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[00:00:09] My name is Craig Perra, your host, and I’m excited today to talk about accountability. So what we’re going to do today. So have your notebook ready. We are going to do an accountability audit. We’re first going to learn why accountability is so important. We’re going to look. We’re in your life now. Accountability exists where it doesn’t. We’re going to identify what’s important to you. And we’re going to provide you with some important tips that you can literally incorporate as soon as you’re done listening to improve your accountability game. Accountability. Is. Almost a lot. Accountability is so important. And I’d like to read to you some statistics about accountability. So there was a study done by the Association for Talent Development. This was in 2015. And so listen to how important accountability is. So the research has found that individuals have the following probabilities of completing a goal by taking these actions, having an idea or goal, just having it. That gives you a 10% likelihood of completing that goal. If you consciously decide that you are going to achieve that goal, now you’re up to 25%. If you decide when you’re going to accomplish that goal, you are at 40% if you’re planning how to do it. 50%. Committing to someone else that you will do it 65% having. Here is the punch line, guys. Here’s the punch line. We’re going to hopefully blow this up for you. So you’re going to, like, come out of this listening to this broadcast convinced you have to increase strength in your accountability game. Here it is: having a specific accountability appointment with someone you’ve committed to accomplishing your goal, increases the chances that you will accomplish that goal by 95%. 95%. That’s a lot. .
[00:03:06] And I don’t know. If it’s 90%, I don’t know if it’s 80%. But let’s look at your life today. And before we go any further, for those of you who are listening to this live. Welcome. Hey, Rob and anyone else who’s listening now, if you want to join me on these live streams and after I do my presentation and you want me to answer your questions or to join us, you can follow the mindful habit on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, LinkedIn. So that way you’ll get notified when I go live. I am working on developing a schedule, so there’ll be some consistency. I know I’ve said that a few times, so my apologies. Well, let’s get right back to it. So 95% having a specific accountability appointment with someone you’ve committed to is 95% increased chance of accomplishing that goal. Here’s what I want to do now. Have that notepad handy, have that notebook handy. I want to look at your life and see where there’s accountability and what that accountability is in your professional environment. So what we’re doing now, just so you can see where this is going. We’re going to take a short look at your professional life. And if you’re joining me for the ride, let me know in the chat what you do, what kind of accountability you have. So in your current work environment. Right. Because and if you obviously you have a boss, everyone’s got a boss. Even if you’re the owner, maybe you have investors or maybe you have someone that’s holding you accountable. For me, it’s my business partner, my lovely bride, Michelle. You can imagine the issues that come up there. We’ll talk about those. But. But let’s look at your professional reality.
[00:05:17] Okay. And let’s identify and I’m going to go back to my time at the Hartford Financial Services Group. Now I’m using a big company example on purpose. Hey, Nathan. Welcome. Glad you’re here. Yes, yes, yes. So I’m going to use the Hartford Financial Services Group. And you may have a small company, medium sized company. The bigger the company, the more structured that accountability is. But what I want to do is highlight how important accountability is professionally. Can you imagine? No accountability. Who here leads people? Who here is the boss of someone else? What happens when you slip? What happens when you cancel those weekly meetings that you know you’re supposed to have? What happens when you take your eye off the prize and start paying and stop paying attention even for a short period of time. Of your key performance indicators. Everything goes to hell in a handbasket. Quickly. This is a good person. This may be someone you hired. Someone you care about. Someone who you know in your heart is committed to the mission. But without accountability. He or she falters. They get distracted. They jump on the Internet, spend hours on social media. Accountability is critical at the Hartford Financial Services Group. Okay. It was amazing. The goals started at the board level. Then to the CEO, then to his executive vice presidents and etc., etc., and made their way all the way down to directors. I was assistant general counsel at the handover, so that was considered a leadership role and I guess I was in a leadership role at the Hartford too. But so, so in weekly meetings with my boss. Regular meetings with stakeholders in my projects are regular quarterly updates significantly two leadership, two three, four level up from me regarding the projects that I was working on.
[00:07:29] Quarterly performance meetings. They didn’t wait to do it once a year. They want to make sure you’re on track and you’re progressing and you’re not getting lost. Quarterly And we had specific goals. They were in writing. There was so much accountability in my professional life. And I contrast that to my personal life where there was none. There was none. And let’s reflect for a second on what is important to you and write that down to what is important to you. What makes you get up in the morning? When you think of that fire inside you that’s burning. What is? Your family, pursuing your passion, hobbies that you’re interested in, your faith, your community, your volunteer effort, your career. Where we spend what a ridiculous percentage of our time. Where is the accountability? And for guys struggling with addiction, they might have some accountability. Let’s say they’re going to meetings or they’ve got an accountability partner. But even they’re there to focus on the break a habit part of the equation, meaning the accountability only speaks to them not doing something. Did you slip? No, I didn’t slip. Great. Listen, the break a habit. You have to make a habit. So that accountability relationship has to focus on the make a habit part of the equation. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that. So when you make this list, two, three, four things that are important to you. Ask yourself, where am I holding myself accountable? Where in my life do I have that accountability to make sure I’m doing what I say I want to do in regards to the areas of my life that I deem important? And so often the answer is there’s no accountability. There’s no accountability for purpose. There’s no accountability for self care.
[00:09:50] Very little accountability for exercise. There’s no accountability for all the amazing goals that everyone listening to this broadcast has the ability to achieve. We need accountability in our personal lives. As I just read, it increases the chances that your goal is going to be accomplished by 95%, 95%, according to the Association for Talent Development in a 2015 study. And if you Google efficacy of accountability, you’re going to see statistics like that. You’re going to see a number of statistics. I saw 80%, 70%. I saw something similar around 50%, Whatever the exact percentage is, we need it. How do we know we need it? Because we know if we did not have that accountability in our professional lives, our departments, our units, our teams would be a disaster. How can we not incorporate accountability into our personal lives? So I want to do something right now that I’ve never done. I have accepted my first paid endorsement, which I donated to the weave woman’s. Charity in Sacramento, California. Small amount, but I’m glad I was able to give it to them. Some of you guys may know recently I hosted on my podcast a guy by the name of Chandler Rogers. I’m going to put that in the notes and I’m going to put that right now in the chat. So you can click on it. But here’s the deal. So Chandler personally overcame a struggle with compulsive pornography use and then used his experience to create a recovery app called Relay Relay. Really, really awesome app. I used it here. Here’s the link. Let me get you link. I used it. And what’s so great about it, it creates these accountability pods. It is affordable. I’m going to include this in the show notes. I put it in the chat right now, the link.
[00:12:16] And if you use the coupon code para one. P e. R. A one. You get it for free. You get it for free. So check this out. Here’s what the app has like. The app has tools to manage recovery goals. What are your KPIs? What should you be paying attention to? It’s got that, which is great. It has an S.O.S. button to reach out when you’re feeling triggered. It also has a system for accountability with peers all in a private, safe place. Channel This story is on episode three of 317 Used a coupon code para one at checkout and you can visit the website w WW dot join relay dot app w w w dot join relay dot app and use my code para one. Check it out. Give me your feedback email support at the mindful habit dot com. Let me know what you think about it. There’s a lot of things I love about the app. I love the accountability. I really, really do. Again, I’ve never done this before. I’m doing it now because I think Chandler’s awesome and I want to support his mission. And I think if you want a simple, efficient, inexpensive way to have accountability and to bring some structure and this and it’s great structure, I mean, you can you can really, really do some amazing things with this app, some. But but I’m saying even if you did some structure on what it is you want to accomplish, what are your key performance indicators? That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. The name of the app is Relay. I’ll have the information for you and you can visit the website, join, relay that app and use Para one to get it.
[00:14:12] So speaking of accountability, right, that app’s a great way. So. A couple tips on accountability. Number one. You must prioritize. Well, let me let me say it a little differently now. Remember this, right? This is a podcast. You’re talking to a guy you found on the Internet. For some people, this advice is spot on. For some people, they might be in a state, a mental health state, maybe. Where I was at my low point. This kind of advice is not helping. That person needs a therapist. So if you’re finding yourself repelled by this advice or or just, you know, failure, unable to do it or have so much fear. That’s that’s definitely therapy. Time Or get yourself into a program because the right advice for John is terrible advice for Steve. That’s the interesting thing about self-help. So you’ve got to find what’s going to work for you. But generally speaking, in any area of growth and development, accountability is going to be very, very important. So one. In developing what you’re going to be held accountability to make sure that that is heavy on the make a habit side. Okay. What a lot of people tend to do is focus and for good reason. I get it right you get it to on the break a habit part of the equation, accountability around not doing the thing. Here’s the problem with that. Not doing the thing is literally a function of you doing something else. To break a habit, you have to make the right habit that meets the right needs. You’ve heard me say this before. The cure is the aggressive pursuit of a great life. Not doing something. Is a tiny part. I say 20% of recovery. But what about the other 80%? So your metrics, your weekly, for example, you could have daily, but but weekly key performance metrics, what are they? Three quarters of those I propose should be on the make a habit part of the equation.
[00:16:30] Eating, sleeping, hydrating, exercising. Practicing. Mindfulness. The fundamentals, attending your treatment, you know, connecting. So. So it’s on that. The make a habit part of the equation. So and daily performance metrics. Weekly performance metrics. And here’s the way to structure an accountability relationship. Your accountability partner can be your spouse. Now, there’s a bunch of pitfalls regarding the spouse. We’ll come back to that in another podcast. But if you’ve got no accountability now. And if you and your partner said, Hey, life is short, I don’t want to live this way anymore. You might feel unsafe sharing your sexual accountability, but the family that exercises together and and has goals together and pursues their passion together is a happy family or a happier family. So you can use your partner. You can use a friend. You can use a colleague in recovery. You can use a coworker where you once a week you check in. And here’s one way to structure your accountability relationship. Everybody’s going to do it different. But what I want to I want to leverage community vulnerability with accountability to give you the most bang for your buck. And here’s one way to start. First piece of advice I’ll give you on starting is the start small? Be accountable for one thing. Maybe to keep it simple. The problem is, is people have to turn to the to do list is too much. It’s not attainable. You’re not in the spot to be able to accomplish that right now. So you want to start small because regularly meeting with someone to talk about accountability is even if it’s for 10 minutes and I recommend 10 minutes per week. Start small 10 minutes per week. You get 5 minutes, your partner gets 5 minutes. You are going to walk through your key performance metrics.
[00:18:47] How are you performing on the make a habit part of the equation? Am I on the right track with eating, sleeping, hydrating, exercising and practicing mindfulness? I call those things the fundamental five the basics. I think self-care rooted in self-love. By to assign a percentage to that. Of your solution? 80%. 80% of this journey is awesome. When you are taking care of yourself and when you feel good about yourself. Okay, so. I recommend it. And listen, let’s say you’re seeing a therapist. You’re spending a lot of time talking about feelings, talking about struggles, maybe talking about the past, talking about your challenges. What if you carved out 5 minutes of that 15 minute session to talk about self-care? Right where you’re working and where you’re not working. So the key to accountability is having a safe place to be vulnerable and to acknowledge I failed. You need that safety to say. I said I was going to do X. I failed. Here’s my commitment for next week. So in our program, our group Intensive, we recommend everybody have what we call an ally. We changed the name from accountability partner to ally, because there is shouldn’t be a negative stigma around having an accountability partner. Covenant Eyes did a study, in fact, and they found out that when people who had accountability partners, even though they’re doing all the right things and even if they were kicking ass, it made them feel weak. It made them feel like pathetic, like they needed someone. Mommy’s got to watch them to make sure they don’t touch themselves. So there is a lot of negativity and I’m embellishing it a little bit just to kind of connecting with how I might have felt that that time week pathetic a loser.
[00:21:00] I’m going to tell somebody whether or not, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. I mean, there’s there’s there’s an attitude that I think I might have had. So you need that safety. You need that place to be able to acknowledge when you’re on the right track, when you’re off the right track. And in summary, three quarters of your key performance indicators. Should be on the make a habit part of the equation. Did you exercise like you said you were going to do? Did you hydrate like you said you were going to do? Did you get enough sleep like you said you were going to do? Did you eat? Well, eat, sleep, drink, eat, sleep, drink. Exercise. Practice. Mindfulness. The fundamental five. So. Figure. And I guess the last piece of advice, I’ll give you 5 minutes per week. You get five. Your partner gets five. Three quarters of your metrics should be focused on the make a habit part of the equation. You’ve got to be moving toward something. Right. If you’re only running away, if you’re obsessively focused on not doing the thing, not doing the thing, not doing the thing, you are eventually going to do the thing. Not because you’re a bad person, because that’s how the human mind works, that what you resist persists. So call it an accountability. Call an ally. Let me just finish that point. So Covenant, I changed the name to Ally. We changed the name to Ally. There should be no negative stigma for having an accountability partner. That’s a smart thing. We are trying to channel and direct a powerful force, one of the most powerful forces in human nature. It has built empires. It has destroyed humans. Our sexual energy. Of course, we need accountability in order to channel and direct that energy in a healthy, constructive way.
[00:23:03] And within that accountability relationship. Now, just to speak on the break habit part of the equation, that’s where vulnerability comes in. You got to tell somebody. I fail. And you and I both know how much shame there is around this secretive behavior. And just to put it in perspective and, you know, give yourselves some grace, man. This is the oldest and most impactful habit lying about some aspect of your sexual expression that my groups have been able to identify. Period. We have not been able to identify a habit that is older and more impactful than lying and hiding some aspect of your sexual expression. I mean, it wasn’t something you did on public, thank God, obviously. But but we know the high this this habits been thriving in secret since we were children. Since is so. I said no body. The the other habits that we think that we use, that might be how you wipe yourself, how you fold the toilet paper, what side of your mouth you brush your teeth on. But the point is, there are many. It’s very hard to think of a habit that is as deeply entrenched in older. Then you lying about some aspect of your sexual expression. And I only kind of want to close on that to remind you how powerful this energy is that you’re trying to control. So you’ve got your self-care. You’ve got your self love. And now accountability. Having an accountability partner means. A lot, and it’s really hard to imagine. Someone being successful without having that person. And when I said old, like, try to think of an older habit, I mean, like early in life, you know, when you go back to your childhood, what habit has been around longer, longer than this one? I’m looking at the wrong camera, that one.
[00:25:44] Not too many. Right. Not too many. And if you can find one, you know you’re lucky. You’re lucky. You’re lucky. You’re lucky. So what did we do today? One, we did a brief mini accountability audit. What’s important to you? Where is the accountability in your life? Around What’s important to you? We started analyzing and reflecting on where you have accountability today. And I use my example when I work for billion dollar companies, how structured that accountability was and how there was a complete vacancy of accountability in my personal life. And when I didn’t have accountability, it was through my 12 step program and it was accountability around the make a habit part of the equation. Of course, to make a habit, part of the equation is important, very, very important. Not as important as the make a habit part of the equation. So make sure in your accountability relationship, that relationship is has a spark about it has a fire about it. Two people aggressively pursuing a great life. And here’s the accountability that we’re going to share with each other. Lean on each other, be vulnerable with each other, so together we can increase the chances that we’re going to make good decisions and times of stress. Because this is one of the oldest habits that you’ve ever had in your entire life. All right. So accountability is important. I’m looking for my notes here. We did a. One of the podcasts I’m going to be doing is going to be on systems coming up. I’m excited about that. A couple other ones coming up. The real reasons young straight men aren’t having sex. In another podcast that I’m working on, very excited about this one. Probably going to come next week because there’s an accountability piece to this.
[00:27:40] Researchers have pinpointed the one type of exercise that makes people live longer. And I’m going to do it. I’ll leave you with a clickbait title. It’s not what you think. It’s not what you think. Maybe you saw that in the news recently, but I’m excited to share that with you. So if you’re looking for easy accountability in the show notes for this broadcast, you will see a link to the app, the podcast that I did with Chandler. That was episode 317. Amazing story. This young man who built this app, which has built in accountability tools to manage recovering key performance metrics and so on, to reach out when triggered and in a system of accountability within the app. So you get on a team of three or four people and I love the app, use the end, define the app it’s WW w dot join relay the app. I’m going to read that to you one more time. W. W. W. Dot Join relay dot app and use the code paragon at checkout to join for free. I love the app. I think you will too. It’s a great easy way for accountability. So para one. Get the app for free. And yeah. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being here. Look forward to seeing you early next week. Remember? Embrace your power of choice and feed the great wolf inside you and having accountability in your life to make sure that you’re on track. Feeding the right Wolf. In light of all the challenges that we are going to face. Accountability is so, so, so important, and I hope this broadcast inspired you to get an accountability partner to start bringing some. Here’s the thing. For most of my clients and most of you, you’re simply leveraging a skill set that you have professionally in applying the key elements of that in your personal life.
[00:29:48] Like, think about it, right? Look to work. Now, listen, if you’re in a work relationship, that’s a mess. You want to quit. And obviously not, it’s not going to be a good template. I had the privilege of working with, you know, amazing, you know, historical companies who’ve been around for hundreds of years and are huge. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot about accountability. And it was a privilege to share some of that with you. We’re just coming up on the end of January 2023. That’s 11 more months to be awesome and look forward to being awesome with you. If you are struggling, if you need intense help, visit the mindful habit dot com. There’s a number that you can call to get on my schedule. I’m or one of my assistant schedules to learn more about my intensives. All right everybody look forward to seeing again.
