Life Notes with Sheldon
Life Notes with Sheldon
From Blame To Ownership: Turning Intentions Into Progress
Accountability isn’t a punishment. It’s the lever that turns good intentions into durable progress. We dig into the hard truth that ignorance doesn’t equal innocence—especially in leadership, parenting, and personal growth—and show how ownership transforms messy situations into solvable problems. If you’ve been circling the same issues at work, at home, or in your habits, this is a practical map out of the loop.
We start by reframing accountability as opportunity: the act of claiming what is ours to fix even when we didn’t see it coming. From there, we unpack why “I didn’t know” fails leaders, how liability tracks back to stewardship, and why recognizing a problem without owning it keeps you stuck. You’ll hear how shame clouds judgment and how accountability clears the sky, revealing the patterns, missed checks, and decisions that need redesign. A simple question drives the shift—“Is it me?”—asked not in self-blame, but as a precise diagnostic to find your part and change it.
Then we get tactical. We walk through turning clarity into action with concrete steps, tight feedback loops, and visible proof of progress. Whether you’re navigating a toxic team, spiraling finances, or stalled health goals, you’ll learn how to move from wishing to doing: write two lists (“where I am” and “where I want to be”), build the bridge with three to five specific actions, assign ownership, and set deadlines. Accountability may complicate today, but it simplifies tomorrow by preventing repeat crises and building trust with yourself and others.
If you’re ready to stop repeating patterns and start building outcomes by design, press play and join us. If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to tell us where you’re taking ownership next.
Welcome to Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best you.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, friends. Thank you for joining me on Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get you off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your very best self. Today on the show, we're talking about one of the most misunderstood but most transformational forces in life, that of accountability. Whether it's in our families, our businesses, finances, our health, or our personal decisions, accountability is what turns good intentions into real progress. So, friends, accountability is not punishment. And I know that sometimes if you have children or team members or employees or associate with people on planet Earth, sometimes we misconstrue accountability to be a form of punishment. In contrast, accountability is a great, tremendous opportunity. But sometimes we feel as though it is punitive, which is an error. Accountability is ownership and responsibility. And without ownership and responsibility, there is no progress. Recently, the United States hosted a supposed prince from Saudi Arabia and attempted to, on the public stage, absolve him of any accountability for his actions, suggesting that it was not a big deal, that things happen, and that he had no knowledge of it, as if that somehow absolved him of accountability to not have any knowledge of it. Now, nobody believes reirrationally that this person had no knowledge of this individual who was a reporter critic of this uh administration who went in to get a marriage license and was dismembered and cut up into pieces and was disappeared systematically. So an attempt to suggest that this individual didn't know it happened, it doesn't absolve them of accountability. And that's where we sometimes err as stewards, as parents, as leaders. We somehow think that because we didn't know about it, it absolves us of responsibility for it. Well, first of all, oftentimes we're lying to ourselves and suggesting that we didn't know about it. Because most of us in most given situations can see that things are not going to end well, right? We have two employees that are constantly fighting, but we choose to keep them on the same uh time working and then on the same team. Well, you know, it doesn't take a soothsayer or a uh illusionist or a magician to see into the future very far that that is not going to end well. So can we just say when they have a fight or when it breaks into um chaos, can we as an owner, can we as a leader somehow suggest, well, I didn't know about it, and absolve ourselves of responsibility? We cannot. And we can't allow this to happen in our own personal lives or on the national stage or anywhere else, because if we absolve ourselves or try to of accountability by suggesting we didn't know anything about it, that's a very dangerous precedent because we have to know. As leaders, we have to know, and we can't know all things, we can't see all things, but we do have to take accountability for all things. If you're a parent and your child beats somebody up, you may be accountable for that. And in fact, you may be liable for that legally, lawfully, and um, you may be sued. You may be paying medical bills and pain and suffering and who knows what else. You didn't know it happened. Maybe you didn't see it was coming, but you are responsible. That is your child. If your child drives and gets in an automobile accident, well, he was insured, yes, but he was insured under you. And guess what? Your rates are probably going up, your premiums going up, and you may struggle finding insurance the next time you look for it. It's just the facts of life, friends. We have to be accountable and we have to admit accountability, and we have to not attempt to absolve ourselves of accountability by suggesting, well, we didn't know or we had no way of knowing. Whether we know or not, we have to take accountability. Without accountability, there is no opportunity for progress because to absolve ourselves of accountability is to absolve ourselves of responsibility. And if we're not responsible for our predicament, either in our own personal lives, our health lives, our professional lives, our mental health lives, whatever it is, our relationship lives, if we aren't responsible, who is? Nobody else is going to take responsibility for you, friends. Nobody wants to raise you, nobody wants to change your diaper, nobody wants to be your babysitter in life. I'm sorry, but there is just nobody that wants to do that. And if they are, they are enablers that are not helping friends. They are not going to be good for you. Nobody wants to babysit you and they shouldn't have to. And nobody is responsible for your actions or the consequences of your actions or those under your stewardship other than you. We have to take that ownership. We have to take that responsibility because only then can we have progress. You know, in addiction recovery, they talk to people about the first step being recognizing that you have a problem. The very first step. But if we only recognize we have a problem, we're only taking one step up the ladder to progress, one step up the ladder to recovery, one step up the ladder to sanity. First, we recognize we have a problem, but then we have to admit that we have responsibility for that problem, that somehow along the line we caused that problem. We put ourselves in a situation where we shouldn't have been, or where we are susceptible to things, or we put ourselves in a toxic situation. If we don't take any responsibility for it, then we're just running around saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling, running around being alarmist and scaring people around us and accomplishing nothing, not moving forward. So accountability is the very basis, the first step to the pathway to progress and to change. And with that comes that taking ownership and taking responsibility. Well, I have a horrible work culture right now. I don't know what to do about it. Everyone is fighting, nobody gets along, they go home, they're not happy at work. You're the leader. You have to take responsibility for that. What have you done wrong? Maybe you haven't done anything wrong. Maybe you don't treat them bad. Maybe you aren't treating them bad. Maybe you're just surviving. But if you're just surviving, your business and your organization is not thriving because you're not able to sustain it, to fertilize it, to help it grow. And if you're not doing that, nobody else is friends because nobody else wants to babysit your business or your church or your community or whatever it is that you have stewardship over. So sometimes we are responsible for the things that we failed to do or that we didn't do or that we avoided doing. And if we don't take accountability for those, we're still just recognizing that we have a problem. Now, another thing that accountability does is it removes shame and replaces it with clarity. Shame is like a dark cloud, friends. It's a dark storm cloud that covers you, that prevents you from seeing things clearly, from seeing love, from seeing positivity. It's an awful, terrible, no good, horrible, bad day of a thing. I had a counselor therapist once, and she said people go into their shame holes, as she called it. You know, we crawl into this cave of shame and we just want to close the door and turn the lights off, and it's not healthy. You know, we all go into that place. If you are in that place, don't stay there very long. Because when you replace that shame with accountability, you start to have something that's called clarity. That storm cloud seizes, that storm cloud slowly dissipates, that shame cloud, and you're able to have clarity. You're able to see by the light of the sun and by the light of truth, rather, you're able to see the nature of your problem, the nature of your predicament, and hopefully how you have contributed to it. Because only then can we ever hope to change up. Some people make the mistake of thinking they can run from their problems or run from their responsibility to be accountable. And so they move away or they change jobs or they change relationships or they get a divorce. And you know what? They have some relief. But before long, those things come up and it haunts you, and it comes again because you can't run from accountability, you can't run from responsibility, and you can't run away from your problems in life, at least not for very long, friends, because they will find you, maybe in another form and place and person, but they will find you. So removing this shame cloud and replacing it with this clarity where we can see. It's the difference between wishing and doing, right? We have this shame cloud. We are upset with ourselves. I wish this was different. I wish this awful feeling would just go away. Oh, I hate this, right? We're wishing. And when we start to remove the shame cloud, replace it with clarity, wishing has the power to become doing. And friends, if we're not doing, we're just wishing. And I had a friend and his mom used to say to him when he wanted things, he'd say, if wishes were fishes, we'd all have a fry. Have you heard that? It would really annoy him, but I would laugh every time she said it because the way she said it was just kind of funny. And it was funny how much it annoyed him, too. But if wishes were fishes, we'd all have a fry, friends. And wishes are not going to feed us, wishes are not going to change us, wishes are not going to help us for very long. We have to transfer that wishing into doing, and accountability is the fuel cell power source for being able to do that when we take accountability, responsibility. Yes, I am the problem. You know, I've mentioned this before, but the most influential, probably bar none, scriptural account for me that has really had an impact influence in my life. And I'm not talking about, you know, reading something in the Christmas story that I dislike or that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I'm talking about real life, powerful change agent, powerful stuff that impacted me. And that is when uh, you know, the Savior Jesus Christ is talking to his apostles, and he says, one of you will betray me. And, you know, there's a lot of just, oh, I would never, I would never, I would never, I would never. And one of them asks this question. They say, Is it I, Lord? Am I the one? And friends, in our situations in life, in our troubles, in our trials, in our complex relationship dilemmas and all of the crazy things that we get ourselves into, we can begin to improve them, begin to change them, begin to even remedy them by asking us ourselves, our wise mind, our deep true self, this question. Is it me? Is it me? Am I the problem? Could I be contributing to this? Is it all me? Ask. Probe. Do surgical tests. I mean, I'm not talking MRI, I'm talking cut into the fleshy tablets of your heart and study and find the pathogen. What is causing this? And we can't do that unless we ask ourselves that sublimely powerful question. Is it me? Because friends, in almost every given situation, I gotta tell you, it is you. The crap that you're dealing with and stepping in is largely created by you and your decisions or your failure to make a decision. Oh, but I'm a victim, and but I'm picked on, but I'm this, but I'm this. Okay, yes, maybe you had some adverse circumstances that helped led to this, but did you choose to stay there? Did you choose to allow it? If we don't recognize how we are contributing to our situation, there's no hope of changing in it, and we stay in this whirling swarm cloud of shame, and we don't have clarity and we don't have opportunity to be able to change, right? And so, you know how do we change? How do we change that? We have to stop pretending like it's not our problem that we aren't responsible, that we didn't cause it. Well, I don't know how it happened. I told them to do it. Well, did you check and see if they did it? Did you follow up the problems that are happening in our life over and over and over and over and that are perpetual and driving us insane are, if not caused by us, generally perpetuated by our decisions or our lack of decision making. Some of us think that accountability will make life harder, and yes, it will, temporarily. You know, if you decide you're going to get yourself out of a your Jeep is stuck in the mud and it's gonna rain and there's a flash flood coming, you have two decisions. Just sit and let it happen, walk away from your property and hope for the best that you'll find your way out, or get busy and start digging and start trying to get your Jeep free, right? Trying to get your tire dug out of the muck. And friends, that's the decision that we have before us. Are we gonna start trying to rescue our lives from whatever troubling situation it's in right now? Are we going to do the hard work? Because it is gonna make accountability does make things more complex. It does make them more complicated temporarily. It can be uncomfortable and almost always is. But only by going through that obstacle and experiencing it and taking that accountability can we hope to have change? Can we hope to have clarity? Can we hope to have progress? Can we hope to have sanity? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting the result to change. Isn't that powerful? I'm sure that you've heard of that. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the result to change. Well, friends, the result is not going to change. If you're walking into a wall and it's hurting your head, the result is not going to change. You're going to keep getting a headache, eventually a concussion, and probably a brain bleed and die. It's just that way, friends. The things that we perpetuate keep on going and they keep on hurting over and over and over unless we apply that powerful change agent of accountability. And so I started to ask myself that question in life. And I don't always do this well. I haven't mastered it, but it certainly has changed my life. It certainly has changed my work, certainly has changed my way of doing things. You know, there was a time in my life where I was really displeased with a large portion of it, various aspects of it I wasn't pleased with. I had didn't have direction. I didn't like where I was going in my career, in my work, in my relationships, in my finances. There were so many things that uh were troubling. And I just felt like there was no way out to dig where to start. And I started asking myself, well, what don't I like? What am I displeased with? And then I started asking myself, well, how am I contributing to this? Or how am I causing this? And only when I did that, removed that cloud of shame and darkness and replaced it with clarity, was I able to recognize the ways that I was causing or perpetuating that. And only then, and then and only then was I able to start to formulate steps. And that's exactly what I did. I wrote down this is frustrating, this is where I am right now, and I'm upset about it, and I don't like this, this, and this. And then I decided to write, well, where I want to be. This is what I'd like these things to be like. But then I was able through that clarity to write down those steps. This is what I need to do to get there. And those steps were the clarity, those steps were the key, right? We can identify the problem, we can take accountability, but if we don't utilize that power of accountability, responsibility, ownership, and clarity to identify steps to prevent, steps to help us move out, steps to help us move ahead, steps to prevent us from falling back into whatever that shamehole behavior is, then we've only done half the work. It's like going in for a treatment. You have an illness, and there's a treatment you can do, but you only go to two of the sessions and you were supposed to go to five. The antibiotics are not effective until you get to five. And the two, maybe they'll help you, but probably they won't. And they won't help you as much in going through the full regimen. And the fuel, full regimen of change is identifying that steps. It is the master key part after accountability to being able to take some of that power, harness the power that you have to change your life. Friends, I don't know who I'm talking to today. Maybe I'm talking more to myself than anybody. But we all have aspects in our life that we aren't happy with. We all have things that we wish we could change. Some of us have things that are going to kill us. It could be our weight, our eating habits, our who knows what it is. And we know it's going to kill us if we don't change it. Well, I'm reaching out to you and me and all of us in hope that we can begin to take responsibility for our lives. And that whatever our leadership capacity is, whether it's a friend, a mentor, pastor, teacher, whatever it is, manager, parent, that we will take that important step. That we will not absolve ourselves of responsibility. Saying I didn't know what happened or I had no idea is not a valid excuse. It does not absolve you of accountability. And we can't allow that to absolve our leaders or ourselves of accountability, or we have truly done ourselves a tremendous disservice because without that accountability, we can do whatever we want because it's not our fault. It's not our responsibility. I didn't know anything about it, so it's fine. If the leader of an organization doesn't know anything about the crime or the mismanagement or the malfeasance that happened in their organization, you know, it doesn't really matter if they didn't know. They're still responsible. They're still liable, they're still going to face those consequences. And friends, we can't outrun those consequences in life. We can't absolve ourselves of responsibility. You and only you are responsible for you, for your organization, for those people under you, for those people around you. And I hope, and I pray that this might help somebody out there listening, who's struggling, who's upset, who's irritated, who's stuck in a situation that they can't seem to get out of, or they're frustrated, they don't know how to change. Ask yourself that powerful question that helps me and has helped me so much in the past that I need more today than ever, and ask yourself, is it I, Lord? Is it me? And then leave your heart and your mind open to suspend judgment, suspend anger, suspend casting blame on others, and identify the ways that you personally are either contributing to, creating, or perpetuating the disastrous problem that is plaguing your life, then and only then can we have that clarity and that power to change it. And that's what life is largely. It's going from one crisis or one situation or one issue to another, and and how we learn to take accountability for those and cope with them and and work through them rather than around is largely how we the quality of our life culminates in the end. How well have we handled our problems, how well have we taken responsibility for them, how well have we been able to change them and transform that pain, transform that shame into the marvelous opportunity that it is. Because anytime you come to a crossroads where you know something is hurting you, troubling you, giving you pain, that is an opportunity, friends, an opportunity to identify those ways, to step up, to step out, to step through, and to step forward. And that's what I hope you'll do, friends, because accountability doesn't make life harder. Accountability doesn't make life harder, it makes it work. It makes it work in the end, it makes things come together, it makes clarity come, it allows us to create and formulate and enact those steps to prevent. And friends, if anything, it gives us the opportunity to have an honest and clear conscience at the end of the day, and not try and absolve ourselves of the responsibility that is clearly and rightfully ours. I hope that wherever you are, you have a great day, that you harness that power of accountability, and that uh you do good and you help others around you. Because if you're going through something, chances are your neighbor is going through something equally perplexing. You don't know what it is. So give a little bit of grace, give a little bit of hope, and go out there and spread some positive news because our world needs that, friends. Tune in next week to Life Notes with Sheldon. Until then, do good work and have a great day.
SPEAKER_01:You have been listening to Life Notes with Sheldon. Listen every week, Note of Life. We hope that we have given you a way to get past the sidelines. And back into the game of life as your best video.