Hold Yourself Accountable

The Scoop

• Why are we so quick to judge others and hold others accountable? It’s typically a reflection of ourselves.
• Social media has created a landscape that makes it easy to judge the actions of others, especially strangers. The rhetoric is a little bit dangerous because of the mob mentality that can accompany it.
• We’ve become so quick to be accountability kings and queens that we sometimes place anger and misuse towards those who fall into the minority which is totally unfair.
  

Links & Currently Reading

Late to the game but I finally read Where the Crawdads Sing and wow, what an incredible story. STRONGLY recommended!

 

Transcription

**This is a direct transcription of the podcast and is not meant to read perfectly. 

 

Hello everybody. It has been a while. I know.

 

Woohoo, I need to do a podcast. I think just on letting things be sometimes, as they are because I had so much anxiety about not being able to record podcasts and release them on the schedule that I wanted and kind of had originally designated, which was weekly. But as you guys all know, life happens and sometimes things are just out of our control and there’s only so much that we can do and there’s only so much that we can commit to

And so I found myself in a situation where I just simply was not able to do what I needed to do. To also record podcasts in conjunction with everything else I have to do in my life. So here we are, overly long time later and, you know, I also accept with myself about it and

Eventually was just like it is what it is. It’s fine. This is something that I do as a labor of love. I’ve super, super super enjoy it and I love getting messages from people that they like my shows and they like what I have to say and they like the content and especially when I get it from people who I don’t know and it feels you know like I’m helping people think about things in a different way and that’s so much fun for me. So instead of beating myself up about it I’m like it’s okay and I’m going to just keep having fun with it when I can. So here we are.

 

And today I want to talk about accountability, which Probably sounds. So lame and boring, but just bear with me and it came from. And I want to tell you the story. So it came from, I was scrolling through Instagram one night because who doesn’t, and there was a post about from an influencer, like a mom blogger about, you know, how obnoxious it is that women who had babies are expected to bounce back so quickly. This is called like bounce back culture.

 

And after you have a kid it’s like how quickly can you put your jeans on and you know how quickly do you lose the baby weight and all of these things and you know, whatever and the main. Yes, I definitely felt some of that pressure with my first but I didn’t necessarily feel that way because of other people and this is obviously just my experience. I’m not saying that everyone feels this way and I’m not saying everyone should feel this way, but I’m just sharing with you kind of where I came from. I just care a lot about being healthy. I care a lot about being in shape,

 

I work really hard to do those things. So for me, it was a pressure that I put on myself and the posts that was on Instagram that I read. Had so many comments. I mean, like probably over a thousand comments. If people just bashing women who bounced back quickly about, you know, bashing people who were, you know, never really had a big belly. Bouncing, a bashing people who, you know, were looked like, they never had a kid right after they had a kid. I mean, it was just really angry.

 

Agree. It’s really aggressive and I just was it totally rubbed me the wrong way. Because I feel like we can argue, of course, that we need to have body acceptance for everybody, but somehow the people who are the minority tend to be the people that we don’t want to accept. Because that isn’t the common thing that isn’t the norm, it isn’t Norm to have a completely flat stomach. Again, right after you have a kid and put your jeans on the next day, like that’s really not the normal thing. So, somehow those people and I should clarify

 

To. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. I’m just kind of stating something that I’ve observed on social media especially which is like I feel like if you don’t fall into the majority then you tend to kind of be excluded and ostracized and people can say some really awful things about you as well. And I think it’s unfair and not just some of the comments that I was reading were very you know it’s just not realistic and it’s not but that is their reality really? I mean and I’m not you know, I don’t want to sound super naive and um obviously there are influencers.

 

And people on social media who Photoshop and lie about one pictures were taken. I am aware of all of that and it just, I mean, one way or that doesn’t really matter that much to me personally, but I do feel like those who kind of go a little bit viral for being a outside of that majority tend to just receive a lot of heat. And I think the point of what I’m saying isn’t that we should all feel bad for super thin lean people who bounced back right away. But I think the bigger question

 

Is why is it that we are so obsessed with holding everybody on the internet and everybody around us so accountable when we’re likely not holding ourselves accountable the way that we should be holding ourselves accountable, right? So, when I was reading these comments, it was, you know, a lot of people are just like, oh, they probably have so much money and they probably have so much help and they probably have so much time and they, you know, they have good genes and this and that and you know, which may be all of these things are true. Maybe some of them are true, maybe it’s true for some people and not others. But what I, what I was reading was really a scapegoat for people who I think we’re not kind of looking at the things that make them feel triggered, or make them feel happy or make them feel upset. They weren’t really taking those things into consideration. It turned into, how can I direct these things? That trigger me into bashing somebody else for how they might appear on social media, and it just felt all really backwards. It was, I think intended to be a post that was like, Hey, body acceptance and Mom’s. You don’t have to do it all.

 

And we should be accepting and turned into really well. Like, if you your only okay in normal, if you don’t, bounce back right away, right? And also who’s, I mean, you know, who determines what right away means? I don’t know, you know, I will say that I, you know, I was back at my Zumba class teaching after four weeks and I was able and fortunate enough to have a healthy pregnancy where I was able to teach my Zumba class in CrossFit pretty much until the day before I delivered. And, you know, that’s obviously not everybody situation and a lot of people have health issues, but

 

I also didn’t use pregnancy as an excuse to just do less just because I was pregnant. Did I take some time off when I felt tired? Of course, did I have anemia? Absolutely, I have to take care of that but I, you know, I just continued the lifestyle that I had been living and working on before I Was Pregnant and So that worked well for me. And in my mind for weeks is a long time. It’s like, oh my gosh, I been in the gym in a month, you know, but and for others, it was outrageous. I mean people actually said some comments to me that were a little bit almost

 

If I mean, they would have been offensive if I cared enough, I didn’t care enough to be emotionally bothered by it. But you know, it’s just like, wow, I just can’t believe that you’d come back so soon or like who’s watching your baby and you know you don’t have to prove anything to anybody and it was just it felt like such a projection. It’s like the fact that you think I’m trying to prove something to you makes me feel like you instantly feel like you have to prove something to me and I don’t see it that way, you know. So the whole premise of this podcast, I think came from a place of I think we are obsessed.

 

Test with holding people accountable, especially on social media when we don’t actually look in the mirror and ask ourselves. Are we accountable for how we feel about ourselves the things that we could do to feel better about ourselves?

 

What triggers Us in forming opinions, and judgments about other people. And that’s, you know, I mean, that’s really what I want to kind of dig apart right now and I kind of use this example a long time ago. And it was a really great example that I read in a book about how we really are, you know, when we’re born and throughout our lives and as we become, adults were in the back seat of the car. Someone’s driving the car. And then, eventually, we can sit in the passenger seat and then, eventually you sit in the driver’s seat of the car. And that is you being a

 

Role of your life, you can control the air conditioning. You can control what music is playing. You can choose to wear seat belts or not, you can choose to put your lights on if it’s if it’s dark out, there are so many things that start to come with responsibilities over time that you that requires you to think about the decisions you’re making in the consequences they have. And I think that sometimes people, especially those who are very quick to judge other people and try and hold other people around them accountable where we’re not, probably wearing her seatbelt and Maybe we don’t have a foot on the gas or the break, you know, or whatever is going on. It’s like we’re not really doing the things that we need to do to be happy with ourselves and so it’s very easy to project those things on to other people and I think that’s really bad. I think that’s not a good thing to do. I think it’s not a healthy way to be and I think I think we could all be a lot happier and better off. If we did that before we went to the other thing, which is passing judgment on people and I obviously and you guys hear me say this all the time and I still struggle with this. I mean I’m not constantly like oh let me check myself and you know never judge anybody else.

Like of course I mean I’m a human but I do try and stop and ask myself if I feel like if I see something on social media or I hear something on a podcast or you know, friend says something to me and my knee-jerk reaction is to say something that’s judgmental or to form an opinion about them, especially if it’s not very nice. I have to ask myself like, what about that? Triggered something in me, you know, is it an insecurity of my own possibly actually? I feel like that’s very likely. Is there some sort of trauma that happened in my life? That makes me think that the way that somebody else is doing something isn’t the right way. I mean, there’s so many reasons why you could feel that way, I think it does come from a place of self-esteem and confidence and uncertainty and I just find myself saying, you know, the more that I can be happy with myself and the things that I’m doing to make myself a better person, the less likely, I feel that I’ll be triggered by other people in their comments or their pictures or their conversations. So I feel this to be true.

Actually, with most regards in our life, I think I found the right relationship for myself when I was happiest with myself, when I was trying to fill happiness with other people, doing things for me, I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t attracting the right person. I think in order to be a good person, a good friend, a good mom, a good significant other, a good daughter.

Son, whatever it is. I think you have to be really happy with how you’re doing things on your own, because it’s too fragile to place your happiness in the hands of other people or other ideas or other things. So, if you’re the type of person that says, hey, when I’m pregnant, or if I get pregnant, or I’m pregnant now, and I want to give myself two months to bounce back, which obviously everyone hates that term, but you know what, I mean, to put my jeans back on, or I want to give myself, six months, we’re going to give myself a whole year.

Or I think it’s a matter of saying, what’s going to make me feel supported? What is going to make me feel like I’m doing the right thing for myself and not. What is everyone on Instagram doing? You know, what are the skinny people doing? What are the body acceptance people doing? What are the athletes doing? I think it’s about saying, what what can I do to make myself feel like I’m on the right track for me and in my case that was getting back to the gym, in four to six weeks, that was something that was really important to me if everything went to plan. I did not.

 

Have to have a C-section so that was doable, you know, and I made that happen. And so I was holding myself to my own standards. And, you know, also trying to be flexible that if I didn’t make it back then it was still okay. I have the rest of my life to work out. So I wasn’t trying to base how I wanted to feel how I want it to look how I want to get back in shape based on what other people might think is right or wrong. And definitely everyone had an opinion for me. It was based on what

 

Oh, I felt was right for me and so whether I would have made it back in that time frame or not, I would have been okay with it because it wasn’t for somebody else. And that is accountability. It’s holding myself to a standard that I decide not that somebody else decides. So, I think it’s interesting when we talk about this bounce back culture because you know, one, I just, I’m not that person that like

 

Lights up different phrases and terms and drugs into the coals. I mean gosh, we have to have like language, right? So bounce back, I mean, whatever, however you want to word it, it’s like in my mind, bouncing back mean is ongoing, you know, there’s not like a start and a stop date to bouncing back after a kid. And if you’ve had a kid, you know what I mean by that. When I went back to the gym at four weeks, I started to bounce back. Right? From like that whole thing. But I could say that I’m still that, I mean it’s like I’m still bouncing back, like, I’m still

 

Always improving and getting better and you know pregnancy changes your whole body and your whole life. So you know, it’s just not this like start and stop date which I think is probably why it has such a negative connotation, but you just continue to bounce back and that’s that can be a positive thing and it doesn’t have to be something that’s so angry and filled with so much aggression which that’s not the only post that I saw on social media that I’ve seen. That is like so aggressive. It’s almost like you’re either, okay. With people just free for all along, you know, or it’s like you’re you

 

No, you’re on this other side of like what seems unrealistic like what the celebrities do, or what? Like these big influencers do. And I think that in itself is a problem. It’s like, you don’t have to put yourself in a camp. You should put yourself in Camp yourself, right? Like, whatever is going to work for you. So I feel like I keep kind of nailing that down, but I think it’s just that important to understand. That accountability isn’t about just doing something because you say you’re going to do it, it’s doing something because you say that you want to do it.

 

The other thing that I think is really important and this is just something that I was thinking about when I was reading some of these comments is I think that when we think of accountability, sometimes we think about doing it. All right? Being an overachiever going nonstop, looks like okay, work full time, I have a child, I have a husband, I’m always making dinner, I’m doing the groceries, I’m working out all the time, I teach them but it’s like, yeah, if you look at my schedule on paper, it looks pretty crazy, right? And that’s what I like. I mean that’s I love that.

 

I have people in my family who are always, like, you should just calm down, like, just do a little less, like, take it easy and it’s like, what this isn’t hard for me. It’s challenging in some ways, but I like it, if I’m not busy, I’m not happy that’s fulfilling for me. That’s my accountability. You know, I like to take vacation, I like to take days off. I like to watch movies. I like to read books, like I do things for myself that our downtime but this is my accountability and I think that’s part of the thing.

 

One of the things about accountability, that’s really important to remember too. Is that accountability means also being accountable for caring for yourself. It means being accountable for taking a day off. It means being accountable for getting a massage for getting eight hours of sleep for watching the show that you want to watch every night on Netflix like it matters that matters to. So accountability isn’t just about going above and beyond its once again, deciding what’s going to work for you and setting those standards for yourself and not being influenced by other people.

 

To do one thing or the other. If you grew up in a family or you live in a household, where accountability just means du du du du du and burnout. That’s not great accountability because I’m assuming that’s probably not how you want to feel, you know, you probably want to take some time out, you want a work-life balance or just some balance in general. So, you know, I think we also come back to this idea, especially when accountability feels so triggering. Oh, they’re doing this. And that seems unrealistic. And that seems unfair is that it has to be one way or

 

Or the other. And it’s just, not every single person is different. Everybody’s lives are different. We all have different things going on. We all have access to different resources. We all have different privilege. So, when we talk about about accountability, and what we want to accomplish, whether it’s a daily goal goal in 10 years, I mean, it doesn’t really matter. It’s really about deciding what’s going to work for you. And I think that part of the responsibility of accountability is making sure.

 

That we’re not dragging other people for sharing different forms of accountability for themselves. You know, I think that that’s super counterproductive and I think it’s really negative. So if I see somebody who you know, is back to the gym and two weeks or six months, like it doesn’t, it’s not about comparison. Their accountability, doesn’t anything to do with mine. That’s what they did. And so whatever that looks like for them whether it’s better or worse and other people’s eyes than mine. That’s not really

 

Lee what it’s about. So I think my bigger Point here is how can we shift away from holding everybody else around us accountable and holding ourselves accountable and seeing how it changes, how we view, other people around this. And that’s something that I’m working on, obviously all the time and I really want to set that example for my kids, you know, is that we have to work on ourselves, you know? And and and make sure that we’re always being compassionate to the people around us and I really strongly believe that.

 

If we can do that we can and will make the world a better place, and we are the person that other people want to be around and want to support and want to love and want to become too as well. So, I would encourage you guys to also do the same. When you find yourself looking at a post on social media that feels triggering to you, or makes you want to say something negative, or mean, ask yourself where it’s coming from, is it because you feel some insecurities about that? Is it because you think that they are doing it the wrong way, or because they’re lying and it’s not real. I mean, again, not trying to be insensitive to people who are quite, obviously, you know, plastic surgery all the time and denying it, or photoshopping things and it’s, you know, obvious in that regard. But just ask yourself how you can continue to be The Driver of the car, you know, be in control of your life and find ways to make yourself happy without making it miserable and without playing the comparison game. Until next time,

 

 

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