Are You Allergic to Personal Accountability?

I’ve got to stop drinking so much Diet Dr Pepper.

The thought went through my mind as I climbed out of my truck and walked into the convenience store, Charlie’s Market mug in hand, to refill it for the second time that day.

I wish I could tell you that the thought stopped me in my tracks and sent me back to the driver’s seat. It didn’t. I also wish I could say the second refill was unusual. It wasn’t. Double refills happen. A lot. I always manage to justify them by pointing to how early I wake up, how late I go to bed, and the fact that water tastes exactly like shame feels. Alright, maybe water isn’t quite that bad.

What’s strange is that I know exactly what I would tell someone else standing where I was.

Just skip one refill. Drink a little more water instead. Go to bed fifteen minutes earlier and get up fifteen minutes later. Don’t try to solve the whole world’s problems this week.

I’ve spent a good portion of my career helping other people improve. I’ve managed teams for many years, built a software company that at one point employed twenty-nine other people, and spent many hours helping employees and others through difficult situations. I also have five children. Some of them are adults now, but parenting doesn’t have an expiration date. They’re still learning how to navigate life, and every so often they need someone willing to hold them accountable, even if they don’t describe it that way.

Most adults occupy both sides of accountability. Someone depends on us like a boss, a spouse, a business partner, a customer, maybe even the family dog that insists on an evening walk, and we’re usually responsible for helping someone else grow as well.

So why is it so much harder to hold ourselves accountable than it is to help someone else?

I’ve honestly wondered if I was allergic to personal accountability. Why could I see sensible next steps for everyone else while repeatedly negotiating against myself over something as ridiculous as carbonated syrup in a forty-ounce Charlie’s Market mug?

I don’t think that’s the real problem.

Unless you’re Stoick the Vast giving Hiccup one of the greatest motivational speeches in animated film history, you almost never ask another person to change everything about themselves all at once. You ask them to improve one thing. You help them build one habit. You celebrate one small victory before moving on to the next challenge. It’s like teaching a toddler to walk but without the poopy diapers. (Unless you’re actually teaching a toddler to walk.)

Then we walk into the bathroom, look at ourselves in the mirror, and suddenly become the world’s least reasonable manager.

Tomorrow I’ll run six miles every day. I’ll stop drinking Diet Dr Pepper. I’ll get at least six hours of sleep every night. I’ll write. I’ll read. I’ll spend intentional time with my wife and kids. I’ll answer every email promptly. I’ll pray longer. I’ll become remarkably patient in traffic. I’ll somehow work fewer hours while earning more money and getting more done. By Thursday I’ll probably have solved world hunger and finally learned how to fold a fitted sheet.

Somewhere in the middle of constructing this absurd checklist, we convince ourselves that this is what personal accountability looks like. We confuse comprehensive self-reinvention with responsible self-management, and when we inevitably fall short by Wednesday afternoon, we conclude that we’ve failed as a human.

The strange part is that we would never treat another person that way (unless you’re a narcissist).

When my daughter doesn’t clean her room for what feels like the 487th time, I don’t hand her a fifty-three-point improvement plan covering every area of her life. I don’t require her to become the perfect student (she’s already pretty good in that arena), sibling, daughter, citizen, employee, and future mother before she’s allowed to spend time with her friends. I ask her to clean her room because that’s the next thing in front of her.

Growth always begins with the next small thing.

If one of my employees came to me and said, “Starting Monday I’m going to improve every aspect of my professional performance simultaneously,” I’d probably recommend a vacation and a nap. Yet I somehow believe that’s a perfectly reasonable expectation for myself.

Maybe that’s why so many attempts at self-improvement fail before they really start. We don’t create goals; we draft constitutional amendments for our personalities. Every weakness receives a corrective action. Every bad habit gets scheduled for immediate removal. Every virtue deserves immediate mastery. The plan looks inspiring when you close your eyes, but by the time you lace up your running shoes while eating a donut, it looks pretty impossible.

That’s usually when the guilt sets in.

We miss one workout, so the exercise plan quietly dies forever. We drink one extra Diet Dr Pepper, so apparently hydration is canceled until next month. We stay up too late once, and somehow that becomes evidence that we’ll never develop healthy sleep habits.

It sounds insane when I write it down, but I suspect most of us have lived (are living?) some version of it.

The irony is that we, as in you and I, already understand how people change because we’ve watched it happen in other people. Employees improve through coaching, encouragement, repetition, and realistic expectations. Children mature one lesson at a time. Strong marriages are built through thousands of ordinary conversations rather than one grand romantic gesture. We recognize progress when it happens slowly in everyone else.

Then we deny ourselves the same grace.

So, we’re not actually allergic to personal accountability. What we’re allergic to is impossible expectations wearing a Nacho Libre mask claiming to be accountability.

As it turns out, real accountability is a willingness to tell ourselves the truth, then choose one meaningful step and take it. If we repeat the process often enough, those small changes will eventually become a different life.

Maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to become the healthiest, wisest, most disciplines version of myself that’s ever existed.

Maybe tomorrow I just need one fewer trips to the Maverik Country Store with my Charlie’s Market mug in hand. Maybe it’s sleeping in a few extra minutes or spending a few more minutes really being there with my family.

Maybe it’s only one more page read, one honest conversation, or one decent workout.

It’s tragically funny (or funnily tragic?) how much of my life I’ve spent believing that meaningful change has to begin with a dramatic transformation.

Now that I’m approaching the big 5–0, I’m starting to believe it begins with treating myself the same way I’d treat someone else who is honestly trying to grow.