One Reason Being Accountable Matters
Being accountable is very important to me. For most of my life, it has been important for the wrong reasons.
I was very good at being accountable to others. Keeping others happy and thinking well of me was really important. Too important.
In trying to always be accountable to others I never learned to be accountable to me.
It’s very frustrating to be high functioning and productive for others and continually let yourself down. I’ve learned it makes it so you can’t trust yourself. That’s hard to live with. We tend to avoid people we can’t trust. There’s no way to avoid me.
I’m learning to be accountable to myself so I can trust myself.
As I’m growing in serving the women I coach, I find I’m held back by my lack of trust for myself. How can I encourage someone to invest in my expertise and training if I don’t fully trust myself? It’s hard.
Building trust takes being accountable. It means giving myself limits and freedoms. Not only giving them but keeping them. I’m worth respecting my boundaries and needs as much as I respect everyone else’s.
It’s a new insight for me into the second greatest commandment. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” To love my neighbor as myself I have to love myself.
For years I would have never dared treat anyone how I treated myself. I would never talk to someone that way. When someone makes a mistake I encourage them and help them see the good. When I made a mistake the ugliness that was unleashed was horrid.
I’m much kinder to me now. Being accountable to myself is one important piece of that process.
How about you? Are you accountable to yourself? Can you say you love yourself the way you love others?
This is my 4th post in a writing challenge by Jan Cox. She has given 28 prompts. I have committed (being accountable to myself here!) to write for 15 minutes a day on one of her prompts (this one was accountable). I then have 15 minutes to polish and post so there’s not much polishing. As I said in my first post of this challenge it’s getting me back to writing instead of producing. Still, I hope my thoughts are a blessing and you’ll keep reading.
