treatment option. She promised to call back within the hour. Before hanging up, she asked, “Can you promise me you won’t drink until I call back?”

To my own surprise, I said yes.

For the next hour, I just sat there, watching Intervention, waiting. My phone rang—it was her.

“I found you a bed in rehab. Can you be there in a few hours?”

“I can’t drive,” I admitted.

“Is there anyone who can bring you?”

She didn’t understand—I had burned every bridge. I had no one left.

“I’ll come when I’m sober enough to drive,” I said. Then I hung up.

She kept calling, but I ignored it.

At 4:30 a.m., I called my boss. “I can’t come in. I need to go to rehab.”

His response shocked me. “Good. If you had shown up today, I was going to fire you. I’ll get HR to set up your short-term disability.”

I had just bought myself some time.

Then came the worst four days of my life.

The withdrawal was brutal—shaking, sweating, vomiting, body aches, hallucinations. The stench of alcohol seeped out of my pores. My heart felt like it was going to give out. I truly thought I might die.

I saw my phone ringing but couldn’t bring myself to answer.

Finally, on the morning of October 22nd, I woke up weak but hungry.

I called the number that had been calling me nonstop. A man answered. “We were worried about you,” he said.

“I had to detox before I could drive to rehab,” I explained.

“If you can be here by 4 p.m., we still have a bed for you.”

“I’ll be there. I promise.”

At 3:45 p.m., I arrived—shaky but sober.

“We were worried,” they told me. “Detoxing without medical help is dangerous. You could have died.”

“I know,” I said. “But I had no other choice.”

They marked my sobriety date as October 22, 2008, the day I checked in. But I count it from October 18—the day I made the decision, the day I fought through detox alone. I earned those days.

Rehab gave me back my strength, my clarity, and my will to live. Since then, I’ve built a relationship with God and created the life I always wanted. I’ve repaired the relationships I once destroyed.

Some people will never see me as anything but an alcoholic. That’s okay. I don’t need to change their minds.

What matters is that I’ve changed my life. I’ve found people who love me for who I am now. I’ve learned how to be accountable, how to grow, how to live.

And since that night in 2008, I have never wanted to drink again.

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