Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. If your boss mentions to you that he or she wants to have a meeting about accountability, how does that make you feel? Anxiety ridden? Fearful about what maybe you did or didn't do wrong? Worry? Nerves? Accountability, in my opinion, is the single most important characteristic required for success, but it so often brings about these negative feelings and emotions. So in today's episode, I wanna talk to you about the sticky floor of accountability and how we should stop holding ourselves accountable and start holding ourselves capable. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, and I'm here to help you bust through the glass ceiling by breaking free from those sticky floors, also known as limiting beliefs like imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and today, accountability. So what is it about accountability that just makes you feel icky and makes your heart rate go up and our mind race about what we failed to do or missed? It's because it's always associated with a consequence. Right? We wanna hold somebody accountable for a failed project, a missed deadline, a gap in revenue. Holding someone accountable is what we hear on the news when a crime has been committed. And the Oxford Dictionary actually defines it as, quote, required or expected to justify actions or decisions. Responsible. So that definition alone puts me on the defensive. I have to justify my actions? I am a grown ass woman. That definition is riddled with blame. It's riddled with consequences that I'm gonna have to pay for and negative connotations. So riddle me this. If being accountable is the single most important characteristic required for success, how can it be riddled with blame and consequences? What if we flip the script? What if instead of holding ourselves accountable, we hold ourselves capable. Capable of hitting milestones, of completing goals, capable of completing daily actions, also known as habits, necessary to be successful. I once saw a clip of Michelle Obama on Facebook that showed her saying, if you wanna be an honest person, be an honest person. And the same goes for accountability. If you wanna be an accountable person, be an accountable person. It is that simple, and it's also as hard as that. Simple because you just need to be accountable. And what I mean by that is if you wanna be a fit and healthy person, you need to be accountable to yourself to do the things that a fit and healthy person would do. You make movement and exercise a part of your daily routine. You swap out fatty foods for leaner proteins, and you eat more leafy greens. The concept itself is not challenging, but those daily actions by themselves, they are. Because delayed gratification is tough. Being a fit person requires that you put the work in every day to become a fit person down the road. It requires you to be uncomfortable. It requires you to sweat, put forth effort. But eating that piece of chocolate cake, that cake that gives you that instant immediate dopamine hit, triggering the pleasure center of the brain and, bam, you are rewarded. So no wonder being accountable is tough. But you, girl, you are capable. And you can hold yourself to the high standards that it takes to be a successful person because that's what we do on this podcast. We set our goals, we line them up, and we take the action that we need to take to hit milestones. We hold ourselves capable of completing each one of those actions and each one of those milestones. Being capable means that you're able to take ownership of the actions that you do or don't take and the decisions that you make. And you then deal with the consequences, good or bad. Just like accountability, the word consequence has that negative connotation and that icky feeling associated with it. You always hear, well, we'll deal with the consequence of that later, as if it's a bad thing. But the definition of consequence in that Oxford dictionary, the same one that I looked up accountability, the definition of consequence is the effect of an action or condition. So a consequence could be good or bad. Right? A consequence of being someone who saves money is that you have money in the bank. A consequence of being someone that chooses the salad over the pizza is that you're immediately feeling physically better. The consequence of going to bed early is getting a good night's sleep. As a leader, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and then we have to hold ourselves capable of hitting those standards. We should never be lowering our standards, not for a relationship, not for our team members, and certainly not for ourselves. If you wanna be successful, uber successful, you have to hold yourself capable. You have to learn what works and doesn't work. You have to make intentional and clear connections between how your success helps you move forward to your goals in life. You and only you are responsible for your successes and your failures. The moment that we stop blaming others or blaming external conditions is the moment that we truly take charge of our destiny and our successes. Now I'm not going to go into the different ways that you could hold yourself capable of goals today. You have to do what works for you. Some people create checklists where they can mark off what's necessary to do as they go. Others like to work backwards and break down big goals into smaller bite sized chunks. I'm sure you've heard of an accountability partner. You know, the person that keeps you in check. But at the end of the day, you need to figure out a system that works best for you. And for each goal, each dream, and each desire that you have, you need to put it into place. You have to put off that instant gratification for long term results. No one's gonna know today if you skip the gym. But if you skip it every single day for a month, it's likely going to show. And as we wind down 2022 and we map out our goals for 2023, if you're like me, you've already started thinking about what that's gonna look like. Think about the best ways to hold yourself capable of achieving each and every one of those goals. Hold yourself capable for being the type of person that you want to be in 2023. The process starts with you in your gut with those dreams, those desires, and the hopes that you have for the future. Girl, you are the author of your own successes. If you enjoyed this episode on accountability and capability and you are looking to grow your LinkedIn network in 2023, I highly encourage you to snag my ebook. In this ebook, I give you the tips, the tricks, and even the templates to 10 x your LinkedIn network with people who will impact your growth. You can snag this by clicking the link in the show notes.