“When you have your own back and you show up for yourself, you say you’re going to do something and you do it. That is what allows you to create a great momentum in your life that feels good to you.”

This past year+ has been a test for many of us on what we can accomplish.

We’ve needed to examine ourselves and learn things like: Can I get work done from home? Am I accomplishing what I want to accomplish during a stressful situation? How productive am I able to be? Am I thriving under the current circumstances?

These thoughts apply to both our careers and our personal lives.

You see, we can set goals for ourselves, we can have our family set our goals, and we can have our boss/colleagues set our goals, but the way we show up for each of those goals can look very different.

The question I want you to answer today is, are you showing up for yourself? In other words, do you have your own back?

On today’s Become an Unstoppable Woman episode, I’m teaching you all about accountability styles and specifically looking at the “Four Tendencies” as coined by Gretchen Rubin. Because knowing what your accountability style is is the first step to having your own back and showing up for yourself in a way that’s most authentic to you.

Get ready for a real glimpse into what coaching is like today because when you coach with me, you are not only learning all the things about yourself and what motivates you, but you’re also learning how to embrace and love all the qualities that come naturally to you. 

So whether you achieve every goal you set for yourself or whether you need some sort of external accountability, today you’re going to learn how to show up time and time again and accomplish everything you set out to do. 

There is never a better time than right now to get behind yourself. Listen to this episode at the top of this page.

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Full Transcript:

Accountability and the Four Tendencies

Episode 128: HAVE YOUR OWN BACK

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 128, Have Your Own Back.

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Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.

[music]

Hi, there beautiful, unstoppable woman. Welcome to this show. Today we’re going to talk about how to have your own back. You may ask yourself, what does that really mean? It means to show up for yourself. If you say you’re going to do something, you show up and get it done. So many times with clients or just everyday people I meet in my life, they say they want to do these things and then they don’t.

They get frustrated with themselves and they get mad with themselves and probably even secretly they get sad about it of, “Why can’t I make something I want happen done?” If they hire me to work with them, I start to teach them how to have their own back in essence. Today I’m going to teach you how to do that too. We’re going to talk about some tough love. If you have a certain accountability style and all the things. I’m excited to give you this episode today. It’s actually been one that’s been highly requested by many of my clients for months now.

It’s taken me a while to really sit with it and to put together exactly what I want to say today, and so it’s here. It’s like due date right here upon me and I’m ready to birth this baby into the world. I’m so excited for that because, again, for a long time, it’s been like, “Oh, I know I need to record this episode, but it just doesn’t feel right.” If I sound a little funky that actually I’ve been traveling, I was in Mexico in the last episode you heard.

The one before that I was having some tech issues so I recorded from my phone in my closet. Today I’m recording again from my phone, but I am recording in Missouri. I’m actually at my in-law’s house, and you may be thinking, “Gosh, Lindsay, you’re just all over the place.” To that I say, baby, I am living the effing dream. Oh my gosh, 2020 and part of 2021 was a lot of focused hard work to get my business to a place that it’s at today and to have a then two-year-old on my hip most of the time. Now I’m at a place where my business is in a whole different level than it was a year and a half ago when this pandemic started in March 2020.

Now I’m recording this in August 2021 and my kids are going to be back in school, fingers-crossed, full-time. I’m like, “Oh, I did it. I made it.” The past few weeks has really just been celebrating that with my husband, especially we were in Mexico, as I said, and we took some time just the two of us and I must say it started off a little bit rough. The past two weeks have just been rough for us as a couple because we did, we had our head down for most of the year and we’re just trying to survive, keep our forward momentum going with work while having our kids, and of course, surviving a global pandemic.

Here we are, and hopefully, we stay out of a global pandemic. For the most part, depending on the news that you watch, it just seems like we’re getting back into it or we’re not or who knows, but in my mind, the global pandemic is ending and I am just keeping my mindset there is as much as possible even if at times I’m like, “Oh my God, are we going back into March 2020 again?” Today we’re talking about accountability and having your own back. I can’t wait to share this with you.

First off the first thing that I want you to do, if you have never figured out what your accountability style is, I’m going to leave a link in the show notes for you to go take a short it’s five minute or less quiz, and it’s free to take. It’s from Gretchen Rubin and her quiz is testing, in essence, your accountability style. She calls it the four tendencies. Regardless if you go and take that quiz or not, but I hope you do, just you can officially find what your accountability style is, I’m going to explain the four different styles for you very briefly, because you may already just know by me describing them which one you are.

Because the reason why you want to know your accountability style is to understand how you work best. So many people just think, “Oh, well, I just can’t get done what I meant to do.” They start to develop the story about themselves that they don’t have their own back, in essence, like, “I’m a failure. I don’t follow through with things. I’m flaky, or I’m just too rebellious to get what I want,” or all the things. The reality is you just made up these stories in your head about your accountability style that you didn’t really know existed.

If you just knew that it existed and what it was, you would know how to work with it better to get exactly what you want out of life no matter what accountability style you have. Let’s cover those four. The first is upholder. The upholder accountability style means that if I tell you to do something, you’re going to do it. If you tell yourself you’re going to do something, you’re going to do it. You’re just those people who tend to be known as– especially in the school world of like maybe even the goody two shoes or the people who are just high achievers, they’re rock stars.

They just, in essence, if we think about having your own back, they have their own back and they have everybody else’s in the process. Again, they tend to be viewed as like this crowning jewel, especially in the school system of like, “Everybody, be like these people.” Especially when we’re kids, parents are like, do what I say kind of thing and these are the kids that do it. They’re like, “Oh, I’m so proud of you little Susie. You do what you say you’re going to do and you follow my directions as well.” The plus of that is obviously they achieve a lot. They get a lot done.

They tend to be highly valued in certain circles, but the downfall of that one is they can lose themselves in the process because the thing about it if I’m telling you what to do and you may not even question that you may be doing a bunch of things that you don’t even want to be doing. For my clients who have this accountability style of upholder, my work with them is to really help them understand what it is that they want and to shed those people-pleasing tendencies. I’m not trying to take away their upholder because according to Gretchen, who came up with these, you can’t really change your accountability style.

I think you could with some mindset work potentially is my theory about it, but I’m not trying to change that in them. I’m just really wanting them to get intentional with their lives and get intentional with the things they’re saying yes to. If we’re looking at an upholder via another assessment called the Clifton Strengths, formerly known as Strengths Finder, these people tend to have responsibility high. People with responsibility, they’re saying yes to things without even considering most times if they really want to say yes to those things.

Then once they say yes, they feel obligated to finish whatever they said yes to. Many times then they can get secretly resentful. They can get overwhelmed because they have too much on their plates and they can just create a lot of stress for themselves that’s not really needed. That’s the big thing with upholder is they get stuff done, no doubt, but they need to make sure they understand who they are, they have to shed that people-pleasing tendency and be okay with saying no to things and to really make sure they’re only saying yes to things that they want to accomplish because they don’t want to live a life of doing all this stuff for other people and then at the end of their life’s journey, be like, “Oh shit, I didn’t do all the things that I wanted to do. I was too busy doing everything for everybody else.”

Now, granted again, they do show up for themselves. If they say they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it but what I’ve seen with a lot of upholders, they have so many external responsibilities they’ve said yes to that their internal responsibilities or their internal desires, in essence, they put very, very low on the list. That’s upholder. I tend to not have too many upholders, believe it or not, in my coaching practice.

The next accountability style called Questioner is one that I see often. I’m actually a questioner myself. Questioners, they will, in essence, if I say that I’m going to do something, I will do it. If I say, “Okay, I’m going to work out five times a week,” you better believe I will likely get that done. It’s probably like an 80-90% chance that I’m going to follow through on goals that I set for myself. Now, if you set a goal for me, I’m going to question the heck out of that goal or any task that you give me. I’m going to question that thing over and over and over and over and over again to the point of almost annoyance to when I can finally understand it and get my brain on board with it, that’s when I’ll get it. A lot of people are like, “Yes, questioner is the best one to be,” because they question external circumstances or external pressures but then they show up for themselves. I will say as a questioner, the grass is always greener because, yes, I show up for myself most of the time, and, yes, I’m going to question external pressures on me or responsibilities, whatever you want to call it, but I will say this has actually hindered my growth a lot of times and it does cause problems for me especially personally because I do question the hell out of everything.

If somebody teaches me something, I’m not going to be somebody who’s likely going to be like, “Yes, I’ll do exactly what you’ve told me to do.” I’m going to sit there, and I’m going to research it, I’m going to ask a ton of questions. I’m not going to be on board with it for a really long time. I’m likely going to be rebellious about it to then a point when it may cause problems between me and that person, and then at some point, I’ll be like, “Okay, why am I not doing this thing that they’re telling me to do?” I’ll give you an example in my professional life and personal life so you can fully understand what this looks like.

In my personal life, it’ll be something my husband tells me that he wants done. For a while, it was like, “Can you do the dishes in the middle of the day?” Especially during the pandemic when we had the kids at home. I’ll be like, “Yes, yes, yes, I will do the dishes during the day.” It may have not been an enthusiastic yes, but he would’ve given me some reasons, and I would’ve been like, “Okay, yes, I see that you want me to the dishes during the day.” Sometimes, this is where my people-pleasing comes out, I’ll say yes, but inside, there’s still this cringe of like, “No, I’m not fully on board with that yet.”

I’m trying to get fully on board with it because I just want to move past the problem and get over this, in essence, discussion him and I are having and I don’t want to turn it into an argument, but inside internally, I’m like, “I still don’t really quite understand why you want me to do the dishes during the day. I don’t really see the purpose in it. I just think we can do them all at night.” It takes a lot of mind work on my end, in essence, too of understanding what questions I need to ask. At first, it’s just this gut feeling of, “No, I don’t want to do this thing you’re telling me to do.”

Again, many times for me, I’ll be like, “Okay, yes. I think I’m on board. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.” Then, what happens is that I don’t really do it. I don’t really do it, and I’ll do it some days, I won’t do it other days, in this case, the dishes, and then it causes problems for me in my marriage of like, “Why are you being disrespectful? You said you were going to do this and you’re not.” Then, he creates his own whole story about it. For me, I start to then gain more awareness and understanding of the questions that I need to ask so that I can get fully on board with it.

In his mind, he’s like, “But I thought you were on board with this.” He’s like, “Why are you bringing this backup? Why are you rehashing this when I thought we were moving forward?” You see where I’m getting at with this? It can cause some problems.

Now, in my professional life, say, for example, I work with a coach or I’m in a program, and they’re like, “If you just do X, Y, and Z steps, you’ll create A, B, C.” The biggest example I can think of this is the first time I was ever getting coached by my coach. This is now eight, nine years ago, and she wanted me to start doing mantras.

Again, that little people-pleasing tendency in me was like, “Okay, I think I understand. I’ll go do them.” I just wasn’t doing them, and I wasn’t doing them, and I wasn’t doing them. It was to a point where it was hindering my growth in the program and in the process. Again, it really took courage from me and an understanding and awareness from me to be like, “Why am I not doing these mantras? Why is this not something that I can get on board with?” I had to then spend the time to really do the research and understanding to get my whole body and brain on board with doing mantras.

At first, I got mantras, if you don’t know what mantras are, it’s like saying positive things to yourself. I thought they were really stupid. I was like, “I’m not going to sit around and say this stuff to myself.” Even though logically, I was kind of on board with it of like, “Okay, yes, of course, we’re going to program in this positive stuff.” I could see the science that was presented to me, but I just couldn’t fully get on board with it. Again, as I created all this extra work for myself, created a hindrance in my progression so I spent more time having to get myself on board to go do something.

You see, those of you that are non-questioners, there’s still some setback for questioners is that they question the hell out of everything. When I have a questioner client, it’s the same thing. They kind of say they want to do something, but I can see in them when they really don’t because I know that within myself, and so then we have to really coach on something in-depth. I have a client right now who’s like this. She wants to continually ask me for time-saving tactics so she can get more done every day, and I keep pushing back on her. I’m like, “No, I’m not teaching you these tactics.”

She’s like, “Why?” I’m like, “Because you have all these shitty thoughts about time. You don’t think you have enough time. You think that you have to do all of this stuff, and that’s where the problem is. It’s not your time-saving tactics, it’s your thoughts about time.” She’s just like pushing back, pushing back, pushing back on me, and I’m like, “Nope, nope.” Then I push back on her. Again, it creates some tension in our relationship and a little bit of turmoil and I see her not progressing as quickly as I would like because her questioner brain just cannot get on board with the coaching I’m trying to give her because that’s partly why she hired me too.

I see ten steps ahead of where she’s at right now that she can’t quite see yet. Instead of her just trusting me, trusting the process, she’s questioning the hell out of everything which is fine. I get it totally, but you can see that can be a problem for questioners.

The next accountability style, this is by far what I see the most in my clients, and that’s obliger. If I tell an obliger to go do something, they’re going to go do it, but if an obliger decides they want to do something for themselves, they’re likely not going to do it unless they have external accountability.

The best example I can give here is one that actually Gretchen had in her four tendencies book where she talks all about these tendencies. It’s a great read, by the way. It’s super easy. She talks about a friend she had. I believe just casually, she went and met one day for lunch, who inspired these whole four tendencies discovery within her. Her friend said, “When I was in college, I was on this running team, and I showed up every day and I’d go run, but now I want to run but I just can’t show up for myself.”

Gretchen being the upholder, because you remember upholders do what they say they’re going to do, and they do what other people tell them to do, Gretchen was like, “What are you talking about? Why is it so hard for you?” It started all this research into these tendencies. This is what I see in a lot of my clients. They’re like, “I keep saying I want to go do this stuff, but I’m not getting it done.” Then, they hire me to come in there. One of the biggest things they say is, “I just want the accountability to get it done.” I’m like, “Great, I’ll do the accountability, baby, but get ready because I’m going to do so much more than that.”

It happens as they start to learn not only their accountability style but many other things with me, they tend to keep going back to this accountability style of, “But, Lindsay, I’m always going to need extra accountability, and I feel needy, and I feel weak, and I don’t like this about myself. I want to be one of the other tendencies.”

We’re going to spend some time today in a bit talking more about this and how obligers can start to shift their mindset with this because a lot of times they just fall into, in essence, this is going to seem dramatic, but in essence, victimhood of like, “Oh, no, I’m an obliger. I’m just not going to ever show up for myself.”That is not the correct mindset to have here. That’s an obliger.

The last and fourth tendency is called the rebel. The rebel is not going to do what I tell them to do, and they’re not going to do what they tell themselves to do. I’ve had some rebels as clients. I will tell you when I first started testing the four tendencies in clients, I had a rebel come in. She was not successful at all. She was actually a beta client that I had at the time. She didn’t pay me any money or anything. I was really trying to test something with her. I didn’t know she was a rebel. When she came in and I saw that, I was like, “Okay, we’re really going to test some things.”

She was just not able to sustain her progress in the coaching system. It freaked me out a little bit. I will say about rebels, I’m like, “Holy shit. Can I coach rebels?” Then, I’ve had some rebels in the past year, and they’ve been effing rockstars. Amazing, amazing clients, and yes, they have just really learned to have their own back. They’ve learned to get on board with when other people tell them to do stuff. I have to say I think it really goes back for a lot of them of getting coached. Yes, there are just so many things that I want to talk about there. I want to go deeper into that in a minute.

You may be a rebel too. I know my ex-husband is definitely a rebel. He doesn’t like anyone to tell him what to do. He doesn’t follow anything he tells himself to do. It can be tricky at times. Rebels can be known of being the bad boy, the bad girl. Especially in the school system of like, “Oh, these are the troubled kids,” and all of that. I will tell you, even with my clients, I freaking love them. They’re so freaking fun. That could be another accountability style that gets a bad rep, but it’s amazing.

All right, so those are the four different styles. Again, go take the quiz. There will be a link in the show notes of how to go take it. It’s free. It just takes a couple of minutes. If you want to dig deeper into the four tendencies, too, you can buy Gretchen’s book called the Four Tendencies. I’ll put a link in the show notes for that as well.

All right. Let’s talk about how to have your own back regardless of whatever accountability style you have. The big one I said I want to touch on is that obliger. The one that typically needs external accountability to get things done that they want to do internally for themselves.

Internally meaning they set a personal goal for themselves, or they have a work goal that’s outside of work or they want to be an entrepreneur and they’re not going to have a boss anymore. How can they show up for themselves and make their goals and dreams happen, and not get into this whole pool of victimhood or just feeling like they got short-changed because they are an obliger? I will say it’s just little mindset shifts. Instead of seeing the glass half empty here of, “Oh my gosh, I’m an obliger,” and start being like, “Great, I’m an obliger, now I know what I need. How am I going to get what I need done?” I’m going to say that again because it sounds so simple, but it’s so big.

Instead of saying, “Oh, no, I’m an obliger. I got short-changed,” shifting it to, “Great. I’m an obliger, now I know what I need to get what I want done.” Let’s imagine you are somebody who’s saying, “Lindsay, I’m an obliger and I want to become an entrepreneur, so I’m not going to have a boss anymore. In the meantime, I’m going to start building my business,” and they’re already– I’m thinking of a client that I have right now, in particular, who’s in this boat. This is like a real-world example. Already, time and time again, she does not show up for herself to hit her entrepreneurship goals like she shows up for her work goals or personal goals she has for her husband, those things come before anything she’s doing for herself. That’s another big thing with obligers. They tend to put other people before themselves.

It’s not that they necessarily want to, it just is more comfortable for them. It’s like, “Oh, I get the accountability that I need in these areas. Boom, I get it done.” How have we started to shift for her to show up for herself? Again, first off, it comes to that mindset shift of instead of just being this woe is me of really falling in love with your obliger. I said earlier, I’m a questioner and there are times I get very, very frustrated with myself, like, “Lindsay, why can’t you just be on board? Why do you have to question the hell out of everything? Why do you have to stir the pot? Why are you so weird and different?” Is even the thoughts that come up for me. It’s like, “Just follow the rules. Just say yes, or just do the thing that they’re telling you to do.”

I will tell you, I understand what it feels like to not love every aspect of yourself especially when we’re looking at accountability styles. I realize by me beating myself up, it does not serve me, it does not help me. Instead, I’m like, “Listen, I’m a questioner. I’m going to question the hell out of everything and I’m going to start just explaining to people.” Like with my husband with the dishes, for example, that whole experience really allowed me to see my question or play out even more to a point of, “What do I need to start saying and what do I need to start feeling within myself to realize when I’m not fully on board with something?”

Now I can go to him and say something like, “Babe, I know you really want me to do the dishes midday, but for whatever reason, I’m just still not on board with this yet and I know you really want me to help you and I know it must be so frustrating. I’m really going to make an effort to do this, but there’s just something that is really, oh, I’m just not quite there with this yet. I would love for you to continue to allow me to ask questions when I’m able to, in essence, formulate them and be able to communicate them to you because this is just my questioner and that’s what I need.”

Hopefully, he would say yes, and knowing my husband it depends on how tired he is of how he’s going to respond to that. That’s just what I know I need to start communicating to other people and holding strong boundaries with them of being like, “Listen, I know you really want me to do blah, blah, blah, but I’m just not on board yet.” The way that, too, that I coach this with my clients, if I’m thinking about the one who just keeps pushing back on me telling me she wants me to teach her things like time save hacks when really it’s her thoughts about time, there are times I’m getting a little frustrated with her right now and I catch myself.

I’m like, “Lindsay, that’s just her questioner. Take a deep breath and start to give her tools in essence or ways that she can communicate her questioner.” Because sometimes, too, questioners, they can just hit you with a bunch of questions in a way where you start to get defensive of like, “Why did you do this? What do you do this? Dah, dah, dah, dah.”

That’s how her emails can be at times, she’ll send me like 10, 12 questions. She sent me one earlier this week on a week I’m on vacation. Then I responded to that email, even though I’m on a vacation.

Then she sent me a 10-minute voice memo about more questions she had from those questions. Again, it’s like I have to have boundaries with her and she has to have boundaries with me. I have to start communicating to her of like, “Listen–” because sometimes too with questioners, they can almost ask so many questions in a way that it’s self-sabotaging. Sometimes they just need gentle but firm little boundary of like, “Hey, there are no more questions,” or, “You’re only allowed to ask X, Y, Z more questions. What are the questions you really need to ask right now?”

Cut it really clear and dry of what is it that you need to know in order to move forward? That’s a perfect question right there. What do you need to know in order to move forward? I know we’ve gone on this tangent with questioners, but questioners and obligers tend to be the biggest ones that I see get stuck. For questioners, again, it’s like, start to communicate to people, I’m going to question things and give them the resources of them having loving and firm boundaries with you of what else is it that you need to know here or what is it that you need to say? Because questioners too sometimes they have things that they want to say but they know what’s going to probably come across as rude.

If we go back to the example with my husband and the dishes, what I really wanted to say there is, “Is this really a thing? I need to know the reasons of why you want me to do the dishes or is this just what I consider your OCD habits coming out?” At times I dance around that because I know that it may be a little offensive. Let’s just call it what it is. Rebels can be like this too. Rebels question external pressures or external accountability, and that’s why we get a bad rep sometimes. It’s like, “What is wrong with them? Why can’t they just sit down and shut up and do what they’re told?” It’s like, “We have all these questions.”

We need both boundaries for ourselves and boundaries that other people put on us, but really at the end of the day, as long as we feel safe in the spaces that we’re in to be able to ask those questions and get those questions answered, man, that’s a beautiful place for rebels and questioners.

All right. Now, going back to obligers and even rebels too who are needing help with that external accountability, as I said, the first thing is really just shift your mindset with it instead of saying, “Oh, woe is me.” Instead, it’s like, “Oh, I know what I am now. Here’s what I need.” For a lot of my obliger clients, they will also be like, “Oh my gosh, now I’m just going to always have to buy coaching.”

It’s like, no, you can set up different systems for you to have external accountability in a way that’s cost-effective or free. If you start to just, first off, just shift your mindset into that place of, “I know what steps to take to set up an accountability system that works for me that can be cost-effective or free.” Just starting to repeat that thought over and over and over again to point where it’s at least somewhat believable that you know or you have the skills to figure out the system that will work for you that’s cost-effective and free, that’s where you’re going to start creating the results that you want. I know if you’re an avid listener of the show and definitely if you’re a client of mine, you know that all your results that you create in your life come from your thoughts.

If you’re thinking again, “Woe is me, I’m not going to be able to do blah, blah, blah,” well, that’s what you’re going to continue to create, but if you have this thought of, “Dang, okay, how am I going to create a system that works best for me knowing I need external accountability?” Bam, great. Start repeating that again and again and again until it’s believable. Then before you know it, and as early as 30 days, even if you continue to repeat that thought, you’re going to start to create those systems to get that external accountability. For my one client I mentioned earlier, she’s not showing up for the work she wants to do with her business that she’s starting to grow. We’re just still testing things.

What works for her may not work for somebody else. That’s where again people want to come to me and be like, “Lindsay, just tell me your top 10 tips for obligers.” It’s like, “I can’t tell you that stuff. The biggest thing I want to tell you is to look at your freaking mindset with it and to really fall in love with whatever you are.” It’s so funny because recently I had a live event for a group of my clients and we were celebrating their growth for the year, and each client we did a recap video of. We started with their consults that we had in order to start the coaching process, and then we had clips throughout the year of them getting coached on their goals, and then we had a recap of, “Oh, here’s where they are now. Look at them, they’ve cracked their goal.”

For one of my clients, the clip that we put in there was specifically how she hates her obliger. In that coaching clip, again, I’m like, “How is this serving you? How is it serving you to hate this?” What I got to on that call with her and what I want to share with you here is you’ve got to start to ask yourself, “What work do I need to do to fall in love with myself exactly as I am?” If you’re an obliger, rebel, questioner, upholder, whatever you are here in this circumstance because, again, we’re just looking at accountability tendency, even though this work can go far beyond what we’re talking about today, what work do I need to do to fall deeply in love with myself?

That’s really where your work is, my friend. That’s the work we do when we coach together is we start to feel, deal, and heal, and let go of all those blocks that are stopping you from not only reaching the goals you want to reach but from falling freaking in love with yourself so that any time you’re getting any kind of assessment results– If that’s even your thing. Some people I know don’t like assessments and that’s totally cool. I think they’re really powerful personally, but that’s just me. Is to then be like, “Okay, what do I need to do here to really love this about myself?” Because if I’m sitting here hating it, if I’m sitting here bashing it or thinking I’ve gotten short-changed, then that’s not empowering.

That’s not you owning your power and who you are and making it a superpower for you. If we then look at my questioner, as I said, there are times I have my moments of like, “Oh, fuck. Lindsay, just get onboard. Why do you have to be so weird? Why do you have to ask so many questions?” I’ll catch myself in that now and I’ll be like, “Phew. Okay. Some of that is still going on.” I’ll show grace with myself and I’ll show love of like, “Phew. I know sometimes, Lindsay, it can be really scary to ask questions and then put yourself out there and it seems like everybody else is on board and you’re the only one asking questions, but for whatever reason, this is your journey and what you’re meant to go through. You’re meant to ask questions, and that’s okay.” That calms me down a little bit.

Then I’ll get to a place of, “How am I using my questioner in my life for good? How is this helping me?” Because right now, it might feel really uncomfortable and I really don’t like it, but if I look at what I do in the world, I’m asking people questions all the time as a coach. I’m questioning the hell out of all the beliefs that society throws at us to then be able to show my clients of, “Hey, you believing X, Y, Z is actually just a societal thing that you’ve been taught and you don’t even realize that.”

I’ve been doing all that work just naturally within myself as a questioner to then be able to give that to people so that they can continue to improve their lives of just questioning the hell out of everything in their own lives and in society and all of the above. That’s when I’m like, “Oh, yes, being a questioner is a really, really great thing, Lindsay. Just love it, own it about yourself, it’s great.” Now, if we’re looking at obligers, there are times, I must admit, I get a little jealous of obligers and upholders too. They’re viewed as the “good kids”. They’re so easily loved because they just get done whatever people tell them to do.

As I said, my husband’s an obliger. I’m in Missouri right now because the past few days he’s had a high school reunion for his cross-country team. He was a cross-country runner in high school and then he ended up getting a full scholarship to go run in college. Running was a big deal for him for a long time. When we went to this 50th reunion for 50 years that they’ve had this program, all these people were just like, “Oh, Jason, he was such a great guy and he’s still such a great guy. We love him so much.”

It’s so funny because if you went to my high school, people would be like, “Oh, yes. We love Lindsay so much, but she’s a little bit rebellious. Sometimes she just really questions the hell out of everything and stirs the pot.” Again, there’s a part of me that’s like, “Oh, man. I wish I could just get on board with things,” but I go back to my questioner and I fall in love with that. I share all that with you because I want you to see is that– I tell this often with my clients. Everything in life is 50/50. There may be some things in life that are 80/20, but I don’t think it really gets higher than 80%.

There’s always going to be some sort of percentage of something that’s just not as great. Marriage, for example, being married, there’s greatness in that. I know for me and my marriage, I love having a partnership with my husband, I love that we can lean on each other for support and I always have a partner in everything, but then there are times when it’s like, “Oh, man. Marriage is work.” There are days when we just don’t get along and don’t see eye-to-eye on things and I’m like, “Oh, man. This is the other 50% of marriage.

It’s the same for anything, including your accountability style of whatever accountability style that you are, there’s “good” and there’s “bad” of everything. What I really want you to just get on board with is to fall deeply in love with whatever one you are. Start there. That’s your number one first step is what do I need to do, what’s the work I need to do to fall deeply in love with this accountability style? Now, you can sit there and be like, “Man, I really want to change it. I really want to do the work and I don’t want to be whatever accountability style anymore, I want to be this other one.” You could do a crap-ton of mindset work and really program in some beliefs to change that.

I think you probably could. It’s going to feel like a really big uphill battle. It’s going to be hard I think, but it’s not that it’s impossible. You can definitely get it done. My motto is, first off, I’d really want to know your reasons for wanting to change your accountability style. Again, I think that’s coming from a place of there’s one that’s better than the other one. I really just want to encourage you to just love the one that you are. For whatever reason, you’ve been given this accountability style, and so own it, love it. Figure out the way it can work the best for you and build your life around that.

Again, if we’re looking at the ones that I see the most, it’s obligers. They’re just like, “Oh, I hate that I have to have an external accountability.” Well, start to think, “What can I do or I know what I need to do to build systems and processes so that I show up for myself.” In Gretchen’s book, she talks about some different ideas for obligers. For example, somebody that wants to get up and run every day. They set some sort of auto-post that would go off on their Facebook account if they don’t get up and run that’s some, I don’t know, embarrassing thing about them or something they don’t want to post.

So then they have that external accountability. They need to get their butt out of bed, turn off that post and get up and go run. Again, that might not be the right tactic for you, but you can figure out what is the right tactic for you as long as you start to have the right mindset about whatever accountability style you are so that you can continue to have your own back because when you have your own back and you show up for yourself, you say you’re going to do something, and then you freaking do it, that my friend is what allows you to create very, very great momentum in your life and a momentum that feels good to you, not a momentum of hustle mentality or “let’s get shit done” or “I need to prove myself”. It’s just a, “I say I’m going to do something and I effing do it, and I do it in a way that really works for me and feels good for me.”

That’s what I really want to create in my clients and I work to help them create. I’ve mentioned often we do this exercise called the puzzle of you. I spend about a month putting together all these different puzzle pieces of them, and then they present to me their puzzle that they’ve put together and then I tell them what the patterns are with that because that’s my zone of genius. From there, it’s like, “Okay, this is how you go and you create things in the world.” You’re not going to be able to create things like Suzy Q over here because she’s got a different puzzle. You’ve got to create things the way that you are built in the world. That’s what’s going to allow you to feel really, really good with the action you’re taking because you’re doing it in a way that works for you.

Again, looking at accountability style, I’m not going to work the same way an upholder is going to work. An upholder is not going to work the same way a rebel is going to work. A rebel is not going to work like an obliger and all the different connections there. We’ve got to make sure we’re spending time learning about us because what society tends to give us and just general personal development tends to give us are these cookie-cutter different tactics and ways of doing things. We’re not cookie-cutter. We’re unique, and we’re different, and we’re special.

In essence, my friend, you’ve got to spend that time just looking at your accountability style, first off, falling in love with it, figuring out how it can work for you. Of course, if you need my help with this, this is where I coach you from. I will help you fall in love with yourself and create what you want in a way that’s authentically you. I encourage you to start the coaching process with me. It starts with filling out an application. You just go to lindsayepreston.com/apply, fill out that application. From there, we will have a free consult call if I feel like we’re a good fit. We’ll spend 60 minutes just talking about you and what goals you want and all the things.

Again, if it feels like a right fit, I’ll tell you about coaching, and then we’ll start the process from there.

I just want to end on, we titled this episode, Have Your Own Back, because again, it’s all about you showing up for yourself. It’s all about you having the accountability you need and figuring out how you can get that no matter what accountability style that you have because having your own back, man, again, I know I’ve said it already on this episode, it is powerful, it’s amazing. I’ve learned this in so many different ways in my life of being able to set a goal and knowing, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to hit that goal.” It’s exciting and fun.

A lot of times with goal setting, people will dread it, they won’t enjoy it, but when you set a goal, and you’re like, “Yes, I’m going to make this amount of money,” or, “I’m going to do this,” or, “I’m going to do that,” and knowing that you will actually go and do that, and it may not be in the perfect timetable that you set it, but knowing like, I’m going to go do this thing, not if I’m going to do this thing, it’s when I’m going to do this thing, or having even a mindset of what I tell my most advanced clients, my Living the Dream program, of, in essence, like it’s already done, you’re showing up like it’s already done, a done deal.

It just makes life so fun. That’s where you feel good in the process, and this is what I’m always saying on my taglines: I help women accomplish their goals and dreams, own their power in the process while feeling better than ever. This is how it’s done right here. Just by looking at accountability style, you’re owning your power of loving whatever accountability style, you are going out and you’re getting stuff done based off that accountability style in the puzzle of you, and because of that, you feel better than ever, not that there’s not going to be mind drama, not that you’re not going to have shitty days, and that crappy things aren’t going to happen, but you know that you’re doing things in the most authentic way for you and you know that you’re going to get whatever the hell you want done, done, and so much fun, it creates so much fun in life.

All right, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you love this episode, I loved recording it for you, and I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

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Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.

In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is to apply for a free 60-minute consult call. Just go to LindsayEpreston.com/apply to get started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can be, so believe in yourself. You got this.