Picture By Nick J Webb

What does it mean to have personal accountability?  Personal accountability means that it is never “them,” or “they,” or “you.”  Contrary to common “team based” approaches, it is also never “we.” Personal accountability is simply, “ME,” “MY,” or “I.”  If we use one of these words, it spurs us toward action instead of complacency, blame, or procrastination.  The questions quickly go from, “why won’t they stop doing that?”  To “how can I help with that.”  ”What is my role in this problem?”  Our world consistently tells us that everything is someone else’s fault.  Our bipartisan world is quick to point fingers at the other party or the 1%.  The truth is we must stop pointing fingers at other people and being pointing at ourselves.  Things will never improve, things will never be where we want them to be until we begin to focus on what we can do, and at the end of the day the only thing we can truly control is what we do.

How do you approach conflict?  Is it an opportunity to learn? Or do you simply want to win or be heard?

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Perspective, we lose it, we gain it, we shift it.  Our perspective is constantly changing.  The way we saw things as a child, are not the way we see them now.  The Dukes of Hazard was the best show on television, it was life changing, awe inspiring, and from a very early age, I refused to miss a single episode.  My parents love to tell the story of me throwing a tantrum around the age of 3 or 4 because I was going to miss the Friday night episode of “The Dukes.” A strange thing happened about 10 years ago, they began replaying old episodes of the Dukes of Hazard.  I sat down to watch the show that shaped my childhood memories, only to find that other than the theme song (still a classic), the show was not as good as it used to be.

Let’s be clear, the show had not changed.  George Lucas did not get a hold of the Dukes of Hazard and digitally enhance the General Lee. I, on the other hand, had changed. I had grown up, the world around me had changed, and my perspective on the Greatest Show of All Time had changed.

Oftentimes our perspective changes as we change.  There will be times when our world begins to crumble around us and we begin to experience the deepest lows; or you feel on top of the world and that things can never get any better.  In those moments, when you are looking back years, months, days or even hours later, you may come to the realization of just how minute your perspective had been.

There will be highs, there will be lows and the difference between the two is often just a matter of perspective.

HOPE…so elusive…here one moment gone the next…but ask yourself, was it ever really gone in the first place?  What is the source of your hope?  Where does it go when you have “lost hope?”  When you think you have lost all hope, sometimes we look to others to give us hope…but do they really give us hope?  Or do they remind us of the hope we have simply forgotten?

The question then becomes, Who are you at your core? Where do you place your emphasis? Time? Money? It’s not too late. Begin today by doing a little bit of a taste test—are you who you want to be? Are you where you want to be? If you aren’t satisfied with your answers to those questions, then maybe you are starting to rot.

All too often we put off for tomorrow what we could do today, and many times our best intentions or resolutions fail because we do not fully embrace the moments and the opportunities that we have every day.  MyFutureMyTimeNow is intended for us to begin to take personal ownership of our future by driving, pushing, striving, towards our purpose every single day!