Hello!
This week's chapter in Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin is titled, "Someone's Watching- Accountability" When thinking about how you best keep your habits or work toward your goals, are you a public resolver or a private resolver? Can you keep your habits even if no one knows you are working on them, or do you need accountability from someone else? Do you prefer a friend or family member to be your accountability partner, or do you do better if you must answer to a professional?
For most things I can hold myself accountable. If I decide I want to do something, I am pretty good at motivating myself to follow through. But I have learned that I need some external accountability to maintain exercise habits. I will run short distances on my own, but I will rarely do a long run alone. Also, if I schedule a time to meet a friend to do a long run, I will not cancel, but if I planned on doing the long run alone, I can easily talk myself out of it if the weather is too cold, too hot, too rainy, etc. However, if I have the external accountability of an upcoming half or full marathon, I will do the long run even if my running partner cancels, because of the race looming in the future.
Food-related habits are easier for me too keep if a family member is doing the same thing. But as far as homemaking, homeschooling, personal projects, my own internal accountability is enough
What about you?
Do you need some external accountability to help you create or maintain a habit? Can you plan a way to do this?
Have a happy day with your habits!
My own need for accountability really depends. I find that I don't need it for food/healthy eating, and generally not for exercise. I don't need it for housekeeping. But I DO benefit from it for school!! I would call myself about 50% when it comes to school....I am pretty good with being accountable to myself, but not 100%, if that makes sense. So it's good to have a little external accountability for schoolwork, for me. Back in 2006 when I trained for a marathon, I was the opposite of you: my long run was the easy one to do. I LOVED that long run. But the shorter runs of 3-5 miles? I just couldn't seem to do them. I think that's so weird! I needed a short-run partner, but I didn't have one!
ReplyDeleteIn general, I think my own accountability tends to be sufficient, but I appreciate external help from time to time, especially for school.
I just had to tell you, Roan, that you were my inspiration earlier this week. Long story short: my father had spinal surgery last Friday in a city 2.5 hours away. On Thursday we drove down for the appointments, he had surgery Friday, and I stayed there in a hotel during the night and hospital during the day until he was released on Sunday. But he had a complication, so on Monday I called, got an 8am appointment for Tuesday morning, and we had to drive back down. Well, Monday night I was SO anxious because I just knew that I wasn't going to get enough sleep (I had to get up at 4am, and I was also waking frequently to check on him). Finally, you know what made me fall asleep? The memory of the fact that you drove 12 hours on NO SLEEP to run a 10K. I thought "wait! if she can drive that far on no sleep, I can drive 5 hours on 4 hours of sleep!" And then...I went to sleep. ;) And it was fine. Tuesday went well and the complication seems to be resolved. I drank a lot of coffee. And yesterday morning and this morning I slept in until 8:00! I'm catching up on the sleep. ;)
I love the sweet comment you left on my blog. I wanted so much to join in the book club - I really, really want to read this book. I think I am going to put it on my list for March and come back and read the posts as I go through it. I have heard so many good things about this author/book. I hope you have a beautiful day today. Sunshine
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