Accountability

When I’m not working out of my Hypnotherapy practice in Richmond I like to go running. Now there are lots of things that I could do to improve as a runner. It has been widely shown that running hills, pyramid training and interval training are all beneficial.
I know this. The thing is…I don’t enjoy doing them. So I don’t do them; I just run. Why don’t I enjoy doing them? Because they’re hard to do. It’s hard enough to run so the thought of running up hills, which is even harder, doesn’t inspire me at eight o’clock in the morning.

Last Sunday however I did run hills. I also did pyramid training and interval training. I even stopped and stretched. So what changed?

I didn’t give myself a choice. I joined a running club and so whatever is on the schedule for that week I do. Despite my desperate hope for a simple run it turned out that we were training. It was really hard work and I felt great at the end of it, despite feeling completely shattered. When I want to do something that I know I will struggle to do, I find it helps to put myself in a position where I have no choice. Thank you The Bearcat Running Club.

But this forced strategy can’t be applied to everything in our life and nor should it be. So what I do now is find a way to hold myself accountable for what I want to do. If I have an idea that I want to follow up on I share it with people who I know will ask me about it. If I have a business idea or something I want to offer people I share this with my coach who I know will ask me about it at our next chat in a month’s time.

Does it make a difference? Yes it does and yet we don’t always do what we say we are going to. Sometimes we don’t move forward with our plans. That’s the thing isn’t it – no matter how accountable we are we don’t always take the helpful action. And there is information in that. Why didn’t we? What can we do to make sure we do take action next time? Is there something that is holding us back?

And this is where Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help; identifying unhelpful patterns of behaviour and out of date beliefs and helping you to let go of them so that you can move forward. That way you don’t need to be accountable to anybody else to get the life you want.