It is an interesting question.

“What is my accountability for not living my life on purpose?”

Mary Davis, one of the facilitators of Choices Seminars asked it at a Choices Renewal session I attended yesterday afternoon.

“What is your accountability?”

Once you take away the excuses, your ‘buts’, your reasons why not, and are left with only the bare fact that whatever you just did or said did not take you closer to the more of what you want in your life, are you willing to get accountable?

Even answering that question takes a willingness to be 100% accountable. And for many of us, that’s a challenge.

It is so easy to blame others. To put the circumstances of our life today on another by laying blame at the feet of someone else like a supplicant laying a sacrificial lamb on the altar, praying for good fortune.

We don’t have to get accountable if we keep blaming another for our ill-fortune. We don’t have to take accountability for our mistakes if it’s never our fault.

And we definitely don’t have to be accountable with our words if we don’t hold our own voice as the perpetrator of the words that caused someone else pain.

Well it’s not my fault, you say. If they hadn’t said or done whatever they said or did, I wouldn’t be so angry.

One nice thing about not being accountable, you don’t have to change or do anything other than what you’ve always done to get to where you are today.

Yesterday, I got accountable.

One of the ‘Aha’ moments I had yesterday is that I am a ‘secret keeper’. No matter what is going on in my day, when I am distressed or chewing on an event and trying to think my way through it, I do not share what’s bothering me with my husband. I keep it secret.

Inevitably, the pressure inside will become so great it needs to be relieved.

And that’s when it will come out, misdirected.

He’ll do something I deem ‘fight-worthy’ and I’ll blow it up out of proportion.

This is my accountability factor.

I struggle to trust others. It has been a life-long journey for me to learn to trust, knowing I’ll be okay no matter what truth-telling I engage in.

Secrets for me are like lies. I’ll say, “I’m great,” when really, the secret is, I’m struggling.

I’ll smile, to keep secret the fact, tears are drowning my heart or that whatever you just did or said was not okay with me.

And I’ll laugh, when the secret is, I want to tell the truth about how I’m feeling but don’t trust enough to get real.

Over the course of my adulthood I have come a long way in ‘getting real’, but I still struggle to tell the truth about how I’m feeling inside about what is going on outside in my world.

My struggle does not serve me well.

Sure, keeping things tight inside means I don’t have to stretch beyond my comfort zone and ‘get real’. And that can feel like a relief when stretching causes the muscles of my heart to ache with fear at telling the truth of what’s going on for me!

But the relief is usually only momentary. And then the pressure builds again. Which means, I will inevitably want to find a way to blow things up when under pressure.

As I told my beloved last night after apologizing for my habit of keeping things secret, I commit to sharing instead of scaring you because I’m too scared to talk about what’s really going on.

In that way, I create more of what works in my life, more of what creates the kind of relationship/marriage that feeds my soul and holds me safe, loved, cherished.

What’s your accountability factor? Are you willing to live your life without blaming others for what’s going on?

Are you willing to get 100% accountable for, and in, your life?