It’s been said many times: people like to have accountability, but it’s difficult to be accountable. This is true for
all of us, even here at MPS. I’d like to share with you the challenge I faced when tasked with planning a vacation.
Yes, a vacation. Why? Because most of us already do a good job at being accountable in the workplace, but it can be challenging to prioritizing our personal goals; being accountable to ourselves. If you’ve attended our Take Back Your Life! program, you know that we create a system where goals for business and goals for personal are both at the top of our lists. It’s important to keep them together so that we don’t lose sight of the things we want to accomplish.
Okay, so case in point. Last year my wife told me, “We’ve been married for some time now, it’s time for you to plan a vacation overseas.” In the seventeen years since I moved from home, I’ve never taken a vacation. Sure, I’ve traveled a lot…but I’m talking about a vacation to somewhere new and to actually disconnect from work. I’ve always had ambitions of traveling to Morocco, Cambodia, Egypt, Peru, but never planned a vacation. It’s because I kept telling myself I don’t have time, it costs too much money, etc. I knew it was important to my wife and I knew it was important to me, but I wasn’t holding myself accountable to making it happen.
Three months passed and my wife says to me, “You haven’t done a dang thing to plan! It’s not in your ‘goals’ system, is it?” (She knows that we live the system that we build in Take Back Your Life!) She was right, I hadn’t had the courage to write anything down. So, she made me pull up the computer and pick a place. “Uhhh, okay, how about Ireland.” I kinda chickened out because Ireland is fairly inexpensive and they speak English, but it’s a part of my heritage so I thought it would be educational.
As soon as I put Ireland in my system, it made me start being accountable to it. The funny thing was, that as soon as I made it a priority, the universe started aligning towards it. My rental house suddenly vacated, and I thought, “Oh, I could sell the house!” It sold within two hours of being listed. Okay, so now the money factor was taken care of. Then I was able to schedule a bunch of work in June and July, thus freeing up August. Now I could actually book this vacation! It was nerve wracking, spending all that money in just a few clicks, but also exciting. June and July were difficult months with all that work scheduled, but I was motivated by looking into August and seeing that vacation on the calendar.
Ireland was incredible. And because I worked hard at it, I didn’t even bring my work phone or computer. I said to myself, “This is true work-life balance!” So, I hope this inspires you to not only work hard at your business goals, but that you also set, plan, and prioritize personal goals as well. Achieving both is possible! After all, if you’re not accountable to yourself, how can you be accountable to others?