Welcome to Being Alive!

Welcome to my Monday Morning Message

I heard a phrase this week that stopped me in my tracks:

Accountability without Shame.

I am currently taking a marketing course, and one of the assignments is to fill out a daily tracker to notice my progress.

Sounds simple enough.....

And yet, some days I forget to fill it out or I don’t do the “homework” for the day. Sometimes I look at the blank boxes and immediately feel like a middle schooler who forgot to do her math homework.

My nervous system does not look at the tracker and say, “Oh good, useful information.”

It says, “Uh-oh. You are in trouble, Colette.”

Isn’t that wild?

Because the tracker is not there to shame me. It is there to help me see what is happening.

But somewhere along the way, many of us learned that being held accountable meant being criticized, embarrassed, or found lacking.

No wonder we avoid it.

But real accountability is not punishment.

Real accountability is quieter and much braver.

Accountability sounds more like " Oh, interesting...I missed something, and I can learn from it.” I see what happened. I am willing to take responsibility and begin again."

That is very different from shame. Shame says, “I’m bad.”

As humans, we are going to miss things. We are going to forget the tracker. Avoid the call. Delay the email. Welcome to being alive!

This week, notice where you may be confusing accountability with shame. You do not have to punish yourself in order to grow.

You can tell the truth, learn the lesson, make a new choice, and begin again.

That is where real change begins.

Have a wonderful week.

Colette