Accountability quotes
These are my 13 favourite quotes about accountability to yourself and what they mean to me. You can hide my thoughts using the toggle button above if you just want to see the quotes. When I talk about accountability here, what I really mean is personal accountability. Not to your family or an organisation but to yourself.
Stephen's 7 habits of highly effective people had a huge impact on me when I first read it. That was more than twenty years ago. It was the first "self-help" book that I ever read. In it he speaks about your ability to choose your response to any situation. There is a gap between cause and effect. If you are consistently accounatble to yourself you can expand that gap and eventually choose how events will affect you, rather than it being automatic.
I haven't read any Molière but his quote stopped me in my tracks when I first read it. It is different to most quotes on responsibility, which generally only speak about what we are doing. Molière is talking about what we do not do. This may be because we do not want to do them or worse, have not considered doing them. Not considering actions is a failure of perspective. Putting your head down in order to focus on achieving something is only a good idea if you have properly surveyed what all your options are first.
Take the team and organisation piece out of this quote and I think it would be more impactful. I love the concept of life ownership. It is a better way of phrasing than life accountability or responsibility. Taking ownership of your own life evokes a sense of action. A real sense of ownership of your life is a powerful weapon indeed.