Greetings Team,
We've been talking a lot lately about getting the most out yourself. today, let's talk about the idea of holding yourself accountable. When you don't get the job, Team, you have to take responsibility.
Holding yourself accountable can apply to so many things we do in our lives. It can apply to our diet. It can apply to working out. It can apply to how hard we push ourselves during training. It can apply to being a good friend or teammate. And it certainly can apply to holding yourself to your word. When you hold yourself accountable, you don't wait around for someone to scold you. You scold yourself.
I have found that guilt can be an amazing motivator. When you don't give it your all, you should feel guilty. When you feel guilty, it's hard to sleep at night until the wrong is made right. If you have that kind of standard on doing your best in any given situation, you definately will get more accomplished. We need to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to try our best....not be the best...just try. When we don't live up to this rule, then we should feel guilty. And again, guilt is a very powerful motivator.
The key here, Team, is setting rules for yourself. Certain guidelines that you HAVE TO FOLLOW. We all have some already. Don't we? Some of us have the belief of NEVER being late. Because it's a rule, we pride ourselves on being timely. If we are late, we are furious! But, if you don't have that rule, we tend to make excuses for our tardiness. "Lots of traffic." "Got up too late." And so on.... The point is, Team, we need to create key rules for ourselves to follow that ensure we optimize our efforts. When holding yourself accountable is a rule, we will feel guilt when we don't follow through. This in turn will get us more motivated to not REPEAT the mistake.
My encouragement for you this week is to start simple. You can start by following the rule of "My word is my bond." If you say you are going to do something, do it. A very admirable trait. If you don't feel you can accomplish a task, don't verbally commit. But if you do, GET IT DONE. No matter what. And if for some reason you don't, HOLD YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE. Let the guilt motivate you to not let it happen again.
If you can apply this one method of holding yourself accountable, Team, you certainly will be able to apply to other areas of your life!
Hope you get some benefit from this today, Team!
ALL THE BEST!
COACH
Do you need to feel guilty to hold yourself accountable? Aren't there other, perhaps better, modivators than feeling guilty?
ReplyDeleteMy take on that is simply this...if you "know right from wrong" and you "do wrong" shouldn't you feel guilty? If you have no guilt that you did the wrong thing, you obviously didn't feel it was wrong. My point is, sometimes a negative forces us to be positive. Just like when a fighter loses. He normally comes back stronger. He is forced to change in ways to grow he may never have other won. Unfortunately as humans, sometimes sea have to get knocked down to grow. That's what I mean by guilt. If its important for you to perform, you should naturally feel guilty when you don't. A subtle reminder to perform better the next time.
ReplyDeleteOk. I guess I am just thinking of guilt as a sort of overwhelming burden or shame, an emotion that often causes me to be paralyzed rather than motivated. That isn't what your talking about though? I think I understand more what your talking about now. Guilt as more personal, "if I just would have trained harder and been more attentive then I know i would have won that fight" rather than saying the other guy was stronger or something. Do I get it or am I still missing something?
ReplyDeleteYes! Exactly! When you hold yourself to a high standard, you will feel guilty if you fall short of what you are capable of doing. Your example is a perfect illustration. If a person had that experience, I would bet they would not want to let that happen again. Therefore forcing them to change in many positive ways.
ReplyDelete