On the Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness, the first step, awakening awareness, is an inner movement. To balance that, the second step is an outer movement, add accountability.
Adding accountability is the step where we make promises (like dates and deadlines and word counts) and then develop the systems and support to help us meet the deadlines and keep the promises. By meeting the deadlines and keeping the promises, we are more likely to complete the project, what Seth Godin, in his book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Seven Ways to Add Accountability and Own Your Greatness
To add accountability, you’ll want to write out your milestones and trail markers. Then you need to share those markers in a public sphere, even if it’s just a one-on-one support system. Here are seven possibilities – some of the proven ways you can write your list of commitments and grab some accountability. Use one or a combination, or all seven.
1 Hire a coach.
2 Set up a one-to-one accountability peer partner.
3 Join or create a Mastermind group and then make your commitments within that framework.
4 Sign up for a course — and do the homework if that will lead you to completing your commitment.
5 Gather a community around your commitment and make it a group challenge. (like our 30-day blogging challenge)
6 Have a deadline and someone expecting your work or project.
7 Make a promise in a public sphere. (to your client list, on your blog, on a radio interview).
Adding accountability is a crucial step to Owning Your Greatness. Why? Because the promises to ourselves are the ones most often broken. What lies closest to the heart of the matter, what is dearest to your heart, is somehow the thing that is most often overlooked. Promises and intentions to create from our deepest gifts are too often forgotten or overlooked, and our brainchildren become like orphans.
And in the interest of full disclosure, this is one of my weakest links. I help other people and my clients with this all the time. It’s part of the process, but it is the part that I have the most challenges with. My own creative projects have been the ones that regularly get moved to the back burner. That’s what has been so delicious for me with the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. It has been a chance to create my own work within a framework of a community.
Adding accountability is how we can be there for each other.
As we move into the final third of the 30 day blog challenge, it’s a special time to thank all the fellow travelers in #blog30. The accountability of having this group, of making the commitment to play together, of carrying through together and cheering each other on, has been spectacular. And it also seems an ideal venue for reiterating the importance of adding accountability. In our case, it’s been a process of writing to add accountability.
Follow the blogging challenge on Twitter at #blog30 and #mini7.