2024 - Year of Acceptance // Accountability

02 Jun, 2024

At the end of my 2023 theme review I mentioned how I started the year thinking this would be the Year of Foundation Repair. A redo of my 2022 theme, fixing all the cracks and damage done over 2023. However, after a couple of months of inaction and continuing to feel lost, I scrapped it and started over, looking for a theme

It was when i was going through some old therapy notes trying to kickstart that up again that the first word came to me.

Acceptance

Acceptance doesn’t come naturally to me, usually because it gets equated to with ‘giving up’ in my head.

I’m a thinker, a planner, a problem solver. If there’s an issue, I should be able to figure it out. If it’s a problem with myself, I should be able to control/master/overcome it. If I can’t beat it, I should be able to find a way around it. I should be able to achieve a positive result, no matter the circumstances.

This is why I squirmed a little when my therapist asked me what I thought of the word ‘humility’.

I did some pretty good work both during and after therapy on this, but that was over 2 years ago now and a lot of it started to slide once we bought our house. Familiar thought patterns started arising: I should be able to sort the roof out, I should be able to sort the garden out, I should be able to sort all of our bills out and prepare for upcoming problems and emergencies. On and on and on.¹

As time went on, I lost more and more objectivity and asked less ‘is this actually in my control?’ and more ‘how do I make it within my control?’. This was usually followed with frustration because the reality that there are an infinite number of things outside of my control is a tough pill to swallow.

That’s the bad news. The good news is I have a ton of past work on this on which to build on, and it’s never too late to start again.

Still, it felt like there was something missing. It felt a bit airy, like it didn’t capture the full picture of what I was going for. That’s when the second word hit.

Accountability

There are an infinite amount of things outside of my control. On the flip side, there are a finite number of things within my control.

I can’t control the fact that I have a relatively severe mental health problem. I can control how I react to it. I can put the necessary checks and balances in, and I can try to control my reaction to my failure.

I can’t control my past failures nor their results. I can control my future effort, whether that’s in my career, towards my health, my relationships, etc.

I can’t shut up that inner critic. That perfectionist asshole who picks apart everything and pushed me to give up before I start. I can learn to live with it and work around it to get a result.

But there’s also literal accountability I need to deal with. I’m very good at finding reasons not to do something and to keep the status quo. Even better than that, I’m very good at finding legitimate reasons not do so. My chronic fatigue is playing up, I need to focus entirely on home life today, I need to rest for my depression. All legit, but not always helpful, and not always the whole picture. Sure my energy levels may be shot, for example, but does that mean I really can’t go to the gym? Or can I go sit on a bike for 20 minutes and do something?

There are a finite amount of things that I can do to better myself and others that are within my control. I need to own that, whilst keeping Acceptance in my mind. Some days I literally can’t do things, others I’m taking the easy way out. I need to do a better job of discerning that and acting accordingly.

Ideal outcomes

Ideal outcomes for the Year of Acceptance:

• Re-engage with my weekly self-therapy sessions, with a focus on accepting what is and isn’t out of my control
• Develop my mental toolbox: a collation of ideas, books, quotes, and practices to help ground and stabilise me
• Develop a daily mindfulness practice
• Re-read key books that have helped me in the past
• Create my acceptance space on my wall

Ideal outcomes for the Year of Accountability:

• Weekly/MonthlyQuarterly/Annual reviews: get them codified and back on track. Keep me accountable.
• Research decision journaling, a technique I’ve been interested in but never put the time in on.
• Figure out what my goals are and how to make them realistically achievable (or at least figure out the direction to take)
• Refine my time tracking process - keep me accountable for how I’m spending my time
• Refine my routines for summer and winter
• Aim to make less excuses both publicly and privately - apologise, correct, and move on
• Improve my time keeping - be punctual

Conclusion

I actually feel two main things about this dual theme: hope, and vulnerable.

Ultimately, both themes are positive, and point towards an outlook that I was working on in my therapy. But just as in therapy, it’s forcing me to really check my ego and re-structure that coping strategy I’ve ‘relied’ on for so long: I can and should be able to do anything I need to do.

It’s served me well in many spots, none more so in recent memory than buying the house, and when I was made redundant in the pandemic. It’s also counter-productive in a wider variety of scenarios, and there’s a better way to be. Or at least, I choose to hope there is.

I’ve already got some words buzzing around for the potential follow on themes, but let’s see how this one goes first shall we?

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Footnotes

#yearly_theme