Who is Holding You Accountable to Your Goals?
You Need Accountability.
Most people are really good at setting goals, but very few effectively create a realistic plan to be held accountable for achieving them. Perhaps this is because accountability is one of the hardest parts when it comes to successfully reaching goals.
If your mind-set is that you are at least 85% responsible for your own success and that just 15% depends on which way the wind blows, you’ll likely be successful. If you tend to have a negative attitude and blame all of your problems on other people, circumstances beyond your control, or just plain bad luck, you will more than likely fail.
The good news is that accountability is not just a mind-set, it’s also a skillset that everyone can learn and strengthen. Below are a few helpful tips to help you improve your own self accountability.
Get in the Right Mindset
Before setting your goals, you must identify your “why.” It is critical for you to take some time to reflect on why accomplishing this goal is important to you, and how it will impact your life. Keeping this in mind on a daily basis will enable you to shift your mindset from dreading to complete a task to instead feeling grateful for the opportunity to do a meaningful task that will help you get one step closer to reaching your goal. Getting in the right mindset is the first step in improving your accountability.
Prepare What You Need in Advance
Planning to workout after work? Pack your gym bag the night before and put it in your car. Want to stop ordering takeout for lunches during the work week? Meal prep your weekly lunches on Sunday so that you can effortlessly grab it and go to work each day. By taking the time to prepare everything ahead of time, you will make it so much easier on yourself to stay committed toward achieving your goals. This is a simple step in improving self accountability.
Have an Accountability Buddy
Ask someone you care about such as a close friend, family member, or spouse to be your accountability buddy. This can be helpful to keep each other motivated by exchanging healthy recipes, sending motivational quotes, and checking in to see how the other is feeling or keeping up with their goal. Although you should be holding yourself accountable, it can only help you to have someone else hold you accountable too.
Set Sub Goals Each Week
If you want to be successful in tackling your goal, set smaller, more specific goals throughout each week. Write down in a planner at the beginning of each week small realistic goals you want to achieve each day. The goals can be as small or as big as you want them to be, as long as they are realistic for you to accomplish. Then by the time the week is over, you will feel accomplished, proud of yourself, and even more motivated to continue setting smaller goals for the next week. Goals are an excellent accountability enhancement as you have clear standards to which you will measure yourself by.
Track Your Progress
Whether you use an app or a fitness tracker, it is a great idea to monitor your progress throughout your journey. When you are able to see your stats, you will gain a better understanding of whether or not you have reached your goal. Although fitness trackers are not 100% accurate in counting the exact amount of calories burned or the number of daily steps, it is still an excellent resource for you to use.
Prioritize Your Goals
Try signing yourself up for a group class, the cancellation fee in itself will be enough to keep you accountable to show up. When you have a set plan in place to hold yourself accountable, it makes it harder for you to come up with an excuse to get out of doing it. Treat your goals as you would to a doctor’s appointment, schedule your workouts in advance, write them down into your planner, be prepared and show up on time.
Treat Yourself
If you crushed your monthly goal of working out 5 days each week and stuck to your 30-minute limit on social media each day, you deserve a reward! Of course, your rewards should not be counterintuitive to your goal, like a “cheat meal” or a large piece of ice-cream cake. That’s a dangerous path that leads into developing an unhealthy relationship with food by training your brain to see your efforts as a “have to” instead of a “want to” and making unhealthy food the ultimate goal. Instead, try rewarding yourself with some new workout gear, a deep tissue massage, or whatever makes your heart happy.
Workout with Friends
Instead of doing the normal happy hour or weekend dinner with your friends, why not suggest a healthier option? For example, you can offer to go on a long hike together or go kayaking to enjoy some quality time together. Not only will you and your friends reap the health benefits together, but they will also improve your accountability as they will make sure you don’t skip the workout.
Have a Backup Plan
Have you ever slept through your alarm and missed your morning workout? Or have you ever had a massive headache and just the thought of running made you nauseous? If you can relate, you are certainly not alone. Prepare an easy and flexible backup plan so that you just don’t completely give up when your original plan goes out the window. For example, you could make time for a 30-minute walk, stretch, or switch your rest day. By having a backup plan, you are able to keep yourself feeling motivated and good about your goals, even when your original plan doesn’t work out.
Create A Vision Board
Surround yourself with images and words that you find inspirational by posting them on something you see frequently throughout your day. You can place it in your car, office, bedroom, kitchen, or take a picture of it and set it as the background on your computer or phone. You can also start a vision board by adding motivational images that relate to your goal. Visually seeing your goal as often as possible will keep you motivated.
Do What You Find Enjoyable
If you hate running, then don’t force yourself to run. If the taste of beets makes you gag, don’t eat beets. Instead, make accountability easier and find the exercises and foods that you enjoy and build them into your plan. Developing new healthy habits is much easier to do when you actually enjoy achieving your goals instead of forcing yourself to eat or do things you strongly dislike. Keep an open mind with trying new workouts to find one that you’ll not only enjoy but will look forward to doing.
Create Your Healthy Habits
Commit to developing small daily healthy habits. These could be as simple as no screen time 2-hours before bed, eating a serving of vegetables with dinner every night, or drinking 4 bottles of water a day. Choosing which healthy habits to add into your daily routine is completely in your control and something that is absolutely worth doing. You accountability is improved as you will be naturally inclined to follow habits you have formed.
Surround Yourself with Positivity
Listen to a motivating podcast during your morning and afternoon commute, read a chapter from a self-improvement book before bed, or start writing in a gratitude journal. By filling your time with things you find to be inspirational and motivational, you will stay focused and excited to reach your goals.
Celebrate Yourself
At the end of each day, spend some time to reflect on the progress you made towards your end goal. This could be something as small as resisting the temptation to eat a freshly baked pastry during your staff meeting or it could be fitting back into a pair of jeans you haven’t worn in years. Once you start acknowledging each of your daily accomplishments that you have made towards your end goal, you will feel incredibly proud and motivated to continue making progress.
A Personal Trainer Can Be Your Accountability Partner
Accountability is a crucial component of any successful health and fitness journey. When choosing the ideal accountability partner, you want to make sure that they are a good fit and will show up for you, each and every day. Your ideal partner should be someone who has proven knowledge, skills, experience, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who is comfortable providing you with honest feedback.
If you are not sure who would be the best person for you to trust as an accountability partner, a certified Personal Trainer might be a great option for you. A Personal Trainer can help assess the challenges you face by determining where you lack accountability and identify how working with a partner will help you achieve your goals.
If you’re having trouble defining your goals, a Personal Trainer will take the time to speak with you to gain a deeper understanding of what you are trying to accomplish to then create a sustainable action plan. Throughout your fitness journey, you can rely on a Personal Trainer to provide you with honest feedback, science-based knowledge, and continuous support through the good and challenging days. If you feel working with a certified Personal Trainer will be the best option for your accountability partner, now is the time to make that happen.