Accountability is extremely helpful when it comes to trying to start. The hardest thing about starting, besides everything, is exactly that. It’s just hard to start. It’s hard to be committed and focused. When you are accountable though, you are forced to be committed, focused or not.

I can barely follow my own advice from writing, but the one thing I’ve gained is an accountability partner. I’ve somehow put out some type of article every Thursday since March of 2021. That’s only 5 months, but if I hadn’t committed to a post every Thursday, I know I’d still be trying to write my first article.

When you read about commitment, accountability, or making things public, it’s all about being put in a situation where even if you don’t want to, you have to. It’s about following through, becoming someone who is trustworthy where their word is a bond.

Being accountable also creates momentum. I really believe this is what powers people through times of difficulty. When the creativity isn’t there, the motivation isn’t there, the power of momentum leads them through these tough times. Jerry Seinfeld talks about this when he talks about his writing habit. It was formed because he has a calendar for a single purpose of making sure he writes every day. And each day he writes, he gets to mark the day off. After a streak of days, weeks, and eventually months, you don’t want to break the chain of x’s, so you use that momentum to power through a tough day. Because let’s be honest, there will be more days where things will be hard, versus the days where things come easily.

So become accountable, even just to yourself, by having one thing you promise to hold yourself to. Start small and make it easy. Even better would be to have an accountability partner. Someone you trust and don’t want to let down. To make yourself even more accountable, put some skin in the game. Meaning if you don’t follow through, there’s a consequence. Maybe it’s some amount of cash, maybe you owe that friend a meal, or maybe you allow yourself to fall into an instagram blackhole whenever you do complete that task. Whatever it is, psychology suggests that you’re more willing to follow through if you have something to lose or to win.

In summary, accountability creates momentum. Start small and easy. Make it public or have an accountability partner. Have some skin in the game.

My example has been to write something every Thursday. This article will make it 22 Thursdays in a row, giving me momentum to not miss next week. I’m accountable because it has to be public. I made it small and easy by telling myself I’d publish even if I think the writing is horrible (which has been often). Skin in the game is that I don’t get to eat lunch until something is live on this website.

What’s yours? Take your shot and just go. Time for me to eat lunch!

A conversation with a good friend of mine inspired this article. Him and I are the same, just born to different parents at different times. We didn’t know each other very well until college, but since then have realized that we have similar thinking patterns.

We’ve lived very different lives, and yet have ended up wondering and struggling with the same things. What is my purpose? How can I be happy? Can I follow my dreams?

What came out of the conversation is that the answer to these questions does not matter. You won’t be able to answer these questions by thinking about it. Creating a list, doing research, worrying what other people would think, being afraid you might fail, is all overthinking it.

Instead, you just need to take your shot. Whatever that itch has been, just fucking itch it. You won’t know how it feels until you do. The journey and next steps starts to unfold after you take that first shot. Because what comes after, is the next shot. And the next. Then the next. Until one day, you’re doing something that you had no idea you could be doing.

This is really helpful for someone like me because I am an over thinker. I wonder what can make me happy. I question my questions. What can I do that will make me satisfied with the day? What action can I do to make today feel like a success? What can I do to make me smile? Is it music? Is acting my passion? What about a life in blogging and exercise? I ponder these questions all day, then try to write something about it, and then proceed to not take any of my own advice.

So when my friend told me to just take my shot, I responded with, “okay, you’re right. What are the things I should take a shot at? Hm, let me make a list.” No, you idiot. The entire point is to just do.

So what shot have you not taken because you’re too scared or too busy or too whatever? Listen to Nike, and this LinkedIn post, and just do it. Take your shot. Don’t wait to find the answers. They’ll come along the way.

While searching self development, you’ll often run into a fable about the lion and the gazelle.

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Many motivation speakers will use this to inspire people to get moving.

The best usage of this, in my opinion, comes from Eric Thomas. He puts a slightly different spin on to this quote, which inspired this article for the Living Accidentally series.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that a lot of what I am doing is just doing things to “stay alive.” I’m just looking for a job to get money just to get by. I’m exercising only because I know that I need to move to keep my body in general shape to “stay alive.” I know that once I stop moving, I’ll fall deeper into depression and have a harder climb to get out.

I’ve realized that living accidentally is just staying alive. It’s flat, straight, doing the bare minimum. In early stages of life, it’s easy to “stay alive,” but this isn’t actually “living.” When you’re simply “staying alive,” you’re living on accident. You’re doing just enough to get by, and not creating anything for yourself.

Staying alive isn’t living, but it is easy. Everyone can stay alive, but not everyone can live. After some time, the ironic thing about life is that staying alive actually starts to become difficult. The reasons to stay alive slowly erode as you realize that you need more to actually live.

The last part of the fable says that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle. That either way, you have to be running. This is very true. You need to keep running to survive.

But the spin is that we should all live like lions. While both are running, the lion is the one running TO something. The gazelle is only running FROM something.

In order to live your life with purpose, you have to run TO something. This is the key difference between the two and could completely change the way you view life. You have to have a lion mentality to not just stay alive, but to LIVE.

Which are you? The lion or the gazelle? Check out Eric Thomas speak about this here.

The Living Accidentally series has been about finding your own path to life. It’s been about living with purpose instead of waking up everyday being part of someone else’s journey. To find satisfaction with life, you will need to wake with purpose.

Purpose can be defined by anything you want. That’s the beauty of living with your own purpose, walking your own path. It can be driven by anything you want.

I’ve been writing about this because these articles are directed at me, more then anyone else. I’m finding that looking for purpose, trying to enjoy life, searching for life meaning, trying to be happy, etc. has all been very elusive.

The irony in searching for purpose is that the more you search for it, the harder it’ll be to grasp. It’s like trying to love and squeeze a cat or dog. The harder you try to love it, the more it seems to want to squirm away (for many pets anyways…). But when you ignore it and wait for it to come to you, it’ll come by and allow you to pet him/her.

Purpose seems like that. The more you try to find it, the harder it seems to be.

This isn’t to say that you should sit and do nothing and eventually purpose will come up to you. The journey we should be going down is to begin to know yourself. Find out what your priorities are. Find out what your values are. And the only way to do that is to start doing things.

I’m definitely stuck in a loop, because as I write this, I’m realizing that I have written some version of this in an earlier article. I’m really pushing myself today to get this article written. And as shitty as it is, I’m going to post it anyways, because this is part of my path to learn more about myself.

Many of us grow up in a designed system. We go through grade school, university, get a career, get married, raise a family, put kids through system, and then eventually die. (Apologies to nonchalantly throwing out death in the first 2 sentences of this article!) This system has been on repeat for generations. We are lucky and should be grateful to be able to grow up in this sort of environment. It could be a lot worse, like not being able to get an education or choose our life partner.

However, in this system, we don’t get to make too many of our own choices until we have income that lets us live independently from our parents. And even after, parents often have an impact in our decisions, consciously or subconsciously, whether we like it or not.

Before we are able to become completely independent, we are mainly told what to do on a day to day basis. Go to school, study this, do this activity, go to this practice, etc. If we’re being honest, a big part of our careers are all about listening to other people as well. Deadlines for projects, revenue targets to hit, sale numbers to reach, meetings to go to, etc.

The early parts of human life are filled with lots of direction from other people and what they think is the best for us. If you are lucky, some of these people become your mentors and push, pull, maybe sometimes carry, convince when necessary, and support you in creating your own path for life.

Some of us are not so lucky and just float through life accepting what other people tell us to do, because that was how we were raised. We accept our accidental life, and live on thinking this is what life is.

I believe that a “mid-life crisis” is when we start to wake up from an accidental life and begin to ask the right questions.

At first, it’s easy to slip into a state of blaming everyone and everything. You may blame society, your parents, your environment, and/or your school for being where you are today. Because when being raised in a system, our decisions were limited, and many of us never actually learned how to make a decision. And when a decision has a negative consequence, your natural reaction is to blame someone else. How could it be your fault when you never even wanted or knew you were making that decision?

This deflection of consequences and blaming others is great if you want to continue living the way you are. It may be why many people are fine working at large organizations where they are told what to do most of the day. That way, if something goes wrong, the blame is mainly on the decision-maker.

The realization that you can be THE decision-maker of your life is a big step towards walking your own path. Life starts to change when you start to own every decision and consequence. Purpose begins to shape when you decide that you are responsible for your actions. It’s scary at first. It’s scary to realize that we can decide what to do next. It’s scary to think that our actions are our own. It’s scary to realize that regardless of the things happening around us, our reactions to these happenings are entirely in our control.

And then it begins to be empowering. What happens next is my decision. How I react is my choice. What I do is up to me. I am in the driver seat, and I decide where and how fast to go.

This shift from “along for the ride” to “I am the ride” is the start towards living with purpose. It’s going to be bumpy, you’ll get lost, you might go backwards, you’ll love some things, hate lots of other things, get embarrassed, learn stuff, and experience the entire spectrum of emotions. In the end, it’ll be totally worth it because the decisions, actions, consequences are all yours. You’ve decided to own it, and have begun paving your own life path.

Start small. The decision to own your actions can be overwhelming. Start small by catching yourself when you begin to put fault onto things. Don’t look to blame someone. What happened, has happened. What you can do now is to accept and own the situation you are in. Own your reactions and your next steps. This shifts you back into the driver seat and gives you the ability to navigate the situation. Then, you’ll remember that someone long ago told you about this annoying thing called the Serenity Prayer. Back when you owned none of your actions, this prayer made no sense. But now, with a shift in mindset into ownership, of living a life with purpose, you begin to understand the power behind this concept. So take ownership of your life and remember, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”