Personal accountability is about taking responsibility for your own life. What you control. What you don’t control. What your strengths and weaknesses are. Where you can and need to improve. It’s about taking as much responsibility for yourself as possible.
We all likely know someone or have experienced someone that lacks personal accountability. They are the people who immediately pass the blame when something goes a little (or a lot) wrong. When confronted, this person will often be very quick to say, “That’s not my fault…”.
When you have high personal accountability, you’re always looking for your own fault or responsibility in any situation. You can even take it to the extreme. Let’s say somebody walks up to you on the street and punches you in the face. Many people would be quick to blame the assailant. They would think, why me… But someone that is personally accountable would be thinking about their decisions that led up to this point.
Should I have been more observant? Should I have been more prepared walking in this area? Should I have been more physically prepared to take a punch?
That’s an extreme scenario, but hopefully the point is clear.
This type of mindset seems to be important to a successful life. When you’re constantly looking at where you can improve, you are going to constantly improve. In all areas of life.
Obviously there is a balance. Get too much in the wrong direction with this and you’re going to be bordering on control freak status. That is also a negative state of mind. Because we actually have very little control over the world around us. Especially with other people. We can’t control what others do or what nature does or what the economy will do.
But we can control how we prepare ourselves. We can control how we educate ourselves. We can control how we respond to the world around us.
Personal accountability is very simple.
What did I do wrong? How can I improve?
It’s not easy to transition to this state of mind. But the more you do it, the more successful you will be over the long-term.