Great gifts and skills come with great accountability.

The Impactmaker Movement is a fast-moving…movement. They say life is short and as a result, we don’t have a lot of time. Not so sorry to put pressure on you but you have a great responsibility.

We covered excuses and explanations last week so I feel bad about bringing these time wasters up again but I suppose it’s a good use of time to address them offensively.

Time Wasters

Think of all the things in your life that you consider a waste of time. I’ll venture a guess that many of them are actions. Here are some things that are a waste of my time:

making the bed (if no one will see it other than you that day)
putting dirty dishes in the sink
watching movies a second time (a first time in some cases)
trying to fix anything around the house
washing my car
spending time with “takers”
working for an unnoble cause
cutting down real Christmas trees (controversial, I know)

This is just a short list. I tried to give you a few funny ones and some more serious options. The point is that we all have opinions about things, especially in the moments actions are happening.

I think we need to be a bit more opinionated when we are not in the moment of an action. Think about the things that are mental time-wasters. Sure, cut out the actions if you can, but what if you spent less time thinking about things and more time doing?

The Accountable Summer

Most of the time I talk about my experience as a collegiate football player revolves around my cancer diagnosis, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and my subsequent struggle from all that happend when I was eighteen years old. I have mentioned this many times but see E-Impact 35 if you want to read more.

The spring semester after my cancer treatment ended I dove right into lacrosse season. This was the best thing for me as I needed a busy schedule to keep me on track. I was taking a full load of classes and participating fully in the season. I was pretty wiped by the time that summer came.

What do you do when you are wiped? You take a break!

Or, you push harder. At least that’s what I determined in the summer of 2002.

I had to stick around to take a summer class (make up for taking a light load in the fall during treatment) and train for football in the early part of the summer. Lacrosse season really helped me get my legs and lungs back and it was important to keep up the momentum. Also, football training focuses on strength and I needed to get in the weight room (speaking of weight, I lost about thirty pounds when I was being treated and hadn’t gained all of it back yet).

School’s Out for the Summer

The first summer session flew by and I was free to head home for a short break and was scheduled to go to Iowa for my annual Spoke Folk tour. See E-Impact 59 and 62 for more about this ministry that changed my life.

I would be lying if I didn’t start to find a little of my “invincible eighteen-year-old” confidence back (though I was 19 by then) at this point. It could have been easy to rest on my laurels but I tried to remember the motivation I had when I first made it to training camp about a year prior.

School was out but the work had just begun.

Back to High School

I remember taking home a workout routine with me that our strength and conditioning coach provided for the guys. This was my almanac but I needed some people to implement with - some accountability. I also needed a place to workout and wasn’t about to spend the money I didn’t have to get a local gym membership at a place that wouldn’t have the proper equipment. Instead, I went back to my high school.

This was a great environment for me. I would reconnect with some friends who had scattered all over the United States to play football (and hopefully go to school). We would come together (all with our collegiate workout books) and get some hard work in.

There were definitely times I didn’t want to get up and make the drive (about a half-hour) over to my high school (St. Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale - state football champs again in 2022). I know my former teammates felt the same but we kept each other motivated.

The excuses were something like:

I don’t want to drive all the way out there
I have stuff to do around the house (play video games)
My parents want me to mow the lawn
My girlfriend wants to hang out (this one wasn’t mine)
I don’t have gas
Today’s my day off (there were no days off!)

They were abundant and could have taken over without the accountability of friends.

Talent

I wasn’t the most talented football player (honestly, I have trouble saying that because I felt I was the best at certain parts of the game but it’s good to challenge yourself to be humble) but I felt a sense of responsibility to use what I had as best as possible. I needed to do everything I could to maximize what I had to help the team win when we came back for the 2022 season.

Talent is fleeting when you don’t train it.

Impactmakers have the equivalent of athletic talent in the form of a generous mindset. You want to do good in the world with whatever it is that you have. There’s no discrimination in this space. Your talents can be used for good. As a result, there is the pressure I mentioned above.

Accountable Impact

The best times that we have in life are those when we are fulfilling our mission. I can’t tell you your exact mission. I’m just here to encourage you to have a noble one.

Accountability works as a positive force in my life. I believe some people struggle to be accountable not because they are lazy or don’t want to accomplish things but because they are afraid of the results.

I always say that failures are hurdles of success. This premise only gets stronger as I speak with more and more people who have done great things. Greatness comes when you don’t expect it everywhere. In other words, you’re going to have tough times when you are held accountable. You might fear failure.

On the other hand, perhaps you don’t fear failure but you fear success. E-Impact 82 addresses this scenario. Either way, the roadblocks to progress are often related to what happens after you try.

Making Progress

The focus as you start or participate in an impact project should not be the result. This is your “why” but not your “what”.

The best organizations that I know, for-profit or non-profit, are able to be productive and inviting as a result of a generous culture. It’s not about the “amount of generosity” as much as it is about its presence.

You can hold you and your organization accountable by seeking small pieces of progress - specifically in your culture.

Expectations without a great environment are bound to falter.

The reason why a generous culture wins is that it affects everything you do. Expectations focus on specific things and are often tied to a metric or another form of measurement. The success is in the journey and you must account for the steps along the way.

Make sure you have a team environment where desire success for not only themselves but for the entire team. This provides three things:

An obtainable goal (their important, yet small piece of the overall mission)
A desire to help the people they work with
A realization that they will need the help of the people they work with

Notice the importance of relying on other people for success. People are inclined to be accountable to something when they know others are the same (regardless if they are present). It’s easy to find distractions and lose desire when you’re working towards something alone.

“No Man is an Island” by Tenth Avenue North is one of my favorite songs. It applies to all of life but it’s especially poignant here.

The fact that you can’t do it alone is ironically what will keep you motivated in those moments when you’re the only one around.

Making Fun

The generous culture makes things fun. You can’t deny the great feeling you get when you help someone accomplish a goal to which they are accountable.

I can’t say that training for football was always fun but I can say that we had some very fun times while doing it. When I came back to school after the summer of 2002, I found a great environment for me to enjoy the sport I loved again. There were times when I struggled to keep up physically (despite the training) but I always looked forward to playing and celebrating the great moments during a competition.

Our team was never as good as it was my freshman year (maybe because I couldn’t play, haha) but there was something about my renewed appreciation for life and the game. Even the smallest moments and successes were fun. We didn’t win the conference championship as we did in 2001 but I still loved it when we scored or made a big defensive play.

Make sure your team doesn’t rely on a single result for enjoyment. If the small steps on the journey matter to get to the destination, they should be acknowledged as they are reached.

A generous culture celebrates the giving that people do and indicates how important it is to be accountable to the little things that add up to the ultimate goal.

There’s no excuse of any size that will make you feel accomplished but every little accountable step is meaningful.

No Excuses, Lots of Accountability