An Accountable Path

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way"

A few winters ago, I was travelling in Northern Maine.  It had been a heavy snow season thus far and I found myself driving in wind driven snow on a back road.  Drifts of snow had begun to form on the sides of the road making it narrow and it was getting dark. Driving had become precarious and coming around one corner I came to a sliding halt because of a large hemlock tree that had fallen in the road. I knew what to do. I got out and painstakingly cleared a path large enough to drive through and called the local road crew for a proper clean up.

This barrier in the road was relatively easy to diagnose and remove. Other barriers in my life however have not been so easy to diagnose and deal with. There are invisible barriers in our lives that can keep us from moving ahead in our career, stagnant in our relationships,  stuck in the past, alone, and mentally or emotionally bankrupt. Often we cannot specifically identify what it is that stands in our way. We tend to get tangled in a nuanced web of emotional and mental blockages that we have either unknowingly created or have carried through the years out of a past of pain and disappointment.

We may say we want to get better but rarely make the effort and often move farther away from the answers. In ancient Greece a maxim developed and was further summed up by Socrates in the phrase “know thyself." Socrates was asked what his thoughts were on the Greek myths and religions.” Socrates, do you literally believe in these?”  Socrates answered by explaining that he could not be distracted to devote such time and effort to something that is as unknowable as this when he has yet to come to a full understanding of himself. 

 In a modern context, examples of our distracting gods might be social media, binge entertainment, comfort and fast paced lives that make it difficult to “know thyself.”  We can be a distracted bunch, and few of us break free from our modern dopamine hits that lead us away from ourselves.  If I was to ask you if you would like to know what it takes to experience a truer sense of self and significantly make your life better I’m sure you would answer as I would with an enthusiastic yes! The problem is, we can make all the to do lists, read the books, listen to the podcasts and talk about change but never commit.

With the forces of environmental conditioning, personality type, past traumas, stress, and fatigue always at our back we often falter when pressure for change is increased. It can seem so impossible to move forward. In no way would I try to convince you otherwise. We generally don’t change unless we hit rock bottom, and the pain becomes too great not to make the change. But maybe there is a way to make a change before we get desperate for one.

In most of my attempts to make change happen in my life I always did it alone. Wanting to be that island or steadfast rock I often failed and felt very alone in my failure. I had tried everything but the one thing that I thought would never create an authentic self and the change I wanted to see in my life.  I have since found that building a support network to hold me accountable and provide encouragement has greatly improved my ability to make the changes I need. People had become the way for me to understand myself better and grow into who I wanted to be.

Reaching out has not been easy and has definitely humbled me, but I had tried everything else and encouragingly enough, research backs the effort. The Association for Talent Development has done a study showing that when we have accountability to someone else our goal attainment probability goes up between 65- 95%. Not only has gaining accountability to others significantly improved my ability to attain goals it has set me on a path of integrity and taking responsibility for myself. I'd like to encourage you if you feel that you have tried hard to make changes and solve problems in your life yet haven't had success and you do not have an accountable community to keep you on course then why not give it a try? It just might be the one thing that makes the difference.