“I really want to establish a spiritual practice, Beth. And I find myself struggling to be consistent with anything,” my friend, Stephanie confided.
“When I find I have the time to spend in my practice, it seems that I inevitably fill that time with something which, looking back, didn’t move me toward my intention. I’m not sure how I am going to move past this block.”
As we continued talking about this enigma (really feeling like you want to do something, but finding that you are doing everything but that), I realized that in some ways, I was finding myself in this same pattern. Our conversation circled around to a point where we both looked at each other and concluded, “We could be accountability partners for each other!”
We have both had (and been) accountability partners at different times for specific projects and found that it was immensely helpful. Why not create a partnership with the focus on helping move past blocks keeping us from creating a new pattern?
Now, we are both very busy ladies, with full lives and meaningful schedules. A weekly check-in call is not realistic for us – we’re often in a few different time zones at any given week. We agreed to touch bases once a month and in the interim keep track of our progress on a simple Excel sheet. In between calls, we drop short emails to each other or text encouragement to each other. It’s brilliant. And I love knowing why things work well.
This accountability partnership dynamic is no different.
I love how well accountability partners can work. I also love how it demonstrates how important we can be to each other – the “why” of it working well. When I was in college, the singing group I was in, the Young Ambassadors, worked on a beautiful version of No Man Is An Island which included someone singing with us in American Sign Language. This song deeply embedded in my heart the concept that we do not stand alone. We are not designed, if you will, to live and grow in a vacuum.
This is one reason why life coaches can be so vital to our growth. When my mother was a young housewife, women used to have more time to sit on the porch and share between friends how certain areas of life were going and give and receive advice. Some of us still make time to sit with a trusted friend on a regular basis, but in my experience I have seen that most of us do not. And having someone (or a few someones) who play this role in our lives is important. With a friend, we have to take time to both give and take. With a life coach, we pay (to give) and we receive directed, specific support.
I don’t know about you, but I love how personal interaction with someone who is like minded in their interest to move beyond blocks in personal development helps me grow. I like how interconnected we are. I love how this seems like a very intentional design feature in our humanity. If this is an intentional design feature, I want to be intentional in implementing it!
So how can we get back to this dynamic in our busy, busy world?
How can we slow things down to the point where we have time to have these conversations with others? What do you think? Where do you have room in your life to create the space to have these interactions with others? How have you personally seen this dynamic propel you into a new stratosphere of growth?
Read more posts by Beth Misner, a contributing blogger for JenningsWire.
The online feature magazine, JenningsWire.com, is created by National PR Firm, Annie Jennings PR that specializes in providing book promotion services to self-published and traditionally published authors. Annie Jennings PR books authors, speakers and experts on major high impact radio talk interview shows, on local, regionally syndicated and national TV shows and on influential online media outlets and in prestigious print magazines and newspapers across the country.
