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Our Decisions Reflect Our
Accountability
Our feelings have the power to influence
our behavior
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We are all solely accountable for the quality of our
lives. This first of my seven core values often elicits
skeptical responses from audiences, many of whom perceive it
as an extreme position. Compared with what we're seeing in
society today, I admit that it is extreme.
I define accountability as acknowledged ownership of the
choices we make and the consequences thereof. The quality of
our lives is a consequence not of the people and situations
we encounter but of the choices we make concerning them.
Quality of life is a real-world example of choice and
consequences&endash;accountability.
Most of us use our feelings as indicators of the kind of
day we're having. "Good" days are characterized by positive
feelings, while we use negative feelings as a basis for
labeling a day as "bad." Our feelings are important not
only
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as indicators of the kind of day we're having but also
because of their power to influence, or even determine, our
behavior. Even when we exercise restraint in the face of a
negative feeling, such as anger, and avoid expressing it
overtly, the quality of our behavior will most certainly be
affected by the anger and by the effort required for us to
control our emotions.
Our feelings define the quality of our days and have an
impact on our behavior; and our feelings, using my logic,
are consequences. Question is, what causes our feelings? I
believe that our feelings are at least partially caused by
choices we make. We own the feelings, and even more
significantly, we own the choices that have given life to
those feelings. We are accountable for our feelings. But
that is not the way most people see it.
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The Illusion of Victimhood
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If the quality of our days is determined by our feelings
and if those feelings don't just occur but are caused by
something, what is it? Most people seem convinced that the
feelings they experience and the quality of their days are
caused by somebody and/or something "out there." Given that
logic, it is not surprising that we are becoming a society
of professional victims.
Maybe the recent rash of violent, irrational behavior
that has received such widespread media attention is only an
extension of that flawed reasoning. If we are truly helpless
in determining our feelings, it doesn't take much of a
stretch to adopt that same helplessness to explain our
behavior. Here are two workplace examples of this victim
phenomenon:
• managers ignoring or even actively
discouraging staff suggestions for how processes and
outcomes could be
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improved because they see such suggestions as
challenging their authority
• staff members withholding their suggestions
because managers don't always listen to, consider, and/or
act on their input
In both of these examples, the behavior exhibited is
irrational; it's out of proportion to the perceptions or
events used to justify it, and it serves no one's interests.
Such behavior is probably preceded or accompanied by strong
feelings, and I suspect the parties would probably attribute
their feelings and irrational behavior to the people and
situations they've encountered. The managers' resentment and
the staff members' frustration are the feelings they use to
justify their irrational behavior, and it's somebody else's
fault! They have this victimhood role down cold, but what
they will seldom acknowledge is that it's an illusion. Fact
is: All professional victims are volunteers!
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Relentless Accountability
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When it comes to the quality of your days and behavior,
you cannot be drafted into victimhood. It's not something
that happens to you; it's a choice you make. Actually, it's
a combination of choices that only you can make.
We can approach the quality of our days and behavior from
one of two perspectives: victimhood or accountability.
Victimhood attributes the quality of our days and behavior
to chance, to the changing world of people and situations
over whom and which we have almost no control.
Accountability is acknowledging that the quality of our days
and behavior is determined primarily by the choices we make.
Transforming accountability from theory to
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practice requires a commitment to acknowledging and
improving the choices we make.
Remember, feelings are the criteria we use to assess the
quality of our days, so any commitment we make to
accountability requires a fundamental shift in our
perception of cause and effect. This fundamental shift from
victimhood to accountability requires that we acknowledge
our feelings to be the emotional consequences of the mental
choices we make. We are truly practicing and demonstrating
accountability when we acknowledge ownership of the mental
choices we've made (our thoughts) and the emotional
consequences of those thoughts (our feelings). Quality of
life is nothing more than choice and consequences, both of
which we own.
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Self-Mastery & Accountability
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Self-mastery is the ultimate people skill, and it can be
achieved only through mental training, that is, the long and
difficult process of acknowledging and improving our
thoughts.
With this, my sixth core value, I use the term
"self-mastery" to represent the ultimate realm of
accountability. Self-mastery is achieved only when we have
transcended all illusions about the relationship between
outside factors and the quality of our lives. I describe
self-mastery as the ultimate people skill because as we
attain it, we progressively enhance our effectiveness at
influencing others. No, it's not the magic tactic for
getting others to do what we want them to do. In fact, our
effectiveness at influencing others will improve with our
self-mastery because we will have fewer attachments to what
others must or must not do in order for us to be "okay."
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It's not that we will no longer care, but we will have
overcome the illusion that what others do or don't do is
somehow the cause of our feelings. Fewer attachments and
aversions means less desperation and fewer attempts to
control others, and those changes translate into more
influence.
Self-mastery is acknowledged ownership of the choices we
make and of their consequences, beginning with the most
powerful and most often overlooked&endash;our mental
choices. Our unfamiliarity with the process or even the
concept of acknowledging and improving our thoughts explains
why the process can be so lengthy and difficult. We are
creatures of habit, and accepting our feelings as
spontaneous, involuntary reactions to the things and people
we encounter is an insidious habit most of us have
formed.
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Reclaiming Our Accountability
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Breaking the victimhood habit requires relentless
vigilance and the discipline and endurance to persevere long
after the new wears off. It also requires the courage to "go
it alone," since most people will continue clinging to their
self-imposed victimhood and will probably
wonder&endash;aloud&endash;about your "unnatural" or
"unrealistic" efforts to create the kind of days they only
hope for.
Mental training is the phrase I use to describe the
process of attaining self-mastery, of replacing victimhood
with accountability. Our mental choices&endash;our
thoughts&endash;are powerful in that they influence our
feelings. As with most activities, our ability to make
better mental choices will improve with training and
practice. Mental training can include whatever activities or
regimens we use to become more consciously aware of (to
acknowledge) the mental choices we make about the people,
situations, events, and conditions in our lives; the impact
these mental choices
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have on the quality of our lives (our feelings); and the
alternatives that might yield better consequences. While
there are many training programs and trainers who could
facilitate our progress toward self-mastery, ultimately each
of us must do the work. Too often we abdicate our
responsibility for our growth by relying on trainers (or
gurus) to show us the way and then carry us. Self-mastery is
a self-help process, and I'll conclude this article with a
couple of tips for acknowledging and improving the choices
you make.
After encountering troublesome people and/or
situations&endash;and I'm sure we'd all agree that such
encounters are inevitable&endash;most of us will probably
have some sort of knee-jerk emotional responses. Anger,
disappointment, and other similar emotions are not
unnatural, nor are they irrational. Truth is, I don't want
anyone on my team who isn't disappointed after a loss.
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It Takes a Commitment
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Starting today, make the following commitments to
yourself and to your pursuit of self-mastery:
1. After every apparent loss, setback, or other
troublesome encounter, give yourself permission to do some
appropriate, rational "grieving." This "grieving" can take
the form of anger, frustration, disappointment, or any other
such emotion.
2. Remind yourself often that after some reasonable
amount of grieving, you're going to get over it and get on
with it.
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3. Grieving is getting over it; getting on with it begins
by defining and taking an appropriate next step. You may
want to review the event by yourself or with the other
parties so that you can learn from it. Or you may be better
off putting it behind you and focusing on something
else.
Putting it behind you and focusing on something else,
even when it's clearly the best option, is not always easy
to do. The mental training process that leads to
self-mastery is indeed long and difficult, but compared with
the suffering we impose on ourselves by clinging to our
voluntary victimhood, "long and difficult" just doesn't seem
too bad, does it?
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Taking a Cue from Toddlers
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Like a child attempting his first steps,
we must accept failures and learn to overcome
setbacks
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Having devoted the past several issues of From the
Inside-Out to six of my core values, I'll conclude this
series with my seventh, and final (for now) core value:
Success and failure will characterize our efforts to make
any worthwhile changes in our lives. Our commitment to
making those changes is best measured by our responses to
our failures. The loftier our goal or objective, the more
difficult the journey, and the more opportunities there will
be for mistakes, setbacks, even failures. The same can be
said for our values. The higher the standards we set for
ourselves, the more difficult it will be to live up to those
standards and the more likely we will be to occasionally
fall short of the mark. Sometimes it seems that I spend a
whole lot more time short of the mark than I do on it.
A key distinction I've addressed with this core value is
the one between getting down (experiencing reasonable,
rational emotions after falling short of the mark) and
staying down. I apply this core value to almost every skill
area I address in my speaking and training. Leaders,
managers, staff members, salespeople, educators, and parents
can all verify that their current level of proficiency was
not attained without experiencing some failures, some
mistakes, along the way. Their willingness to endure
those
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mistakes was essential to their achieving higher levels
of proficiency. Their commitment to their growth was seen in
their responses to their failures. Did they get down?
Probably. Did they stay down? Absolutely not.
I see the home as a wonderful place to learn, teach, and
grow. Contrary to what I once believed, it's the short
people (our children) who are the real teachers. Watching my
children learn to walk taught me about rational responses to
failure and the power of commitment.
None of my three children walked perfectly on their first
attempts. In fact, it took all of them dozens of attempts to
even remain upright. You might say they experienced repeated
failures. How did they respond? Sometimes they didn't seem
to care, other times they did some "grieving." But the one
thing they always did after every failure was pick
themselves up and try again. They got over it and got on
with it. By watching my children I've learned many things,
but perhaps nothing more important or as valuable as the
lesson I've incorporated into my seventh core value: Success
and failure will characterize our efforts to make any
worthwhile changes in our lives. Our commitment to making
those changes is best measured by our responses to our
failures.
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