The Power of Accountability

A fun week again with a really good meeting with an international client where I ran two pilot workshops on Mental Resilience and Advanced Sales Techniques for their middle management group and the feedback to these has been very positive. On the back of the feedback we are now looking at four more pilot workshops for the staff on the next level down. This is very exciting as they have offices around the world and who knows what may happen.

I also had a good coaching session with a regular client and received outstanding feedback from a presentation I gave to around 20 directors from a taster session for a new Academy for Chief Executives group. I have noticed that the more I live the principles of Mental Resilience the more I believe in them and this comes across in the way I present. I am now following up the other 20 groups across the country to see if I can agree workshops dates with some of these.

The Isle of Man

The other positive news I received this week is the approval for a further 3 coaching sessions with my client in the Isle of Man. This is good news as we have made really good progress and I really enjoy flying across to coach – it is quite exciting and is great fun.

I spent a night away with my dear wife Julie in a lovely hotel to ensure that my work-life balance is healthy. We enjoyed time to relax and just being together. This is something I am very aware of as I build my business. We have been married for 11 weeks and it is important that we work on our marriage as well as the business. It is so easy for the business to take over and the communication within the marriage to suffer. We have a date night each week and we intend to keep that going.

The book nearing completion

The book is coming along well and I have about a week and a half to complete all the chapters and get it to my book coach to edit. This has been a very fast turnaround as I didn’t start writing the book until January this year and it will be in my coach’s hands within 7 months. It has fallen into place really well and my coach says that I have great content. It will be a self-help, easy read book on how to develop outstanding Mental Resilience.

This week’s tip is about goal setting and targets. I have a mentor who advises me on my business and he is the reason why I have already completed 13 chapters of my book with just 4 to go. The reason he is important is something which happened last December at a Christmas party we both attended. He came up to me and we had a chat about things and I mentioned my book.

He challenged me to accept a target he would set me regarding the book. He said that I needed something to inspire me to write as other things would get in the way and nothing would happen. So what he came up with was that I would have to send him at least 2,500 words by the first Monday in January and then fortnightly thereafter. We had a laugh about this and I remember clearly thinking that I could just laugh this off, but if I went ahead with it then it would help me write my book.

A heavy price to pay

So I accepted the challenge and the forfeit which was to pay £1,000 into a charity if I missed the deadline. We shook hands on this and my Christmas plans changed course as I started to research and write my first chapter ready for that first deadline. I have to admit many times during the past 6 months I have wished that I hadn’t agreed to that challenge because I would get to Sunday night without any words written, knowing that I would have to write the whole chapter in one day to avoid paying the fine.

One thing he added to the challenge was that the fine would go up every time by £250 so the current fine is £3,750. This is clearly quite a strong motivator and you will be pleased to know that I haven’t missed a single deadline even though it has been very close at times. If I hadn’t agreed to the challenge I know that I would only have about 4 chapters completed because it took extraordinary will power on some occasions to get those 2,500 words sent out in time.

We have a choice

I had a choice to accept this or not, but once I had I knew there was no pulling out no matter how much I wanted to. Now because of this I sit here with enough time to finish the final 4 chapters and check them over before sending the whole book to my coach. I have cleared my diary for the next couple of weeks to give me plenty of time and to ensure the book is well written.

Action for this week

1. Have a think about what challenges you have but have been putting it off
2. Make a list of these then choose the most important one
3. Think if you have anyone in your life who can help you with accountability
4. If you don’t have anyone in your close circle find someone else – it could be someone you know in social or business circles
5. Agree a fine you will pay if you don’t complete the action by the required date – it doesn’t have to be money
6. Then simply observe how much more you get done with this target in place

Until next week have a great weekend and stay positive

Warm regards

John