Some people, however, find such visioning and resolution-setting to be a negative experience. Perhaps they’ve done it before and “failed.” Or they might fear that their reach will not exceed their grasp and failure will be their booby prize. Maybe yet they find it difficult to picture a semi-distant future and thus refrain from thinking any further ahead than absolutely necessary.

Success or Failure

The larger issue in my mind as I write is that visioning and planning are intricately linked with our own ideas about success and failure. Daily, from the moment we’re born, we’re given messages about succeeding and failing, doing well and doing poorly, being right and being wrong. Because this is the water in which we swim, it takes many of us years to even realize that these ideas aren’t concrete, immutable realities, but are rather merely human judgments. While I believe that there are many widely-held values (compassion, fairness, honesty, etc.) and thus much consensus about what it means to succeed or fail, I think that it’s dangerous to the soul to navigate life’s waters using any “standardized” definitions.

• Decide for yourself what a life successfully lived will look, feel, and be like.
• Get clear on the values you hold dear and are willing to live by.
• Let go of any societal, familial, or cultural demands that don’t really fit who you believe you were made to be.
• Refuse to pass judgment on others since you’re not really an “all-knowing” god-human.

To close this post, I offer a video I found to be most intriguing and thought-provoking. I hope you’ll give Mr. de Botton a listen and consider what his ideas mean for your life. Whether or not you vision for the year ahead, I wish you the greatest success, joy, and love that matters to you.

Peace,
Shonnie

My experience is that for most people, accountability in this form is about being obligated to do what you said you would do because someone else will judge you on your failure or success. This thinking is common, in part, because most of us have grown up in cultural systems that are based on this judging, “pass/fail” model, and we learn to behave in ways that our culture (or organization, family, peer group, etc.) will deem acceptable.

While seeking to remain on “the good side” of people who are important to us isn’t necessarily a bad thing, using this as the primary motivational driver of our choices is both limiting and uninspiring.

We need to widen our view of accountability

We are accountable to everyone, because our choices, which flow from our beliefs, habits, and desires, ripple out to potentially affect the entire world. Though one could interpret such accountability in the same way as the earlier examples (i.e., using fear of judgment to compel certain behavior on our part), I find them near opposites. When I recognize my interconnection with all other life-forms on this planet, I see that I matter and my choices are important.

“Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life.”

~ Denis Waitley

Rather than worrying what others will think of the choices I make, I focus on making choices that reflect who I am and how I value the interconnectedness of life. I am inspired by the opportunity to do as Bernie Siegel, MD, once suggested: “to contribute love in [my] own way.” It’s about being accountable to myself and all others simultaneously — because this is reality, this is actually the way our world works.

Service is the new accountability

Finally, accountability, in the “traditional” sense is often about a relationship that is unequal. One person has authority over the other (to a greater or lesser degree). The perception is that the one “holding the other accountable” is somehow superior and that the one being held accountable is in need of someone to make them follow through on their own word. While I know that we all have times when we break our word or otherwise fall short of following through on our commitments, being “beholden” to another doesn’t necessarily lessen the chances that we will fall short.

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”

~ Moliere

For me, a better way to think of accountability is to think of one’s life as being in service to something. Making choices and then following through, or not following through, serves some purpose.

• We heal or we wound.
• We awaken or we slumber.
• We connect or we retreat.
• We love or we hate.

With every choice we make, we serve to create some effect on our world. The effect either fosters more of what we want in our world or less. The effect either brings greater connection or greater separation. Regardless of whether others applaud or rebuke our choices, we all live with their effects. Perhaps author and physician Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, said it best.

“Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery with an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose….From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering, and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.”