RADICAL PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY

RADICAL PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY

This can be a triggering topic and there is much room for misinterpretation. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it – quite the contrary, it becomes more important than ever. 

In a society where individual or group errors and failings become more publicised and accessible, making people more vulnerable to the digital witch hunt, we can fall for the lure of assuming a public show of virtuosity over authenticity. This can also lead us to turn a blind eye towards taking emotional responsibility in our own lives and in our own relationships in favour of protecting our constructed sense of self and pointing at another in blame.

But blame keeps us stuck in a hamster wheel.

Society simply cannot evolve until we each individually take personal accountability for how we show up in our own lives.

So, to be clear, radical personal accountability is:

• Full authentic ownership of how we participate in the current dynamics in our own lives. What is it that we are doing, or not doing, that is keeping the wheels turning on what we are experiencing? What is our part in our own unhappiness? 
• It is full acceptance of how you have shown up in your life in the past, with compassion, without beating yourself up, and an awareness of how you will fully show up in your relational dynamics in the present and in the future.

What radical personal accountability is not:

• Self-blame or guilt. 
• Radical personal accountability is not another stick to beat yourself with as you reflect on all the times in which you made mistakes, or let yourself or others down. 
• It is not a denial of your past self and it is not suggesting you have any iota of a part to play in physical victimisation. You certainly do not.

Taking radical personal accountability does not mean we absolve perpetrators of their deeds. It means we begin to shift our focus away from how we don’t have power

TO HOW WE DO.