An accountability partner can be a great resource to motivate you and to help you reach your goals, but if you are not careful, an accountability partner can be like a ball and chain that drags you down.
To make sure you find an accountability partner who is your catapult to higher and faster achievement and not your crutch, consider this:
The greatest value in having an accountability partner is to maintain a daily discipline of setting and reaching goals. You want someone who helps you keep focused, motivated and moving forward.
Theoretically, you should have enough self-motivation to go out and do the things you need to do in order to achieve your goals, but being human, we all like to share our victories with someone else.
An accountability partner fills the human need of letting us take pride in what we do, and have it mean something not only to ourselves but to somebody else. By telling another person of our achievements, we get the external feedback that what we do transcends the small world of our own egocentric wants and desires.
When we get positive feedback, we allow ourselves to believe that our efforts are valid because someone else sees them that way too. We tell ourselves that what we do is good and that we should continue, because the universe “out there” has given us the green light and the stamp of approval. What we do transcends us.
That’s an awesome feeling, isn’t it?
Just make sure that the push for achievement comes from you. If you ask someone to be your accountability partner with the idea that that person is going to show up at your house every day, shake you awake, tell you what you need to do and sit on you till you do it, then you have a crutch, not an accountability partner.
If you find yourself with a crutch, you should get a new accountability partner or do without one, so that you don’t become a permanent cripple dependent on your accountability partner.
After all, you want to be independent, don’t you? So, you need to find a positive accountability partner to be your catapult.
There are two types of positive accountability partners.
One type is very neutral, almost non-existent. She is someone to whom you can send a daily e-mail, and by doing so you give yourself an extra jolt of re-commitment to moving ahead with your goals. The only requirement of this type of accountability partner is that he/she has a valid e-mail address.
The second type of positive accountability partner is more interactive. An interactive accountability partner is great as long as the push is coming from you to focus and achieve. An important quality of the interactive accountability partner is that there is no criticism or suggestion that you change direction. You want a cheerleader to reinforce your self-made momentum. The last thing you need is a devil’s advocate who constantly expresses doubt about your every move.
If you have a positive mindset, your accountability partner can be your catapult by simply being there and by giving you positive feedback.
Do you have an accountability partner yet? Is he or she a crutch or a catapult? Let me know in your comments below.