E232: The Power of Accountability: Finding Support on Your Habit Journey

If healthy habits were so easy to create and implement into our lives, there’d be a lot more iconic people in the world. People who would be crushing their goals, making a more meaningful impact, and enjoying optimal health.

So what separates the people who succeed with their high-level goals, and the ones that don’t make it past the first few days?

In today’s episode of the Women’s Empowerment Podcast, I’m going to share how one powerful tool can increase your chances of success by 95%..

Stats from the American Society of Training and Development

[00:35] Here are the facts: the researches at the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) found the following information in regards to your chances of completing a goal:

Having an idea or goal: will make you 10% more likely to complete it

This makes sense, if you didn’t have any goals, then there would be no way to measure your success or achievements. They also found that…

Consciously deciding that you will do it: makes you 25% more likely to complete the goal.

When we consciously make a decision, it means that we are fully aware of our choices. It means that we have considered the options, weighed the pros and cons,and made the decision. According to the ASTD doing this increases your chances of success by 25%. Wonderful!

I think we can do better! Apparently when you…

Decide WHEN you will do your goal, it can increase your chance of success by 40%

Something I teach in my Transform Your Habits Course is an implementation formula or implementation intention. This is writing out, and consciously deciding, what habit you want to implement AND WHEN. The formula goes like this:

I will [habit] at [time] in [location].

This formula helps a lot of people create their goals, and make their goals more obvious to do. A big part of why people don’t succeed in their habit-formation is because they have an idea of what their new habit is, however they haven’t thought about how, where, or when this habit is meant to fit into their daily lives.

Insert the implementation intention formula. Writing out this simple sentence brings more awareness and clarity into the new habits and behaviours we’re creating. You can try it yourself! Share your implementation intention in the comments below this video, or let me know on instagram @vallavignelife

Okay, 40% increase in the likelihood of achieving your goal is great, but here’s how you can bump it up to 50%. According to ASTD…

Planning how to do your goal can increase the likelihood of achieving it by 50%

You may have heard the quote, "A goal without a plan is just a wish." by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Having a plan for your goal and habits means you have broken that goal down into smaller actionable steps. Again, this is supporting the clarity of your new behaviour and makes it more possible for you to do.

Part of working with me in our 1:1 Make a Habit Mentorship is that after each of our sessions, yes even the first one, you leave with an action plan. I always say that the magic happens when you’re in action – even if the action is small!

While I encourage my clients to follow the plan we’ve co-created, it’s important to note that the plan can be flexible and adjusted as we make progress and can better understand how the plan works in action. I also want to add to this plan piece and say that setting dates for certain points of the plan, and blocking the time out in a calendar can be extremely helpful for implementation.

There’s another way you can increase your chances of success with your goal, and that is by…

Committing to someone that you will do it. This increases your chances by up to 65%!

There is power in sharing your goal with another person. I feel like this stat is great for leaders, and managers to keep in mind when working with others. Whether that’s for the manager to commit to their employee, or the employee to make a commitment to the manager.

Later in this episode I’m going to dive into the details of different types of accountability and how they can help you achieve more! Speaking of accountability, our final stat from ASTD is…

Having a specific accountability appointment with someone you’ve committed to increases your chance of completing your goal by 95%

YES! You are 95% more likely to complete a goal when you have a regular accountability meeting with a specific person you’ve committed to.

In my 1:1 Make a Habit Mentorship program, we have meetings together every other week, with voxer support in between our calls. That means you’re able to stay on track with your plan and create success in your goals.

Having this process in place, allows us to identify what’s working, what isn’t and stay in alignment with your goals along the way.

This ASTD statistic makes so much sense to me because I see this in action when I’m working with people. In our group Healthy Habit Membership, the members who are most successful, are the ones who are showing up to our monthly workshops, asking questions, and utilizing the voxer they have access to every week.

Sure, it’s not the same 1:1 connection and in-depth accountability, however it is there and it works, if you work it. “It” being the tools and systems provided.

Types of Accountability

[05:49] Accountability is available to everyone, not just people who work with me. There are so many types of accountability we can take advantage of, the trick is finding the one that works for YOU and your new behaviours.

Let’s take a look at the different types of accountability.

We’ve covered that Working with a Coach/Mentor is the best way to see your goal through. This is because working with a coach – actually let me rephrase this. I’ve worked with many coaches, some have been incredibly helpful, and others… not so much. Working with the right coach for you, and a good coach, will mean that you have regularly scheduled meetings that are specific to you and your goal.

When women work with me one-on-one, we have the specific goal of working together, as well as the specific goal of the meeting. This clarity and organization help my clients stay on track, and highlight what is working, and what isn’t. The expectations are set and clear, and the action steps are laid out.

There’s also Social Accountability. This could be anything from sharing your goals on social media or telling your community of friends and coworkers what you’re working toward. Most of the time, when you share your goals with people you see on a regular basis, they’ll want updates on your progress and want to ask you how things are going with your new routines.

I’ll even add to this one and say, if you can share your habits socially and also declare that you’ll be doing updates every week for example on your social media.

If you don’t want to share your goals with your entire Instagram audience, you can seek out an Accountability Buddy. This is a friend who you check-in with on your habit, or they might also do the habit with you! Perhaps you’re both going to the gym at the same time every week. Or maybe you both want to avoid alcohol so instead of happy hour meet ups, you meet for a pedicure date. If your buddy isn’t doing the habit with you, you can ask them to check in on you every so often and help encourage you along your journey. In return, you can hold them accountable to their own goals.

Similar to an accountability buddy, you can use Healthy Competition as accountability. This can be done with another person, or a group of people to compete against each other to reach the goals. This type of accountability works really well when everyone is going for the same goal, and if you can see each other's progress along the way. Peloton does this really well. With the Peloton app you can follow friends, set workout dates and workout to the same video even if you’re in different physical locations. Through the app you can also visit your friend’s profiles and see what workouts they’re doing and what progress they’re making. If you’re a competitive person, or have competitive friends, this might be a great option for you!

An overlooked type of accountability is a Habit Tracker. There are so many different types of trackers or methods of tracking, and I could probably do a whole podcast episode on it. For simplicity’s sake, let’s discuss the most basic – yet effective – form of tracking your habit: marking a calendar.

Jerry Seinfeld has been named one of the top 100 comedians of all time. His method for being a better comedian, now known as the “Seinfeld Strategy” is to write a joke every single day. To help him do this, he got a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hangs it on a wall he sees daily. Then get a big red marker and for each day that he wrote a joke, he got to put a big red X over that day. After a few days, you start to see a chain. Seinfeld says, “Your only job is not to break the chain.”

When we work together, whether that’s one-on-one, in the group membership, or through my Transform Your Habits Course, I always supply a tracker. It’s totally up to you to use it, but it’s always there.

In fact, our Healthy Habit members in the group coaching program receive these trackers at the start of every month, and a blank 28-day tracker lives inside their bonus resources in their membership portal. So you don't have to start tracking a habit at the beginning of a month, you can start today!

Another idea for accountability is to have Milestone Celebrations/Prizes. I like these for bigger goals that we’ve broken down into smaller steps. Let’s say the big goal has 100 steps. How can you celebrate or incentivise yourself every 10 steps you take? This can be fun and help boost motivation early in the habit formation because it has you dreaming up what you’ll be doing 10 steps from now. The more meaningful the incentive/prize, the more likely you’ll be to reach it because you want it that much more.

The last type of accountability I want to share with you today is Alerts and Reminders. I like these because they can be automated. For example, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday an alarm goes off on my phone at 11:11am to remind me to connect to my feeling words: Joy, Purpose, Strength. When I don’t set this alarm I go the whole day without thinking of my feeling words. While I usually use reminders and alerts as triggers for your habit, they can work really well for simpler habits, like the one I shared.

Surprisingly Satisfying

[11:11] I want to circle back to the habit tracker for a moment because I feel like this really simple method of building a habit is too often overlooked.

Your habit tracker, or your calendar like Jerry Seindfeld uses, is going to do something very powerful for you. Your habit tracker is going to show you your progress.

Making progress in your goals is one of the most satisfying rewards. Creating a new behaviour that is satisfying to you, will make you more likely to repeat that behaviour. The more you repeat the behaviour, the more it forms into an automatic habit.

Every night I use the app Duolingo to learn French. Some days I get through ten lessons, which is a big deal. And other days I only finish one or two. Duolingo doesn’t necessarily keep track of how many lessons I do each day, BUT it does keep track of how many days I complete a lesson.

At the time of this podcast recording I have completed 999 consecutive days of learning French with Duolingo! My consistency is very much because of how the app celebrates even your smallest progress! There are a lot of things this app does right, and automatically tracking my progress is one of them.

Automate Your Tracking

[12:28] When it comes to tracking habits, I think the main reason why people fail to track their habits is because doing the habit is already a new habit, to manually track that habit is an additional habit!

To overcome this obstacle, notice different apps or systems that can help you automate your tracking.

For example, there are a number of apps on my phone that keep track of my habits without me having to do anything extra.

My OURA ring app tracks all kinds of information from the number of steps I take to the amount of sleep I have.

The Insight Timer app tracks how many minutes of meditation I’ve completed. My Period Tracker app tells me what part of my cycle I’m in. And the settings on my iPhone track how many minutes I spend on every app I use.

I use an electronic calendar. If I open my calendar up right now, I can see how many workouts I’ve done this week, month, and even year because I schedule those workouts into my calendar.

Of course not all of our habits can be automatically tracked, but if you struggle with keeping track of your progress, think of ways you can automate or simplify your tracking.

Ways to Work with Me

[14:09] I feel like I’ve bragged about my services already, but I’m going to talk about them one more time with you because I am truly passionate about helping women like you!

If you’re watching or listening to this podcast episode, I feel that it is safe to say that you’re looking for support in your health and wellness.

Maybe you feel overwhelmed with all the information out there. Or perhaps you’ve tried to do things on your own but the new habits just aren’t sticking. Or maybe you’re craving change and don’t know where to get started.

Whether you’re stuck in these areas, or with something different or more specific, I feel you.

There was a time where I felt deeply trapped in bad habits, negative mindset, and I was hanging out with the “wrong crowd.”

I was all the things. I remember feeling lost, overwhelmed, confused, and hopeless.

I want to tell you that in one day, with the snap of two fingers I had figured out all of my problems and was on the path to brighter days!

But that’s not how it went at all.

I experimented with the books that came into my life, and the nudges I was getting to make a change. Because of what I went through I know now that transformation does not happen overnight or all at once. It happens through small, seemingly insignificant behaviours that bring you to your transformation over time.

I am now able to use my own journey and experience to help women take back their power and make a greater impact.

I lead by example with the habits, rituals, routines, and systems I’ve created with my own life and business and I do not share any methods that I haven’t already tried myself.

I’m sharing this with you because I believe you can have it all, with the right intentions and actions set in place.

I would love to work with you in creating your dream life, achieving your goals, and making your impact on the world.

If you’re just getting started with your habit journey, my new self-paced course is a great starting point. This is called Transform Your Habits and it’s available this month! In this course you’ll learn proven methods to help you create your habits and the implementation tips to start them today!

Transform Your Habits

Join the waitlist >> (squeeze page)

If you’re looking for community support and accountability mixed with some independence in your habit-formation journey, then our Healthy Habit Membership is for you. In the membership you have access to everything in the Transform Your Habits course, as well monthly workshop and coaching sessions, and weekly voxer support with me.

Healthy Habit Membership

Maybe you’ve been here a while and you’re ready to go deep with your habits and transformation. In that case we can work together more intimately in the 1:1 Make a Habit Mentorship program. This is where you’ll get the most access to me, as well as the most accountability with your new behaviours. This program is 100% customizable and guaranteed to improve your self-worth.

1:1 Make a Habit Mentorship

When you’re deciding who to work with, or partner with for your new habits, routines, rituals, and systems, make sure the person you’re working with is someone you trust to share your goals with and who can hold space for your journey of growth. You want someone who can keep you on track, and celebrate your wins!

If that’s me, I’d love to connect! Let’s chat in the comments below this video!

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!