Stop me if you know this story already.
You start a new program with a new coach. You’re like the best client ever you check in every day letting them know what you’re doing and how everything is going.
This lasts for a few weeks or months and then things start to get tougher because life friction gets in the way. But, you’re going to stick it out so even when things get tough you remember that you are being held accountable to someone so you keep doing the Things™ and you keep checking in although a little less frequently.
Then one day it slips – you don’t do something you’re supposed to do but you’re a good little client so you let your coach know that you didn’t do it and you feel pretty good about your honesty.
Little do you know the pin is already pressing in on the bubble.
Pretty soon you’re not only not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, but you’re avoiding check-ins and going incognito because you don’t want to admit it.
The accountability bubble has been popped and just like any bubble once it’s popped you can’t fix it. It’s gone forever. The magic has been let out of it.
What you can do instead is to form a new bubble in a different way. Start where you are. Commit to what you can. You may have to take three steps backwards. If you started on Level 1 and you were at Level 10 before you fell off you might even have to start back at Level 1 and hold yourself to whatever rigid standard was appropriate then.
But what’s neat is that you’ll be able to progress much more quickly back to Level 10 than you did before.
You’re not actually the same person you were when you started at Level 1 so it won’t take the same things to get you back to Level 10 that it did the first time.
But whatever you do don’t pop that precious new bubble. Hold that little baby bubble ever so carefully in your hand and let that accountability grow.
Because if you pop it you have to start all over again.
Next time don’t pop that bubble.
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