#1 Accountability: Taking back control

Have you ever felt like a passenger in your life? Perhaps circumstances conspire against you, or you are a victim of other people’s failures? Or perhaps a colleague finds every possible excuse as to why things are going wrong?

If this sounds familiar, it is a sign of a lack of accountability and in this situation, our life may not be on the trajectory it should be, or even feel out of our control. If we own our successes and our failures, we focus on what we can do to positively influence an outcome, but if we don’t, we believe that outside factors are piled up against us, and we feel powerless to make a difference. We become the victim.

If you want to take back control in your life and break the victim mentality, here is a simple tip to get started. STOP MAKING EXCUSES.

When something hasn’t gone well, don’t blame others. Instead, identify what you could have done to change the outcome and then do it better next time. If you want to step it up a gear, each day write a list of the top 3 things within your control that will help you succeed. Focus your energy and actions on these areas, even when the temptation arises to make excuses or look for external obstacles. To be truly accountable, you need to own your actions and performance, rather than playing the victim in your own story.

Pro Tip
Ask yourself what your team or organisation might look like if nobody passed the buck? 

Every member would be actively looking for what they could do to positively influence an outcome. That group would also be on task, innovative, employ the best people and crucially, their business would be growing.

So, if you want to become a more valuable professional start taking ownership of your own performance and start positively influencing outcomes, instead of finding excuses.