115. Follow Through on Your Goals: Self Accountability Strategies for Interior Designers
Do you struggle with follow-through and honoring commitments to yourself in your interior design business? You're not alone. Self-accountability is an essential skill that many business owners grapple with, especially as their companies grow and evolve.
In this episode, I revisit one of the most popular episodes of the podcast about becoming self-accountable. As your interior design business expands and your goals get bigger, the level of self-accountability you need to make things happen increases as well. It's a prime example of how you, as the business owner, must grow alongside your company.
Tune in to discover practical tips for strengthening your self-accountability muscles. I share the key differences between self-accountability and discipline, explain how to build internal motivation by connecting your daily actions to your larger business vision, and reveal why treating yourself as your most important client is a game-changer.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why self-accountability is crucial for achieving any goal in your interior design business.
How a lack of follow-through can manifest in various aspects of your business.
The key differences between self-accountability and discipline (and why it matters).
How to break free from the cycle of setting goals, pushing yourself too hard, and giving up.
Why tying your daily actions to your larger business vision builds internal motivation.
How to treat yourself as the most important client you have.
The transformative benefits of developing a strong sense of self-trust.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 115. In this one we’re revisiting an early episode of the podcast where I dive into how to become self-accountable. This continues to be one of the most listened to episodes, probably because it’s such an essential skill to develop as a business owner, and frankly it’s one so many of my clients struggle with.
Any goal you set in your interior design business or in your personal life requires the skill of follow through. You must learn to honor your commitments to yourself and continue then to strengthen your level of accountability as your goals get bigger.
If you think about it, as your business grows and you're busier and you have more things and people to manage and the vision you have for your company stretches you even more out of your comfort zone, which of course sometimes makes us want to hide from action, the level of self-accountability you need to make things happen also increases. This is yet another example of how as the business grows, you as the business owner must grow with it.
If you're new to the podcast, this is going to be a great foundational episode to listen to. And if you’ve been around for a while, definitely listen again, I guarantee that you will hear something new or something will land differently than the first time you tuned in.
I’m going to be back next week with a brand new episode to kick off 2025 where I’m going to share what I believe to be the essential things you need to focus on in quarter one to tee off your best year yet.
And as a reminder, there’s still time to sign up and join me for Create Your 2025 Roadmap where we’re going to map out not just quarter one, but all four quarters of the year, create your vision for the coming year, and make a doable plan for how you're going to achieve it. And of course you're going to have lots of opportunities for coaching and getting that personalized support directly from me.
To sign up all you have to do is go to desicreswell.com/resources and you’ll see the link on the page. And that’s going to be an incredible way for us to start the year together and, of course, I’ve got some wonderful episodes mapped out for you already for The Interior Design Business CEO podcast. If you’re not already subscribed, make sure you hit that follow button and let’s dive into this episode.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
In the last episode I shared my five step process for setting and achieving any goal. If you haven’t listened to that one yet, you don’t have to go back and listen right this second, you’re still going to get so much out of this episode. I do highly recommend listening to it though, so maybe that’ll be your play next episode if you haven’t listened to it. It’s really one you’re going to want to refer to again and again.
I wanted to follow that episode on goal setting with sharing one of the obstacles that is likely to arise when you set a goal or set out to create something new in your interior design business. The topic I want to talk about today is follow through, doing what you say you’re going to do, or doing what you say you want to do. And I call this self-accountability.
Often we talk about holding others accountable, but what about you? Do you honor your commitments to yourself? This is such an important skill in any area of your business, and especially so with goal setting where you’re having to hold the vision for something greater. And you’re going to need to engage in small consistent habits and actions for a while in order to see yourself making progress or attaining the goal.
We’re going to dive into all of this, but first, I have another podcast winner, ding, ding, ding. I’m excited. This winner is Penno Interiors, and they write, “Valuable takeaways for all designers. Desi’s podcast is packed full of vital information to thrive as a business owner in our industry. I also highly recommend her coaching group, Out Of Overwhelm, where Desi doesn’t take I don’t know for an answer.” That is right. They also say, “Everything she does pushes you to understand your business and your busyness, congrats Desi.”
Well thank you Penno Interiors. I loved working with you and I loved that you took the time to submit this review. I will be sending you an email and we’ll make sure to get you your $50 gift card to Jayson Home. And if you, listener, want to enter to win, you’ve got another week to enter the giveaway. Just go to desicreswell.com/podcast launch. That will give you all of the instructions on how to enter the giveaway so you can win a $50 gift card to Jayson Home.
Let’s dive into today’s topic of follow through or self-accountability now. I’m really excited to talk about this, can you tell? All right, so let’s talk about how is this or the lack of self-accountability showing up in your business? Let’s get some awareness to start. It might be in the form of telling yourself you’re going to send out invoices on Friday, and then repeatedly deciding to do it next week. Except next week is always next week, and next week, and next week.
It might be deciding you want to leave the office at five, but continuing to do just one more thing. If you could see me right now I’m doing the air quotes with my fingers, “just one more thing,” And when you look up it’s 7pm. It can look like always putting your client’s needs first. It might be setting an income goal for the year and then avoiding looking at your numbers on a regular basis.
Or it could be saying you’re going to give yourself one hour today to devote to marketing or to take a walk, do something for yourself. But you let the time on the clock simply roll by. It could be any of those things or a variety of other things, it’s where you’re not honoring the commitments and priority that you have set for yourself.
The other interesting thing here is that if you’re having trouble holding others accountable, like maybe your clients, or your contractors, or your team, you’re probably not holding up your end of the deal with yourself either. So this is another way that this self-accountability challenge can come up.
What I want you to see here is that the skill of self-accountability, or doing what you say you’re going to do for yourself, not because anyone else is watching, touches every single aspect of your business. Before we move on I want to clarify something, I often see designers mistaking self-accountability with discipline. There’s a really important difference.
I’ll often hear this in the form of, “I just need to be more disciplined.” This is how a lot of you talk about following through on plans, or goals, or routines, or habits. We could argue that there is some overlap between self-accountability and discipline, but I want you to check in with how you feel when you tell yourself, I need to be more disciplined.
For many of my clients when they tell themselves “I need to be more disciplined” they feel pressured, inadequate, constrained, or forced. You always want to check in with how a thought is feeling to see if it’s useful. Those feelings I listed do not feel good.
And if you remember the self-coaching model I shared in episode two, Overwhelm is Optional, you will remember that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings fuel our actions, and our actions produce our results.. And if telling yourself you need to be more disciplined is making you feel bad, if we just speak about the emotions of broader terms, you’re going to have bad feeling, dirty fuel for your action.
You’re probably going to end up engaging in rebellious behavior or avoiding behavior. Maybe that would be like, I’m not going to follow my calendar, I don’t have to. Kind of like a two year old who doesn’t want to be told what to do. And that’s the exact opposite of what you want.
There’s this cycle that I see so often when it comes to telling yourself you need to be disciplined. What this looks like is you get fed up with your current circumstances, so you declare a goal or a habit or a routine. You get really excited and hopeful about this change, and then you get started pushing through using willpower and discipline to get yourself to do these things through force.
And then get overwhelmed or exhausted from trying to do too much, too soon, too hard, and doing it in a way where you feel like your own disciplinarian. And then what happens is you quit whatever you’re doing, it’s very all or nothing. You might blame yourself for not following through or might even blame others, as in, well I could do this if it wasn’t for X, Y, Z.
You’re not going to do anything anymore then. You’re going to get fed up with yourself because you’re blaming yourself and judging yourself for not following through. Or you’re going to get fed up with the current circumstances again, and then you’re just going to end up repeating the whole cycle.
It doesn’t actually get you anywhere if you are not served by the thought or the belief, “I need to be more disciplined.” It also has this underlying identity piece of I am not someone who’s disciplined, right? If you’re telling yourself I need to be more disciplined, what you’re doing is actually reinforcing the belief about yourself that you are not someone who honors their word or follows through.
And when we don’t see ourselves as someone who is more than capable of honoring our own word, we’re much less likely to take action to reinforce that belief. So just notice if you’re telling me you need to be more disciplined as if it’s just reporting the news. Maybe you’re wrong about that story or you want to choose to think about following through in a way that actually would support you and the actions you want to take. That was my big side note, just to make sure we’re extra clear on that.
Now, now that you have a better understanding of what self-accountability is and what it’s not, and also how it’s impacting your business on a daily and long-term basis, let’s talk about how you can begin to build the skill, because it truly is a skill that you can develop for yourself. And just like any other skill, it’s going to be something that you work on. You’re not always going to get it right. You’re not always going to follow through.
But if you stay committed to the process and to becoming someone who does follow through, you will get better at it over time and there will be less friction each time you’re in a position where you’re asking yourself to follow through.
And this is why I work with clients in Out Of Overwhelm for six months, and sometimes even beyond that where clients will do multiple rounds, because with all of these changes, we’ve spent our whole lives doing things one way, and so it’s natural to take a little bit of time to ingrain these new habits. You’re going to potentially stumble with self-accountability, and I want you to have support as you get back at it so that you become stronger and wiser.
So I just want to put that out there too, that it is normal to not go to not accountable to yourself to fully accountable to yourself, which let’s be honest, being fully accountable to yourself is not even an attainable goal. But going from that zero to 60 is not reasonable to expect of yourself and it’s really going to hold you back in developing this skill.
I want to give you three key tips that you can start with today to build this skill of accountability for yourself. The very first one is deciding what you want to think about your relationship with self-accountability. You might not want to think of yourself as a disciplinarian who you have to obey. You might not want to think about yourself or the idea of being self-accountable as being a mean boss. You’re the boss of you, and you can be a nice boss who has firm but loving expectations.
You can choose to think of being self-accountable as a way of supporting your present and future self. One of the reasons follow through can be challenging is because often there isn’t an immediate consequence of not following through. If you don’t spend an hour today working on your systems, you don’t have an immediate repercussion. Or if you don’t go to the gym, today, you’re not all of a sudden unhealthy, you just kind of were where you were before. No better but also no worse.
And so many of you are used to waiting to take action until there is a breaking point or you just kind of get so sick of your own crap that you finally do something about it. But it doesn’t have to get to those extremes. And looking at self-accountability as something that supports your future self and your future goals, and who you want to be, and what you want to achieve, and what you want to create, that is where you can create internal motivation.
You do have to train yourself to think this way. And one of the ways you can do that is by tying your daily actions to your larger business vision or goals. In the Interior Designers Get It Done Daily Planner, which you can download for free by going to desicreswell.com/planner or clicking the link in the show notes, there’s a question I provide you that will help you identify your priority for the day. So it’ll help with time management, and it’s also going to get you laser focused on why you actually want to do the thing you say is your priority.
So it’s a really easy way to link this is what I’m doing today, this is why I want to do it, and this is how it’s supporting me in the future. And that’s going to help you build that self-accountability. If you have not downloaded the planner, please do that immediately, it is so, so supportive. Designers love it.
The reason this works is because your primitive brain, the one that’s really concerned with immediate safety and pleasure isn’t looking out for your long-term benefit or interest. So you have to practice thinking about future benefits, and that requires you to use the higher, more evolved part of your brain. Because today’s actions are going to create future goals, and you need to consistently remind yourself of this as you build the skill of self-accountability.
You’re going to want to connect to that future version of you, so practice picturing yourself after having followed through on whatever is on your calendar or whatever the commitment is to yourself. And think about what are you believing about yourself after you’ve completed the task? That you’re so proud of yourself, that you’re someone who can do hard things, think about that.
How are you feeling? Are you feeling proud or accomplished? What is possible for you because you followed through? That’s one of my favorite questions, what is going to be possible after having done this? And it could be something that’s very short term, like I can just shut my brain off for the weekend and know I took care of business.
But it also could be what’s possible a year from now. What will my business look like because I’m putting in these small consistent actions that are going to create something greater in the future. It feels amazing to be looking at yourself this way. And the more you experience this for yourself, the more easily and more quickly you’ll be able to tap into this internal motivation.
The last tip I want to share with you is learning to treat yourself as the most important client you have. Think about this, whether it’s your client or your family, there are certain people you always show up for. You always do what you say you’re going to do for these people. And sometimes it’s even at your own expense, but you’re going to do the thing.
If you show up for others this way, I want you to really consider why are you not giving yourself the same level of respect? What do you think is different about you? Why does that level of commitment not apply to you and your business?
Often when I ask clients this question they’ll say, well, the client is paying me, or the client is waiting on me and will know if I didn’t do it. But guess what, you truly are no different. You are paying you, and one of the ways you pay yourself, and even give yourself a raise, is to build your business. Whether it’s growing it in terms of revenue, team members, projects serviced, maybe it’s streamlining it for efficiency, increasing your profitability. You are paying you.
You also know if you did something or not. Just because it’s not someone else looking over your shoulder or waiting for you at a job site, doesn’t mean that you don’t notice. You definitely know, so please stop telling yourself that the only way you can be accountable is if someone else is on the other end.
Often clients will even say to me they want me to hold them accountable. And certainly having someone who knows your goals and your challenges and what the changes are that you want to make in your life and business is immensely helpful. And at the same time, what I ultimately want for you as my client is that you become accountable for yourself because you see yourself as being that important.
You see your goals, your desires, what you want to create in your business, as that important. You are important enough to honor the commitments you make to yourself, even if you’re the only one who knows about them or the only one who cares.
When you practice the skill of self-accountability. So much is going to shift for you, both the tangible results in your business and the intangible results in your business. The way that you feel, the way that you see yourself, the way you show up in every single area of life, because let’s face it, you take you wherever you go. So inevitably, the work that you’re doing to become self-accountable in your business is going to show up in your personal life and your relationships outside of work. It’s going to show up everywhere.
And when you start to become self-accountable and can rely on yourself, you start to plan and set your goals in a way that really honors your capacity and current stage in life and business. Because when you’re self-accountable, you take your commitments so seriously that you’re much more selective about what you take on and what you say yes to and what you say no to. It requires you to be realistic about your planning because you know, hey, I’m actually going to do this thing.
And then when you’re not able to finish a task or complete a commitment, because let’s face it, life happens sometimes, you look for the lesson in whatever happened and whatever your part in it was so that you can improve in the future and use that lesson for you. You can become self-accountable, even without perfect follow through.
This really is about the identity you adopt as being someone who does what they say they’re going to do. So even when things don’t go as planned, you still know you can count on yourself to course correct. And this is just one of the many ways that you build self-trust. The relationship that you have with yourself is the most important relationship you have in your life, and you want this to be a trusting relationship.
When you have this high level of self-trust, you’re going to make consistent quicker progress. Whether that’s on a client project, a back end business task, or your big goal for the year. And there’s no more of this on again or off again the wagon business. We are not in the Wild West, there are no wagons anymore, okay? Let me just say that.
When you do this, you empower yourself to set bigger goals because you’re showing yourself what you’re really capable of. And you’re also going to feel proud and accomplished and treat yourself with care.
The other thing that happens is your time management skills become so sharp because you want to set yourself up for success with your planning so that it becomes easy to follow through. And when you do that, it’s so much easier to say no to things, to set boundaries, to keep your focus on what it is that’s in front of you.
It also becomes easier to manage your team and project partners when you know how to uphold commitments to yourself. Because there is that certain level of discomfort that we must go through when we are upholding commitments to ourselves, when we don’t feel like doing it, when it feels hard.
And when we learn to be comfortable with that discomfort, which I talked about in a previous episode which we’ll link in the show notes. But when you become comfortable with that discomfort, it becomes so much easier to then hold space for that discomfort when you’re holding others accountable and holding them to your level of expectation as well.
So I want you to remember that being self-accountable is a supportive gift you give to yourself. It is not a punishment or a way of caging yourself in. Learning to follow through is a skill you’re going to practice and get better at over time. Doing this whole self-accountability thing imperfectly is what is going to help you get better at it, not trying to do it perfectly from the get-go.
I want you to focus on these three things as you’re working on building the skill of follow through. The first thing you’re going to do is decide what you want to think about your relationship with self-accountability. The second thing is going to be training yourself to tie your daily actions to your larger business vision or goals.
Remember, you’re going to practice doing this using your free copy of the Get It Done Daily Planner, go to the show notes and your copy will be sent directly to your inbox when you click on the link and enter your email address.
The last thing I want you to focus on is to start treating yourself as the most important client you have. I want you to just picture yourself six months from now. And if you focused on just this one piece alone, treating yourself as if you are that important client, what would shift for you in your business? What are the results you could create? What would be different for you for the better because of this reverence for yourself?
The benefits of building the skill of self-accountability truly are endless. That’s why I have an entire module on it in my program Out Of Overwhelm. Just this one module, the impact it could have on your life is worth the investment of the program on its own. And that is why I wanted to do this topic today, because it’s goal setting time, it’s thinking fresh, thinking about where we want to be a year from now and this skill is so, so important. So give this one a try, I gave you lots of ways to practice self-accountability and get started with this today.
That’s what I’ve got for you for this episode. In the next episode I’ll be back to sharing with you in real time with a new topic and until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
Any goal you set in your interior design business or in your personal life requires the skill of follow through. You must learn to honor your commitments to yourself and continue then to strengthen your level of accountability as your goals get bigger.
If you think about it, as your business grows and you're busier and you have more things and people to manage and the vision you have for your company stretches you even more out of your comfort zone, which of course sometimes makes us want to hide from action, the level of self-accountability you need to make things happen also increases. This is yet another example of how as the business grows, you as the business owner must grow with it.
If you're new to the podcast, this is going to be a great foundational episode to listen to. And if you’ve been around for a while, definitely listen again, I guarantee that you will hear something new or something will land differently than the first time you tuned in.
I’m going to be back next week with a brand new episode to kick off 2025 where I’m going to share what I believe to be the essential things you need to focus on in quarter one to tee off your best year yet.
And as a reminder, there’s still time to sign up and join me for Create Your 2025 Roadmap where we’re going to map out not just quarter one, but all four quarters of the year, create your vision for the coming year, and make a doable plan for how you're going to achieve it. And of course you're going to have lots of opportunities for coaching and getting that personalized support directly from me.
To sign up all you have to do is go to desicreswell.com/resources and you’ll see the link on the page. And that’s going to be an incredible way for us to start the year together and, of course, I’ve got some wonderful episodes mapped out for you already for The Interior Design Business CEO podcast. If you’re not already subscribed, make sure you hit that follow button and let’s dive into this episode.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
In the last episode I shared my five step process for setting and achieving any goal. If you haven’t listened to that one yet, you don’t have to go back and listen right this second, you’re still going to get so much out of this episode. I do highly recommend listening to it though, so maybe that’ll be your play next episode if you haven’t listened to it. It’s really one you’re going to want to refer to again and again.
I wanted to follow that episode on goal setting with sharing one of the obstacles that is likely to arise when you set a goal or set out to create something new in your interior design business. The topic I want to talk about today is follow through, doing what you say you’re going to do, or doing what you say you want to do. And I call this self-accountability.
Often we talk about holding others accountable, but what about you? Do you honor your commitments to yourself? This is such an important skill in any area of your business, and especially so with goal setting where you’re having to hold the vision for something greater. And you’re going to need to engage in small consistent habits and actions for a while in order to see yourself making progress or attaining the goal.
We’re going to dive into all of this, but first, I have another podcast winner, ding, ding, ding. I’m excited. This winner is Penno Interiors, and they write, “Valuable takeaways for all designers. Desi’s podcast is packed full of vital information to thrive as a business owner in our industry. I also highly recommend her coaching group, Out Of Overwhelm, where Desi doesn’t take I don’t know for an answer.” That is right. They also say, “Everything she does pushes you to understand your business and your busyness, congrats Desi.”
Well thank you Penno Interiors. I loved working with you and I loved that you took the time to submit this review. I will be sending you an email and we’ll make sure to get you your $50 gift card to Jayson Home. And if you, listener, want to enter to win, you’ve got another week to enter the giveaway. Just go to desicreswell.com/podcast launch. That will give you all of the instructions on how to enter the giveaway so you can win a $50 gift card to Jayson Home.
Let’s dive into today’s topic of follow through or self-accountability now. I’m really excited to talk about this, can you tell? All right, so let’s talk about how is this or the lack of self-accountability showing up in your business? Let’s get some awareness to start. It might be in the form of telling yourself you’re going to send out invoices on Friday, and then repeatedly deciding to do it next week. Except next week is always next week, and next week, and next week.
It might be deciding you want to leave the office at five, but continuing to do just one more thing. If you could see me right now I’m doing the air quotes with my fingers, “just one more thing,” And when you look up it’s 7pm. It can look like always putting your client’s needs first. It might be setting an income goal for the year and then avoiding looking at your numbers on a regular basis.
Or it could be saying you’re going to give yourself one hour today to devote to marketing or to take a walk, do something for yourself. But you let the time on the clock simply roll by. It could be any of those things or a variety of other things, it’s where you’re not honoring the commitments and priority that you have set for yourself.
The other interesting thing here is that if you’re having trouble holding others accountable, like maybe your clients, or your contractors, or your team, you’re probably not holding up your end of the deal with yourself either. So this is another way that this self-accountability challenge can come up.
What I want you to see here is that the skill of self-accountability, or doing what you say you’re going to do for yourself, not because anyone else is watching, touches every single aspect of your business. Before we move on I want to clarify something, I often see designers mistaking self-accountability with discipline. There’s a really important difference.
I’ll often hear this in the form of, “I just need to be more disciplined.” This is how a lot of you talk about following through on plans, or goals, or routines, or habits. We could argue that there is some overlap between self-accountability and discipline, but I want you to check in with how you feel when you tell yourself, I need to be more disciplined.
For many of my clients when they tell themselves “I need to be more disciplined” they feel pressured, inadequate, constrained, or forced. You always want to check in with how a thought is feeling to see if it’s useful. Those feelings I listed do not feel good.
And if you remember the self-coaching model I shared in episode two, Overwhelm is Optional, you will remember that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings fuel our actions, and our actions produce our results.. And if telling yourself you need to be more disciplined is making you feel bad, if we just speak about the emotions of broader terms, you’re going to have bad feeling, dirty fuel for your action.
You’re probably going to end up engaging in rebellious behavior or avoiding behavior. Maybe that would be like, I’m not going to follow my calendar, I don’t have to. Kind of like a two year old who doesn’t want to be told what to do. And that’s the exact opposite of what you want.
There’s this cycle that I see so often when it comes to telling yourself you need to be disciplined. What this looks like is you get fed up with your current circumstances, so you declare a goal or a habit or a routine. You get really excited and hopeful about this change, and then you get started pushing through using willpower and discipline to get yourself to do these things through force.
And then get overwhelmed or exhausted from trying to do too much, too soon, too hard, and doing it in a way where you feel like your own disciplinarian. And then what happens is you quit whatever you’re doing, it’s very all or nothing. You might blame yourself for not following through or might even blame others, as in, well I could do this if it wasn’t for X, Y, Z.
You’re not going to do anything anymore then. You’re going to get fed up with yourself because you’re blaming yourself and judging yourself for not following through. Or you’re going to get fed up with the current circumstances again, and then you’re just going to end up repeating the whole cycle.
It doesn’t actually get you anywhere if you are not served by the thought or the belief, “I need to be more disciplined.” It also has this underlying identity piece of I am not someone who’s disciplined, right? If you’re telling yourself I need to be more disciplined, what you’re doing is actually reinforcing the belief about yourself that you are not someone who honors their word or follows through.
And when we don’t see ourselves as someone who is more than capable of honoring our own word, we’re much less likely to take action to reinforce that belief. So just notice if you’re telling me you need to be more disciplined as if it’s just reporting the news. Maybe you’re wrong about that story or you want to choose to think about following through in a way that actually would support you and the actions you want to take. That was my big side note, just to make sure we’re extra clear on that.
Now, now that you have a better understanding of what self-accountability is and what it’s not, and also how it’s impacting your business on a daily and long-term basis, let’s talk about how you can begin to build the skill, because it truly is a skill that you can develop for yourself. And just like any other skill, it’s going to be something that you work on. You’re not always going to get it right. You’re not always going to follow through.
But if you stay committed to the process and to becoming someone who does follow through, you will get better at it over time and there will be less friction each time you’re in a position where you’re asking yourself to follow through.
And this is why I work with clients in Out Of Overwhelm for six months, and sometimes even beyond that where clients will do multiple rounds, because with all of these changes, we’ve spent our whole lives doing things one way, and so it’s natural to take a little bit of time to ingrain these new habits. You’re going to potentially stumble with self-accountability, and I want you to have support as you get back at it so that you become stronger and wiser.
So I just want to put that out there too, that it is normal to not go to not accountable to yourself to fully accountable to yourself, which let’s be honest, being fully accountable to yourself is not even an attainable goal. But going from that zero to 60 is not reasonable to expect of yourself and it’s really going to hold you back in developing this skill.
I want to give you three key tips that you can start with today to build this skill of accountability for yourself. The very first one is deciding what you want to think about your relationship with self-accountability. You might not want to think of yourself as a disciplinarian who you have to obey. You might not want to think about yourself or the idea of being self-accountable as being a mean boss. You’re the boss of you, and you can be a nice boss who has firm but loving expectations.
You can choose to think of being self-accountable as a way of supporting your present and future self. One of the reasons follow through can be challenging is because often there isn’t an immediate consequence of not following through. If you don’t spend an hour today working on your systems, you don’t have an immediate repercussion. Or if you don’t go to the gym, today, you’re not all of a sudden unhealthy, you just kind of were where you were before. No better but also no worse.
And so many of you are used to waiting to take action until there is a breaking point or you just kind of get so sick of your own crap that you finally do something about it. But it doesn’t have to get to those extremes. And looking at self-accountability as something that supports your future self and your future goals, and who you want to be, and what you want to achieve, and what you want to create, that is where you can create internal motivation.
You do have to train yourself to think this way. And one of the ways you can do that is by tying your daily actions to your larger business vision or goals. In the Interior Designers Get It Done Daily Planner, which you can download for free by going to desicreswell.com/planner or clicking the link in the show notes, there’s a question I provide you that will help you identify your priority for the day. So it’ll help with time management, and it’s also going to get you laser focused on why you actually want to do the thing you say is your priority.
So it’s a really easy way to link this is what I’m doing today, this is why I want to do it, and this is how it’s supporting me in the future. And that’s going to help you build that self-accountability. If you have not downloaded the planner, please do that immediately, it is so, so supportive. Designers love it.
The reason this works is because your primitive brain, the one that’s really concerned with immediate safety and pleasure isn’t looking out for your long-term benefit or interest. So you have to practice thinking about future benefits, and that requires you to use the higher, more evolved part of your brain. Because today’s actions are going to create future goals, and you need to consistently remind yourself of this as you build the skill of self-accountability.
You’re going to want to connect to that future version of you, so practice picturing yourself after having followed through on whatever is on your calendar or whatever the commitment is to yourself. And think about what are you believing about yourself after you’ve completed the task? That you’re so proud of yourself, that you’re someone who can do hard things, think about that.
How are you feeling? Are you feeling proud or accomplished? What is possible for you because you followed through? That’s one of my favorite questions, what is going to be possible after having done this? And it could be something that’s very short term, like I can just shut my brain off for the weekend and know I took care of business.
But it also could be what’s possible a year from now. What will my business look like because I’m putting in these small consistent actions that are going to create something greater in the future. It feels amazing to be looking at yourself this way. And the more you experience this for yourself, the more easily and more quickly you’ll be able to tap into this internal motivation.
The last tip I want to share with you is learning to treat yourself as the most important client you have. Think about this, whether it’s your client or your family, there are certain people you always show up for. You always do what you say you’re going to do for these people. And sometimes it’s even at your own expense, but you’re going to do the thing.
If you show up for others this way, I want you to really consider why are you not giving yourself the same level of respect? What do you think is different about you? Why does that level of commitment not apply to you and your business?
Often when I ask clients this question they’ll say, well, the client is paying me, or the client is waiting on me and will know if I didn’t do it. But guess what, you truly are no different. You are paying you, and one of the ways you pay yourself, and even give yourself a raise, is to build your business. Whether it’s growing it in terms of revenue, team members, projects serviced, maybe it’s streamlining it for efficiency, increasing your profitability. You are paying you.
You also know if you did something or not. Just because it’s not someone else looking over your shoulder or waiting for you at a job site, doesn’t mean that you don’t notice. You definitely know, so please stop telling yourself that the only way you can be accountable is if someone else is on the other end.
Often clients will even say to me they want me to hold them accountable. And certainly having someone who knows your goals and your challenges and what the changes are that you want to make in your life and business is immensely helpful. And at the same time, what I ultimately want for you as my client is that you become accountable for yourself because you see yourself as being that important.
You see your goals, your desires, what you want to create in your business, as that important. You are important enough to honor the commitments you make to yourself, even if you’re the only one who knows about them or the only one who cares.
When you practice the skill of self-accountability. So much is going to shift for you, both the tangible results in your business and the intangible results in your business. The way that you feel, the way that you see yourself, the way you show up in every single area of life, because let’s face it, you take you wherever you go. So inevitably, the work that you’re doing to become self-accountable in your business is going to show up in your personal life and your relationships outside of work. It’s going to show up everywhere.
And when you start to become self-accountable and can rely on yourself, you start to plan and set your goals in a way that really honors your capacity and current stage in life and business. Because when you’re self-accountable, you take your commitments so seriously that you’re much more selective about what you take on and what you say yes to and what you say no to. It requires you to be realistic about your planning because you know, hey, I’m actually going to do this thing.
And then when you’re not able to finish a task or complete a commitment, because let’s face it, life happens sometimes, you look for the lesson in whatever happened and whatever your part in it was so that you can improve in the future and use that lesson for you. You can become self-accountable, even without perfect follow through.
This really is about the identity you adopt as being someone who does what they say they’re going to do. So even when things don’t go as planned, you still know you can count on yourself to course correct. And this is just one of the many ways that you build self-trust. The relationship that you have with yourself is the most important relationship you have in your life, and you want this to be a trusting relationship.
When you have this high level of self-trust, you’re going to make consistent quicker progress. Whether that’s on a client project, a back end business task, or your big goal for the year. And there’s no more of this on again or off again the wagon business. We are not in the Wild West, there are no wagons anymore, okay? Let me just say that.
When you do this, you empower yourself to set bigger goals because you’re showing yourself what you’re really capable of. And you’re also going to feel proud and accomplished and treat yourself with care.
The other thing that happens is your time management skills become so sharp because you want to set yourself up for success with your planning so that it becomes easy to follow through. And when you do that, it’s so much easier to say no to things, to set boundaries, to keep your focus on what it is that’s in front of you.
It also becomes easier to manage your team and project partners when you know how to uphold commitments to yourself. Because there is that certain level of discomfort that we must go through when we are upholding commitments to ourselves, when we don’t feel like doing it, when it feels hard.
And when we learn to be comfortable with that discomfort, which I talked about in a previous episode which we’ll link in the show notes. But when you become comfortable with that discomfort, it becomes so much easier to then hold space for that discomfort when you’re holding others accountable and holding them to your level of expectation as well.
So I want you to remember that being self-accountable is a supportive gift you give to yourself. It is not a punishment or a way of caging yourself in. Learning to follow through is a skill you’re going to practice and get better at over time. Doing this whole self-accountability thing imperfectly is what is going to help you get better at it, not trying to do it perfectly from the get-go.
I want you to focus on these three things as you’re working on building the skill of follow through. The first thing you’re going to do is decide what you want to think about your relationship with self-accountability. The second thing is going to be training yourself to tie your daily actions to your larger business vision or goals.
Remember, you’re going to practice doing this using your free copy of the Get It Done Daily Planner, go to the show notes and your copy will be sent directly to your inbox when you click on the link and enter your email address.
The last thing I want you to focus on is to start treating yourself as the most important client you have. I want you to just picture yourself six months from now. And if you focused on just this one piece alone, treating yourself as if you are that important client, what would shift for you in your business? What are the results you could create? What would be different for you for the better because of this reverence for yourself?
The benefits of building the skill of self-accountability truly are endless. That’s why I have an entire module on it in my program Out Of Overwhelm. Just this one module, the impact it could have on your life is worth the investment of the program on its own. And that is why I wanted to do this topic today, because it’s goal setting time, it’s thinking fresh, thinking about where we want to be a year from now and this skill is so, so important. So give this one a try, I gave you lots of ways to practice self-accountability and get started with this today.
That’s what I’ve got for you for this episode. In the next episode I’ll be back to sharing with you in real time with a new topic and until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
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