The city of San Francisco is a hilly maze of roads winding in every direction, including up, down, over, and under. It’s like being stuck in a giant Chutes and Ladders game board. Before GPS, you could wander around in there for hours without arriving at your destination, but with GPS, San Francisco is easy to navigate.
Accountability is our GPS in life, and without it we get nowhere fast
Let’s say you want to fly to Hawaii. Tools on the dashboard of the plane bring you comfort. They track your progress and communicate with ground control. If you’re off course by one degree, you’ll land in the middle of the ocean. None of us would get on a plane that didn’t have any dials.
We are all meant to get somewhere, probably within a certain time frame. Since we’re talking about healthcare, maybe we want to lose weight, get in shape, or improve a health marker. Unfortunately, the thing we often leave out of our plans is the plan to get there: accountability.
A food log is the most important part of an accountability system when approaching health with natural solutions. A food log provides loads of information that can be used to keep you doing what is working, change your course when something isn’t working, and help you connect dots that you weren’t able to see without tracking. And finally, a food log enables you to build on your progress from week to week as you continue to learn how to manage your health. In short, a food log can keep you from wandering around in the maze of natural healthcare.
Accountability is not criticism
Some of us think of accountability as punishment, or we may look at it as submitting to a fault-finding neighbor who criticizes the way we mow our lawn. Everything in us wants to hide from that kind of judgmental interaction.
Successful people love the accountability, though! It may seem like a mystery, but the truth is, they know a secret. Accountability is a law of nature — like gravity. Very few of us would say we don’t like gravity. We’re happy about not being flung off the planet, and we enjoy feeling the support of the earth underneath us.
People who love accountability understand that it’s a system of checks and dials that keep us moving forward. They love getting to their destinations, and they love the success they’ve become accustomed to.
Healthy versus unhealthy accountability
If you have negative experiences with an unhealthy accountability system in the past, you’ll want to avoid accountability, and you’ll find it hard to understand. You’ll see accountability as a toxic partnership, but the problem is, you’ll find it difficult to get traction in life.
If this is you, you might view a food log as just another way to be criticized. You’ll see your challenges as failures, and you will show up at appointments expecting negative consequences. Sadly, it will feel like a relief to give up on your goals, eventually, and you’ll go back to being comfortable wandering.
Healthy accountability requires trust. It’s important that we understand it, and that we seek out a supportive accountability system. We need to trust the information we’re working with and the people we’ve chosen for support. This is one reason we have regular workshops here at Natural Health Practices — so that you can meet us and learn about Nutrition Response Testing. We think you’ll be encouraged and want to dive in and get started.
Without accountability, our plans are incomplete
Lacking accountability, we might study nutrition and understand every biochemical function in the body but still not make good progress in our health goals. Why? Information alone won’t move us closer to our destination. It may be an important part of the map, but it can’t successfully navigate us through the landscape so that we reach our stated goal.
Information is like the addresses, latitude, longitude, and mileage that populate the map. It’s the data we use to make decisions but none of the planning and check-ins that keep us going and enable us to stay the course. Accountability completes the plan. It’s our route, our checkpoints, our rest stops, our calendar, and our clock all in one. It’s the system set in place that we can easily continue in. It is simply how we get anywhere successfully in life at all. If we’re not keeping track and checking progress, and nobody is looking, we tend to wander and get lost along the way.
We should be thinking, “I’m never leaving home without it!”
3 things necessary for turbo-charged accountability
There are three basic things that need to be present for accountability to work well.
- Clear expectations
- Agreed-upon checkpoints
- A clear finishing point
For accountability to be a positive and motivating force we should know where we’re headed, we need to understand the terms set for check-ins, and we need to know when we’ve arrived. At Natural Health Practices we support you in your health goals through regular appointments where we can talk about what is working and encourage you on your path.
Come join us for a workshop at Natural Health Practices to find out if our support system is right for you!