Steps to Accountability
Sometimes, being personally accountable to one’s actions and the willingness to tell the truth, simply involves courage. Do you have the necessary courage to exhibit personal accountability? One may want to examine the consequences associated with being accountable and responsible before answering.
First, accountability means you are responsible to somebody or for something. Second, being responsible means that you cause something to happen. Third, by exhibiting accountability, as seen through the eyes of the people around you, may look like the following:
- Accepting complete responsibility for your behavior.
- Meeting/exceeding agreed upon expectations in an agreed upon role or position.
- Admitting mistakes and taking steps to correct them.
- Admitting limitations of knowledge or skills in certain areas.
- Accepting responsibility is being fully aware of exerting control of one’s behavior through one’s choices.
Additionally, one accepts the consequences of the choices one makes while taking responsibility for what may be perceived as positive or negative experiences that come with those choices. Integrity, or doing what is right, because that is the right thing to do, is the epitome of accepting responsibility. We all have much to gain by exhibiting personal accountability in our personal and professional life. Some of these are listed below:
- You become a person that can be trusted.
- You are respected by people around you.
- Your words or actions hold credibility.
- You send the message that you are willing to do whatever is necessary for the success of the group/team/organization.
- You are a person with strong moral and ethical character.
- You can be trusted to complete challenging projects and meaningful assignments.
- What kind of person do you want to be?
Personal freedom begins and ends with responsibility and accountability. Personal accountability is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to contribute to the world, contribute to the human race and the organization of which we are a part. It is the opportunity to be counted as trustworthy among the other people inside our organization and for whom we truly hold caring respect. It is our opportunity to ask, “What can I do to contribute?” and “How can I make a difference?“. If our spiritual and other organizations foster an environment that values integrity, trustworthiness, honesty and courage, personal accountability truly presents all of us with a vast opportunity to grow while serving others.
Accountability Exercises
Below are a few exercises that we can work on:
Tell the truth. Many times we may make the mistake to believe that saying a “little white lie” is better than to risk hurting feelings or dealing with someone else’s judgment of our behavior. Maybe we are in fear and afraid to face the consequences. When we engage in lying about something or we try to cover it up, this deceitful action will always boomerang and make the situation much worse. When deceit is used to manipulate or cover up, it snowballs into a larger problem and sucks time and energy. Save yourself some time and protect your energies by telling the truth.
Monitor yourself. Are you accountable for your actions even if nobody holds you accountable -- or nobody catches you? Of course you are. If you do not think so then you are cheating on yourself. You are the person who will ultimately suffer the consequence of your actions. Even if you cannot visibly see the consequence of your action today, there is always a consequence that will show up either now or later on.
Go within. When you have conflicts or trouble in relationships or situations, look in the mirror first. Ask the question to yourself, “What is the problem here?” “What am I doing or not doing to solve this issue, and what can I improve upon?”. In many interpersonal communications with every social aspect, whether its communicating with family, friends, or acquaintances, personal accountability is sorely lacking and urgently needed. Accountability is not just a mindset but is an important skill set that everyone can learn and should master. Choose personal accountability and own it. This commitment will always eventually reveal a much more positive situation for everybody involved. [1]
Unified Cooperation builds Accountability
Through Unified Cooperation, the consistent development of the group can better align towards mutual agreement, that helps to build energetic Coherence, congruence and Accountability, within all members of organizations and communities.
Accountability and Self-Responsibility for one’s direct behavior and actions cannot exist without developing inner Coherence.
Practicing Accountability is a direct part of developing inner Coherence and supporting the integration of the personal layers of the Lightbody. This means we do not have a duplicitous nature, or a split personality that shows one face to the public, and another face in private. As we increase our ability to be coherent, we show ourselves as we are, and there is an ability to allow people to be just as they are in that moment, without judgment. As we develop our inner Coherence, the way we perceive events changes, we evolve away from needing to feed negative emotions, control outcomes or the need to attack others. Being accountable for our behavior and choosing more evolved and higher ethical behaviors, is how we stop the cycle of painful attachments, servitude and bondage to lower spirits and their negative nature. These negative spirits will interfere with the function of our instinctual body, thus, distorting our feelings and intuitive perceptions into creating pain, suffering and misery.[2]
