External Vs. Internal Accountability - How to Achieve Your Goals Without Going Against Yourself.

 Setting your goals is mostly the easy part of achieving your goals. The hardest part is committing to them. I find that many of us cannot create a consistent commitment to our goals and achieve them not because we are lazy, procrastinators, or lack motivation but because many of us work against ourselves. We don't understand the mechanism of how we can achieve goals, and that's why we fail.

 To better understand our motivation to act, we must understand the difference between external and internal accountability. 

Internal accountability:

If you are motivated by internal accountability, that means that when you tell yourself that you are going to act on a goal, you WILL follow your goals at the time you allotted for it. 

External Accountability:

On the other hand, if you have found yourself wondering why it is so easy for you to be accountable for your team or friends, but it's so challenging to be accountable to yourself, you are one of the people who are motivated by external accountability. By the way, most of us are motivated by external accountability. 

Remember I shared that you can go against yourself by setting your goals? Let's see how you can go with the system that is right for you. 

Systems for people who are motivated by external accountability:

External Accountability
To accomplish your goals, create systems that lean on one person or a group. 

One on One

• Accountability Partner. 
   An accountability partner is someone you partner with to achieve similar goals; business goals, weight goals, workout goals - in a nutshell, you want to achieve the same goals. 
  For example, my accountability partner and I have supported each other's business for several years. We challenge each other, brainstorm ideas to support each other's businesses, share each other's knowledge, resource and network to support each other, and we also make sure to remind each other to spend time on self-care. To gain excellent results from having an accountability partner, I recommend co-designing what will motivate you to stay accountable and committed to each other's goals. Before you have the conversation with another person, start by asking yourself who can be the right persona to keep you accountable.

** You can find more information on establishing accountability partnerships in the links below. 
Click Here and get your accountability checklist

• Pets
  Yes, an accountability partner can also be a pet. For example, I had a few clients who got dogs to start walking, focus on self-care, or running to change workout habits or wake up early in the morning.

One to Many  
An accountability partner can be a one-on-one partnership, but it can also be a group partnership.

• Mastermind or Group Coaching - One of the ways to establish a group partnership is mastermind, or other groups that help each team member achieve their goals. These groups can be virtual groups that meet on Zoom or other online options or in person. I believe that the best ones are groups that focus on a specific topic, like speaking skills or growing your leadership skills or business.

• Online

  • Online forums - you can use online forums or other groups to achieve your goals and do it at your own pace and time with less personal commitment.

  • Social Media - Some people gain from posting online to their community about how they will commit to achieving a goal.
    Being accountable to the people who follow me on social media made me commit to my goals. For example, when I wanted to get better at online videos, I posted on social media that every time I ran, I would post a video and share my thoughts and my ideas from the run. This is how I established "on the run" videos that were on my social media accounts for almost three years.

Internal Accountability. 

1. Gamification

Some of the people that are motivated internally are also competitive. If you are inspired by competition, create a game with rules that will encourage you to stay competitive to achieve your goals. Here is how you can use the system of gamification. 

• The first step, write down all the goals you want to achieve.

• The second step is you give each goal points. And here is the competitive part: the more challenging the goal is for you, the higher the issues you will assign for these goals.
  For example, Let's say that writing an email is an easy goal for you, then you will assign it one point. And networking is a goal that is quite challenging for you, so you will get 100 points if you go to a networking event and speak with at least one person; if you talk with five, maybe you will even get more points.

• The next step is to decide how many points you want to achieve at the end of the week.

• Repeat the system each week and adapt the numeric weekly goals.

And you can even go the Hybrid way here. Some people I know use the same system to compete against their accountability partner - what a great way to engage both gamification and accountability partners!

The most important is:

1. Don't go against yourself.

2. Don't feel limited by playing against yourself; you are more than welcome to use this system with others.

3. If you are motivated by external accountability, create the systems with another person or a group. If you are internally motivated, ask yourself how you can make competitive goals to achieve the challenging goals that are important to you.

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