No easy button

I turn on the end table lamp in living room. Because of the shorts days of winter, the fact my living room is half underground and that the furniture is dark, it is already hard to see. I grab the blue Disney blanket and my iPad and head to the chaise lounge. It is time to add a few paragraphs to my book on accountability. In part I am driven because the first draft is almost done, in part I am driven because, in a twist, I am being held accountable to keep writing.

The couch wraps around me and I am tempted to turn on the TV or XBOX, I have a few moments while the kids are doing homework, but I know I shouldn't. I turn the iPad landscape and flip open the black cover. I find my google application and double click. After the ad, which I get because I refuse to spend the couple bucks to get the full app, I click on google documents. There it is the last chapter, as I have it so far.

When I started this, I was just writing about an age old tool of one person holding another accountable and helping them get better and better at reaching goals. I had, had some quick early success that made it seem easy. I had a recipe to give everyone success and anyone could do it and it was easy. I consider, before I write the next paragraph, how my own experience has evolved.

Steve, my first accountability partner after starting this process, has had major successes and improvements in his life. By his own account, he is at a very successful time of his life. He though, is not anyone, he has a special drive and insight and this hasn't been easy. He has worked hard. In this relationship, he also hold me accountable, he has helped me add exercise to my life. My success in this is limited. I do exercise three times a week, I have stepped it up with his guidance, but I haven't pushed myself as hard as I could or should. I cheat sometimes on the program. My success is limited by my willingness to do the work.

I have just restarted this kind of partnership with my wife. The first time we did this it got aborted because this is hard to do with your spouse. In our case, she is likely to let me off the hook while I am militant about doing what you say. This combination, when the goal is hard, can be disastrous. So, when we didn't get success and didn't want to add the work, we stopped. On our second attempt, we shared a mutual goal of hold each other to our Bible study, this is not hard, it is mutually beneficial and we have found success. It took work to get there.

These two are my morning calls. In addition to them, I have a couple of people that check in by text. Jeremy and Matt are working on very different things, but I see the same similarities in them. They have found clear success, but not everyday. They still have that part of them that wants to make excuses, even when they know it is not what they should be doing. These can be just forgetting the the moment or having a case of the "I don't want to.". It is hard work. The battle is not with me or the outside world, it is with themselves. At one point, I might have told them this would be easy, but that would be a lie. As long as you have a will to squander your energy, time and money, you will not find it easy to be efficient with those things.

Usually my last accountability call for the day is James. He is my second longest accountability partner, only a few days shorter than Steve. As I mentioned, he holds me to my writing. I like writing, but in many ways I am like my children who sometimes try to complain about what we are having for dinner, even when they like it. It is not that they don't like Spaghetti, but that they would rather eat pizza. My writing, even from this couch, is much like this. There is a child in me pounding the cushions crying to play games and watch TV. This has meant some lost days for me, days that I dropped the ball. His experience, I know from our discussions, has been similar. He has been very successful in several things at different moments, but it is hard work.

So, it is time to write, but it almost seems I need to make amends for my misunderstanding of what it was I doing. I do have a recipe that can give anyone success. I don't doubt this at all. In every case, with every person I talk to or text, success has been clear. It is something everyone can do, the range of people I work with are various educations, marriage statuses, ages, but that doesn't seem have much impact. What does have impact, though, is their willingness to do the work. My success and the success of all those in this program is mostly dependent on their willingness to buckle down when they don't want to.

Now, how do I find a way to express that?