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Almost at any time, changing the direction of your life—especially if it’s likely to have enormous impact—can go one of two ways. First, it can completely frustrate your progress. Or second, you can work to find ways to emerge on the other end a transformed person. On both occasions, of course, the process is never easy to go through.

In the last two weeks, via a three-part series, we uncovered and shared ways to stay accountable to your goals and demonstrate accountability to yourself and the people around you. This final piece ties up the conversation by discussing how to handle the transformations in your life while taking accountability as a way to navigate through those uncertain times and stages of transition.

Handling uncertainty: how do I successfully turn around my life’s direction while facing overwhelming insecurity?

To survive in times of transformation requires that we work towards finding a new focus. Change, no matter how big or small, can be equally unnerving. Another difficulty is facing the cold fact that endings (and the shifts that follow them) require you to let go of what has become familiar and comfortable.

Feeling set back: changing your path or strategy doesn’t mean you are a failure.

In this case, a balanced perspective is important, as it is possible to view your whole world from the keyhole of your recent ‘failure’. And this type of thinking can devalue prior achievements and the progress you’ve made. Managing change is a mental game, and it also provides an opportunity to look inward and create room for reinvention.

It’s also important to acknowledge your emotions at any point of the transition you’re experiencing. To let go of the past, and the underlying expectations you had of yourself, and the subsequent disappointment in having to take a detour, for example. Without familiarity, it’s fairly easy to get our confidence knocked down as we test our feet within a new reality.

Taking accountability: this is how you bounce back.

To begin rebuilding and gaining a stronger personal understanding, assuming responsibility is an important ingredient in the process. This means having honest conversations with yourself about the ways you might have contributed to your current reality. This approach provides a big shift in perspective, personal development lessons, and encourages empowering discoveries.

The stages of transition: how change and transition differ.

“Change is the external event or situation that takes place; change can happen very quickly,” once wrote William Bridges, a change management consultant. His research into dealing with change clarified the difference between the two concepts.

“Transition is the inner psychological process that people go through as they internalize and come to terms with the new situation that the change brings about. The starting point for dealing with transition is not the outcome but the endings that people have in leaving the old situation behind.”

To expand on the stages that shed insight into understanding transitions, the Bridges Transition Model outlines the process in three stages:

Endings

A period of change starts with another phase coming to an end or taking a different direction. This step mainly involves recognising what will change and how to manage that change. This might include your relationships, the routines and habits you have developed over time that might need reworking for you to grow further.

Neutral Zone

The second step comes after letting go of what has been until now. This is the stage where important mental shifts happen. This is the stage between a former reality and the preparation to enter a new one.

It’s the time when you’re likely to create new approaches and fully come to terms with the changes moving forward. The neutral zone is the launchpad for new beginnings.

New Beginnings

Initiating yourself into a new reality involves adopting a fresh perspective—perhaps a change in deeply held values. And a well-managed transition will allow you to begin the next chapter of your life with a deeper understanding of your goals.

Conclusion

“Don’t panic when the new business model isn’t as ‘clean’ as the old one,” Seth Godin once cautioned the music business against wishing that the new digital reality was as good as the old one, right from the start. The same is true for dealing with change on a personal level.

In the previous post, we unpacked what it means to remain accountable to your goals. Beyond that, it equally important that we learn to become accountable to ourselves and those around us. By definition, accountability is the ability to reliably deliver on commitments and showing others that you can be trusted to do what you said that you will do.

Accountable to yourself

Self-accountability on the other hand means that you are responsible for your choices and actions. You are the first and last line of defense for your integrity. Self-discipline is your primary method for improving your life, pursuing good things because you desire them. You have set your course and are committed to success.

 The following are ways to remain accountable to yourself:

• Write everything down

This might seem like a simple task but it can be extremely instrumental in helping to remain accountable to yourself. Write all your goals and tasks – short term and long term. A trick that can help is writing your to-do-list on a sticky note and placing it all over your laptop, room wherever is most visible and then throwing them away as you complete your to-do items. It will be extra tough resisting the will to complete a task if they stare at you in the face.

• Identify your personal mission statement

Similarly to how businesses have mission statements, you also need to have your own mission statement. This comprises of your purpose. It simply needs to define you as a person and define what you are working towards every day. A simple example of a mission statement could be, “Live life to the fullest, stay focused and leave a legacy for women in sport”. Recite it every morning until you fully identify with it, once it ignites passion and fire in you then you know that you’ve found your mission in life. The constant reminder is also another way to enforce the commitment to living your life in a manner that upholds your personal mission statement.

• Create micro-goals

Identify smaller goals that you can begin with, and commit to achieving each one at a time. This keeps you more accountable in terms of the overall success of the goal. Experts argue that taking action every day that brings you one step closer to achieving your goal is one of the best methods out there. This incremental approach is favourable because it is more sustainable in terms of morale unlike setting only macro goals that might not always be achievable in a realistic timeframe.

• Learn to reward your accomplishments and milestones

This step might come as a surprise to most of you but contrary to popular relief, attaching rewards to goals can be one of the most exciting components of accountability. Knowing that you once you accomplish a certain goal, there is a reward on the other end that has high chances of making the task of completing that goal more enticing.

• Evaluate your performance

Being accountable to yourself means being brutally honest with yourself. This requires constant reviewing of how well you were able to apply your accountability skills because, at the end of the day, it is you that is responsible for your goals. If you want to remain accountable, keep yourself in check so that you can find other strategies and alternative paths if your performance is not up to par.

Accountable to others

Accountability also means that you might be called on to explain yourself to others. No one can live entirely disconnected from other people. You have various relationships with others like parents, friends, neighbors, teachers, bursaries and scholarships, co-workers and teammates. So, in addition to self-accountability, being accountable also means you are willing and able to give an honest account of your conduct to those who ask you.

Let’s be honest, being objective about your conduct can be hard, therefore being accountable to others can help you become aware of your blind spots and challenge you to get out of your old routine.

Additionally, being accountable to others does not mean you demean yourself or think you are a failure. Accountability is a positive thing when you desire to improve your life. These are the benefits of being accountable to others:

1. It increases your commitment to completing the goal.
2. You are able to share the success of your celebration.
3. Promotes clarity in stating your goals and action plan.
4. Reporting of success and setbacks along the way can help you focus on solutions to keep you moving.
5. Provide valid explanations for the choices and actions you have made and ask for their perspective and advice when you are not sure what to do next.

Self-accountability can help you push forward toward significant and lasting improvement in your life. And being honest with accountability to others can increase your motivation and likelihood to succeed. Hold yourself accountable for your choices and actions, and be accountable to others so that you can live your life well!