S1 E7: The Super Wise Accountability Episode

In today's episode, we discuss how being accountable is like having good credit--it will get you into almost any door. 

...and how, on the flip side, if you lack accountability then you have to work much harder to accomplish anything.

Transcript

What's up, good people? Welcome back to the Speak Space. It's your favorite spiritual sister, the super wise intelligent, here to bring you some super good conversation. Welcome back. Welcome back. I would like to thank Skillshare for sponsoring today's episode. Y'all, Skillshare hasn't sponsored today's episode. I'm just in manifestation mode. I'm I've been in this energy lately. I am calling into this Speak Space all of the types of sponsorships that we need to hit the plateau that we would like to hit and get to a steady state. So you guys just bear with me and let me claim my Skill shares. Let me claim my T moose. Let me claim my what is that Amazon thing? The Amazon Book one audible. Let me claim all of that. Okay? Y'all, just hang tight with your girl until it actually happens, and you will see that it will actually happen. Why? Because I have the audacity to put it out into the universe and call it back into me. Just like I have the audacity to call whatever it is that you are standing in the need of into you. Okay? So with that said, I do want to, as always, thank our contributors and our supporters of the superwise Speak Space. I appreciate all that you do. I am very thankful for you. Thank you, thank you and thank you. All right, y'all, so let's get into it. Today's episode will be about accountability and how being accountable and how having a lack of accountability positively and negatively impacts our day to day lives. And it's so funny because when I was writing the episode notes, which I probably won't follow, I likened accountability to having good credit, right? So if you have accountability, if you and accountability have a healthy relationship, the experiences that you will have in life will be just like the experiences you have when you have good and excellent credit. For the most part, all of the doors are open unto you and you will have your free reign and domain over everything. On the flip side of that, though, if you don't have a healthy relationship with accountability, then just like having bad credit, you'll have to work extra hard to get just as much as people who do have a relationship, a good relationship with accountability. And getting to that point in your life where you're catching up because you'll always be playing catch up will probably be a lot more expensive for you than it would be for anybody else. But let's get into that. Let's dig into why those things differ so much. All right? So let's start talking about the good relationship with accountability. There's so much trust and honor and respect in having accountability. I liken liking it also to having good character. It's all a part of the same piece of pie. You feel me? You feel me sounding a lot like myself. But honestly, accountability, having a healthy relationship with accountability, being accountable makes you so trustworthy. And when folks can have confidence in your ability to come through, when folks can actually put value to your word, people tend to want to a be in your presence genuinely more. And you find yourself in the midst of better opportunities, higher quality opportunities, because people know that you can come through for them. And most importantly, you know that you can come through for yourself. It just makes life so much easier. And I think about sometimes how hard it is to be held accountable in the society that we live in. Because perfection is preached. Body. How do they call it when people get all that plastic surgery, all of this? Stuff for women, for men alike. This society, the society that we live in, really doesn't promote healthy relationships with accountability and responsibility when it comes to owning the things you do, owning the things you say and owning the things you don't do and don't say. I think it makes it really easy for people to just have an expectation that how they are, where they are should be respected as all they can give. And that's some bullshit. We all know we can do better some kind of way, right? And that's so funny because that sounds counterintuitive to what I was just saying about how society pushes and preaches perfectionism. But There is a Difference in Having Good Character and Striving to have Good Character vice having the best Car or the most labels when it Comes to Clothing or having the Most liked posts on IG or I know. I don't feel. I know that social media has definitely skewed what accountability actually looks like, and let's use Facebook as a primary example of that. I remember years and years ago there was this lady who I knew in the DC area because I lived in the DC area still but I've been there for a while. But anyway, there's this lady who I knew and her car had broken down on the BW parkway and she put the post out there. She made a call to someone, I think she had exhausted all of her options and that's why she made the post on Facebook saying hey you guys, if anybody sees this can somebody send a person to help me? I'm at blah blah blah place, my car is broken down and I just need someone to give me a ride home, right? So I remember racking my brain trying to figure out who I knew, who knew somebody in that area who could help her out, right? So before I responded to the post, before I hit that like button or the love button or commented anything, I genuinely thought about who I could send to give her assistance, right? And I'm telling you all, I noticed a post maybe two minutes after she posted it. And by the fifth minute she had over 100 comments and likes and hearts and prayer hands and people saying oh I'm praying for you but that's it. Nobody said they were sending anyone. Nobody said they knew someone who could absolutely help her. You know what they did? They acknowledged her cry for help by saying oh I'm a pray for you and let it be that. And even she got a little pissed off and she was like I am grateful that you all want to pray for me but more than your prayer right now I need somebody to get me off the side of the road. And folks got upset with her because she called them out on their inaction. Because people really think that clicking a like making a comment saying you gonna pray for somebody or discussing a situation on social media is enough and it's not. You have to be accountable within yourself to know that you must follow up your words with action. And see this is for lack of better terms right now because I can't think of anything else right now but this is what definitely separates the wheat from the shaft. It really is. Because we live in a society right now where it's so easy to talk about what you going do and it's so much harder to actually follow up with or follow up on or follow through on the things that you say. And the crazy, crazy part is historically people have had to fight much harder with much fewer resources. We have so many resources at our disposal, but it feels like people actually making a concerted effort to inflict some form of positive change into a situation is hard. And I and I'm really leery of social media sometimes and how much I interact, because the last thing I want to do is get comfortable in my position as a person who has a luxury of access to these things and misuse it or take it for granted or put me in a position where that is enough. People get lazy really quickly because they let other people fight their battles and then they get upset and want to complain when the things that directly impact them don't necessarily change in the way that they would like to see. I always tell people you have to be a leader of yourself firstly and it takes being accountable to yourself to do those things. For instance, if you have a goal, it is your responsibility to take the necessary steps you need to achieve that goal. And then if you fall off the horse, or if you find that you're not in alignment on that journey, you have to hold yourself accountable and call yourself out on your bullshit. And it's not going to be fun. Accountability is probably one of the least fun things you have to do in this life besides paying taxes, you know what I'm saying? You have to hold yourself accountable, be your own accountability partner to make sure that you stay on path. You have to do it for yourself. Nobody else will, and nobody else should have to. Now, in my own life, I am very grateful to my mom who, regardless of how I feel up until recently and we'll talk about that later, has held me accountable in her own way. Right. I had so much so that I had to stop her. And I was like, you need to consider my mental health, because with the things that I had going on, it was just so overwhelming. I had to say stop. Okay, I get it, but you need to chill. There's a time and a place for you to share certain things with me. And in order for me to manage everything that I have to manage, we don't have to space this out a little bit. But all in all, I am very grateful to say that I have a parent or a person in my village or in my friend circle who I can count on to tell me what needs to be said regardless of how I feel about it. Now, she was kind enough to honor my request, but I was accountable enough to myself and maintaining my sense of sanity to say to her what I needed. And that's a good segue into the next point that I would like to make about accountability. You have to be accountable for yourself enough to be your own advocate. If there is a thing that you need, you have to be accountable and audacious in your accountability to put your needs into the atmosphere so that they can get met. Not only can you say something like, I need a car, I need a house. Whatever it is you need, you be specific about it. I need an SUV because I have a business that requires me to transfer objects. I need a house and not an apartment because I have kids or I have a business that I'm running out of it. You have to be very specific about the things you want, and then you also have to be accountable to yourself for making those things happen. Nobody on the face of this earth outside of yourself owes you that much respect. Right. And there's so much respect tied into accountability. Which for me is why when people project their lack of accountability onto me, I get very offended. Because within the space of what I can control and within the space of my capacity, I try to hold myself accountable for many things. Which is why I am so aversely affected when something isn't going right. And when there's something that I know I need to do, I am triply impacted by it because I probably never want to be in certain types of situations anyway. If the world were perfect, I wouldn't have certain things to worry about. Right. Because I try really hard to put myself into position where there are certain things that I don't have to worry about. I've made so many sacrifices in my life, with my career, with the locations where I live, so that I don't have to be forced to make certain types of decisions when it comes to my life. And this is the thing, I know for myself that I need to make these types of decisions. So I do. What's so hilarious in the saddest way possible to me is that there are people around me who only see the outcome of what being accountable has done for me and it offends them. Not because it's disrespectful, not because it is actually offensive, but because they didn't have the audacity in holding themselves accountable for whatever it is that they wanted to do. So they look at me and people like me and get upset when our accountability opens doors for us like the good credit that it is. Having a healthy relationship with accountability is some good ass karma because you do the work, you plant the seeds, you sow the seeds, you reap the rewards. That's how it works. That's the system. If you want to know, the key to somebody's success besides discipline is accountability. And there is absolute accountability and discipline and there is discipline and accountability. They work hand in hand. Those are two things that people just really want to run from. And the other thing, when it comes to having good accountability, is not having to worry about consequence other than good outcomes. When we get into the second segment of this podcast, we're going to talk about the consequences of having lackluster accountability and what that does to your life. And to close out the first segment of this podcast, I really want to remind people of just how much of their own responsibility it is to be held accountable to themselves. Firstly, because you can't really go out into the world and fool people and maybe you can, but you can't wear a mask but for so long. And when it starts to slip, don't get upset when you get called on it because people who have held themselves in high regard, people who hold themselves accountable, will not want to put up with bullshit from people who are too afraid to do the same. You all need to understand out there that it takes a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice, a lot of hard times to get that formula right when it comes to accountability. But when that good karma starts to kick in from the decisions that you made, those good decisions that you made, you can't help but to be out here shining. And yes, there will be people who don't understand how you amassed everything that you have amassed. And sometimes it's so overwhelming to have to even try to explain that to folks. But that's all it really is. You were disciplined enough to be accountable enough to yourself to make better decisions. Nobody said that you did not learn hard ass lessons along the way because I guarantee you, you will, but you just had the willpower enough to say, okay, I'm learning and I hold myself accountable to me to make better decisions because I know where I would like to be in this lifetime. And sometimes it's that simple. It is literally as simple as absolutely learning the lesson and then being accountable enough to yourself and to everybody else around you to apply the lessons you learned to help you to further you along your journey in this life so you can achieve whatever your life's purpose may be. So, yeah, let's take a little break and when we come back, we'll get into the not so savory side of accountability with examples and all right, I'll see you on the other side of this break. All right, welcome back. Welcome back, y'all. We're continuing the conversation about accountability in this segment. We're going to dedicate some time to the bad karma of having a dysfunctional relationship with accountability, right? Just like I mentioned in the previous segment where we talked about how good accountability is akin to good credit. Well, on the same hand but the flip side, a dysfunctional relationship with accountability is like having bad credit and it just messes up everything you touch. It's going to appear as though you lack character. You lack good character, right? It's going to appear as though you are not trustworthy. It's going to appear as though you cannot be dependent upon to do things, and it's going to appear as though you are just an unhealed traumatized person all from not being held accountable to yourself, right? Because this is the thing. If you do not hold yourself accountable, what else are you doing? Like you got to be lying to yourself. If you are functioning every day as though you have made the decisions that you know you need to make to put yourself in a position that you know you need to be in to get the things that you know you need to have. Now, granted, there are some people who exist on the face of this earth and are okay with just getting by. But to those types of people, I say, get your ass out the way of people who are actually putting in the work and putting forth the effort to do the things that they need to do to get the things that they're going to get, because it's not a guarantee that you're going to be as successful. Right. There's a lot of honesty and there's a lot of truth and accountability. And what I find is because we've all dealt with people who just lack accountability, jesus, we have all dealt with people who run from being held accountable. And I mean these. Some rock throwing ass people who destroy buildings. And as soon as you look at them sideways, they'd be ready to cry. And they will give you every excuse in the book as to why it wasn't them. Or they'll talk circles around it, never admitting to their role in the destruction of the building in the first place. They will even admit that the building is destroyed. And you're looking at them like, we saw you throw them rocks and they'd be like, yeah man, that building is messed up, man. That building was standing there and then the next thing it wasn't standing there. It's all in rubble, all the glass is all sharded on the ground everywhere, man. Now somebody got to clean it up. Yeah, but how did that happen in the first place? You just admitted that the building wasn't like that and then it was what happened in between. And it's so crazy because we deal with people like that every single day. And it's crazy making because sometimes you see the capability in these people, you see the potential in these people and it's like if you would only just accept your role in the fuckery that is your life, you have the potential to turn that thing around. But for whatever reason, with these kinds of folks, they just don't want to see it. And this is how I know that there is so much trauma rooted in people who lack the the ability to be held accountable for things. I say to people all of the time, it is your responsibility to facilitate your own healing because nobody has to like you, nobody has to love you, nobody has to help you. It's so strange, but it's such a normal way of living for so many people. And it doesn't bother me because it doesn't impact me per se, but it frustrates me because many of the people who operate in this way are the same people who would exclaim that they do not understand how other folks are so lucky. They love to use the word luck. There is no such thing. There is hard work, there is preparedness, there is dedication, there is responsibility and there is accountability. It's as though something is fundamentally missing from people like that. And I'm trying to figure it out. I'm like, were you coddled when you were little or is it more of the narcissistic bent where you don't give a damn if you had something to do with the situation or not, you're not about to take accountability for it. People be damned. And to speak about narcissists in this way specifically because there's so many different types of that personality disorder. But with regard to accountability and narcissism. I find that with folks who suffer from this personality disorder, it isn't that they don't know that they are suffering direct consequences for their decisions, it's just that they don't want to be held accountable for the stigma associated with not being either perfect or not being the center of attention or just not. They don't want to suffer the consequence of lack when it benefits them, but they don't want to do the work to absolutely deserve and earn the things that they seek to get. And when you are accountable and you've done the work that is required of you to manifest all of your blessings, right? It is such an offense when a person comes into the space of you and gives the bare minimum, however, in whatever situation gives the bare minimum, if that, and then gets upset with you when you say you're not given enough, I need more, and then you walk away. I've had friendships that I just cut off because the people in the role of friend at the time thought that I was going to carry the burden of their needing to heal. And in those moments, because these are friends that I had had for years. But the friendship just kept getting more and more toxic, and the dislike for me from them toward me just kept getting stronger and stronger because my dedication to account, my accountability, my dedication to getting to where I needed to be in this life just got stronger. The older I got and the more I learned, it just grew because I value my accountability, I know what that means for my life. I want to have good accountability karma, I want to have a credibility, I want to have good accountability karma, I want to have good accountability, credit. I want the doors to open for me. And people got upset. These people who were my friends were upset when the doors actually started to open for me, when the manifestations that I had put so much intention on actually started to come to fruition. Those same people were not happy for me when I had been happy for them. I had to be accountable to myself in that moment to say I value my peace over trying to keep the peace with them, especially when it was one sided. So I cut them off and I haven't looked back to this. There are moments when I'll check my email and one of them will try to say something and I'm just like and it's so funny because I block them and I'm like, did you just create another email account and try to reach out to me all these years later? No ma'am. No sir. Now, I will say this about myself. I am for those of you who study the science of astrology and for those of you who don't get into it, I'll say that get into it. I am a SAGITTARIUS sun, a Cancer moon, and a Taurus rising, dim some placements for your ass. I am the most grounded, free spirited, loving person you would ever want to meet. And I don't mind giving love to people, but as soon as I see that a it's not reciprocated, or b that the person is not accountable enough, trustworthy enough for me to continue to pour into them, I pull all the way back. Because more than I am accountable to them, I am accountable to myself. I am responsible for myself. In the way I distribute, any of my talents, any of my skills, any of my time and energy. I know what my capacity is. And let me tell you something about relationships, ladies and men. And we're talking about romantic relationships right here, right now, right quick. We're going to talk about that right quick. It is your responsibility to walk away when everything points to needing to walk away. And as simple as that sounds in many situations, it is the hardest thing at that moment that you will think you ever have to do, especially if you love this person. But let me tell you something. There ain't enough love on the face of this earth that would validate you needing to stay in a situation where you are not gaining anything that will elevate you. You should never have to pour more than you receive. You should never have to pour more to keep a person present. If there is not a desire to have balance, if the person who are you who you seek to have relationship with does not understand accountability, especially if they run from it, then that tells you right there what you need to do. And it's not staying because some of y'all be trying to convince yourself that you got to stay. It's not staying. It's the opposite of that. You have to leave. If you are accountable to yourself and if you know that you have places to go on this journey with this one life that you have, leave it's okay. Because you know what your accountability will do. It will open up every door for you that will lead you into the situation that you need to be present in in the first place. And don't worry about what happens to the other person. Let them figure that out for themselves. And people do. See, this is the thing about being accountable. You don't ever have to worry about a person trying to leave you. Because I find that people who skirt accountability, who run the greatest fear that they have is being left alone, which is crazy. They subconsciously fear being left on so many levels that they pretend. And I'm like if you want folks to stay around, if you want money to stay in your hand, if you want to attract abundance, if you want to attract true love, if you want to attract professional success, you have to have that good karmic relationship with accountability. That's the only way you can grow because if you don't, you stay stagnant. And yes, people who are worth their weight in flesh will leave your happy ass alone. Leave your unhappy ass alone. How about that? The last thing you want to do is have a power struggle with a person who don't even trust themselves in the decisions they make. A person who can't even hold themselves accountable because they're too afraid. Don't get caught up in no shit like that. You want to have good karmic credit when it comes to accountability. If you are on the negative balance having side of that, if your accountability credit is less than 400, you probably want to try to do something about that because you won't be able to get a line of credit in that people won't trust you. You will never have a genuine relationship. And see if you do. You'll have to be with somebody who is just as unaccountable as you are because there is no way in hell that a person who loves themselves enough to be accountable to themselves will allow you to be anything less than the best version of yourself that you need to be. Because if you're not that at your own personal level, there is no way in hell that you can positively invest in anyone else. And don't mess around and find somebody like me, because I've been and called you out on it. And I have been in situations where I've had to call people out. And this is how you know who folks are, right? You see them do dumb shit consistently. Now the way I work is I'm going to give you a chance and we're going to have a conversation. I am going to open the door and invite you to have a conversation about the things that I see happening with you. Let me know if what I see is what is I don't know what's going on with you all the time, right? So I invite you to give me context. Whenever you decline to take up a person, when they give you the invitation to make this situation clear. First of all, that shows a lack of self respect for for that person and it shows a lack of accountability. Secondly, but most importantly, it shows you the person who has good sense, first of all, the person who has good communication skills and the person who takes pride in being accountable. It is flags one through 100 for you that this is probably not where you're trying to be. And I'm speaking from experience with this one. You have grown folks out here who have the emotional intelligence of and I'm not even going to disrespect a first or second grader like that because they can regulate their emotions better than some of these adults can. And that's going back to there being trauma to cause a person to shirk being accountable. In many situations I find it starts in the home and childhood. Either there was a tyrannical ass parent who ran their home like a military installation or there was a very toxic parent who was just insufferable, right? And God forbid a person had both. And let me say this because it's funny because I heard a person say basically in my mind like woe is me. Woe is me. That's why I'm this way. You know what? Yes, that is exactly why you are that way and yes, that is exactly why you. Need to be accountable to facilitate your healing and see that's it right there. You know what's wrong with you. You should also know that it is your responsibility to fix that and that nobody else has to and don't nobody else have to put up with that bullshit. That's the thing about people who lack integrity. That's the thing about people who lack a functional relationship with accountability. Don't nobody want to be around that broke shit. It's disgusting because you always got an excuse for something, but you never have a resolution. Don't come up to people who got good sense talking about the ways you know you need to change without changing. We shouldn't be having the same conversations about the things you need to do years from when it was established that you needed to do a thing. How about you do the thing so you can move or elevate yourself or graduate yourself to the next level in your journey, so you can do whatever else you need to do to keep clearing obstacles so that you can meet the purpose that you were intended to meet in this lifetime. So that you can meet the tribe that you were intended to meet in this lifetime. When I tell you having a lack of integrity and not having a functional relationship with accountability will destroy all the blessings and room for the blessings that you had coming your way. It will. Some of y'all have angels of people, earth angels of people who come into your path and you blow it. Destroy any possibility of them wanting to assist you because you can't be trusted. Your integrity is that shot, and all you can talk about are excuses. At some point in time, you have to come to the decision that you either need to implement a resolution or just shut the fuck up. Because nobody wants to hear excuses. Nobody wants to have to deal with a pity party. I am not about to be sympathetic as a person who holds myself in high regard for a person who admits to doing something that they do all the time. You sound like a goddamn kindergartner. We know you don't have good integrity. We know you don't have a functional relationship with accountability. What are you going to do about it? And don't come to me until you start doing something about it. You don't even have to tell me what it is. Just do it. Just do it. That way you don't have to worry about having to suffer the consequence and the bad karma associated with not being accountable, not being trustworthy. You don't have to worry about your feelings getting hurt when people disregard you because they don't want you in their presence. You're a burden at that point. You are a liability to people's peace at that point because you won't bring nothing but confusion and chaos. Because you confused and your life is chaotic. Because you don't want to be accountable or you're trying to keep up with all the lies you had to tell because you just don't want to deal with the reality of a situation. We know, we know. But we from the delegation of good accountability. We, the delegation, hold you responsible for having to get your shit together. You cannot come unto the starship Enterprise with that bullshit. Right? Get it together. That's all I have for you guys today. Thank you for tuning in. I'll speak to you guys next time. Until then, go be good people and be accountable. Bye.