00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 732 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Jennifer Lazzatto author of inheriting chaos with compassion. I encourage you to find the ways to be loving with your family both before and after you pass. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer. Sometimes when we set out to do accountability,
00:00:36 we make it hard. Honestly, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to hire a coach or join a mastermind group. It can be as simple as adding, asking your spouse or another family member to hold you accountable. Often having external accountability to a stranger like a coach helps some people, but there are other people that are more able to be held accountable to family members.
00:00:59 Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. Learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact In today's spiritual foundation episode about impacting the world.
00:01:32 I talk with you about Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17, why this proverb could be misunderstood or misinterpreted in some ways, but it shares about the power of accountability and why accountability is always powerful. If you really know what it means, Proverbs 27 17 is one of those that you've probably heard before. Even if you're not a church going person, you've heard iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another in all likelihood.
00:02:07 You know, the interesting thing about this proverb is it's a long list in that chapter of various things that we should do or not do. It's it's part of Proverbs known as the wisdom literature, and it's basically telling the story of what folks should do or not do to be, be godly. And I think it's interesting that iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another is called out in this,
00:02:34 this idea of accountability from one person to another is called out is one of those things that we should do. You know, interestingly, one of the ways that this passage is interpreted because of the various ways that things are translated is one man basically brightens another or, or makes his face clear, brings clarity to them. And sometimes it's interpreted as if one man is angry,
00:03:03 he will bring on the anger of another, but it can also be interpreted in terms of one, man, you know, helps challenge another and lift him up and make him better. And I think both of those are valid. One of the interesting things is, is the way we surround ourselves with people that has a lot to do with how we act,
00:03:24 how we feel, what we do, what we believe. I saw an interesting study a few years ago, about how somewhere around 60 or 70% of people make new year's resolutions every year. And yet almost no one actually follows through with them and achieves them past about February 14th. And one of the interesting things is a study dived in and said, why did people not follow through why did not,
00:03:51 you know, people didn't consistently do things and achieve their new year's resolution. And one of the things that they found is many of these people never even got started. They set the resolution, but then they never took any action. Others were unable to achieve because they weren't consistent with those goals. These are the folks that start the gym in January, but quit by February.
00:04:13 And most of them gave up before they ever made it to six months in. But then they, interestingly, they looked at it a little bit more and they said, what do people do that do achieve their new year's resolutions? And they found that 65% of the participants that completed a goal had asked someone to hold them accountable to that goal and had fully committed to making it and following through on that project,
00:04:42 with that accountability partner, with that other person and that 95% of people that achieved the goal also had set up a specific appointment or time where they would discuss with their accountability partner, what they were doing, what they were planning on doing, how their progress was going, what successes they had had. So the basic idea was if all you have is an idea,
00:05:08 you're really not going to achieve your goal. Even if you start taking some action, most people don't achieve their goal. Now adding a deadline helps people achieve goals, but even there it's about 40% of people with a deadline still failed to deliver on time. 50 per cent can achieve their goals. If they have a step by step plan, adding commitment or accountability raises it to at least 65%.
00:05:35 And if you set up that appointment system, it brings it to 95%. Accountability is not a dirty word. It's this idea of accepting responsibility to account to others or to yourself for actions. Internal accountability is when you make a commitment to yourself, an external accountability is when you make a commitment to somebody outside of yourself. And the interesting thing is, remember folks that set a new year's resolution had internal accountability,
00:06:08 but still didn't necessarily follow through unless they also added external accountability. This is one of the reasons that things like coaching work, that mastermind groups can work. These are why weight Watchers and other things where you go through with a group work so well because they actually cause you to focus on being productive and performing with follow-through. It actually helps you complete your projects.
00:06:39 And I find it interesting that this idea of accountability is also a biblical idea by pointing out this idea that iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another the idea of commitment and bringing on another person to be accountable to is right there in Proverbs. It's right there as one of those things that you're supposed to do. And sometimes when we set out to do accountability,
00:07:09 we make it hard. Honestly, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to hire a coach or join a mastermind group. It can be as simple as adding, asking your spouse or another family member to hold you accountable. Often having external accountability to a stranger like a coach helps some people, but there are other people that are more able to be held accountable to family members.
00:07:31 So one of the spiritual ideas that I propose is that as good Christians, we need to find accountability. We need to find accountability for our spiritual walk. We need to find accountability for our financial walk. We need to find a countability for how we build relationships. Everything in our life should involve some level of accountability, not just to God and not just to ourselves,
00:07:56 but also to people that we invite into that journey to walk with us and hold us accountable. So if you haven't started looking for accountability partners, the new year's coming up really soon. And if you really want to achieve something in 2021, if you want to achieve some of those new year's resolutions, one powerful way to make sure that you do that is to find a way to let iron sharpens iron as one man,
00:08:26 sharpens another and invite accountability into your life. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, do me favor, go over to facebook.com/inspired
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