#13 - The Power of an Accountability Partner | Strategy Series IV
Sammy and Andrew wrap up the final episode of the Strategy Series with the importance of an accountability partner.
The great tactic of accountability partners
How do you bring in another person as an accountability partner?
What does keeping stuff to yourself lead to?
What benefits exist by involving someone in our pursuit of quitting?
What traits does a good accountability person have?
How does acknowledgement for good deeds help?
Why does just initiating a conversation open a great possibility for change?
If you are seeking transformation why not sign up through highnoon.org?
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another exciting day here on planet Earth. And you're lucky, you are super lucky because you've found Love, Life and Legacy. And this podcast is the best podcast in the entire cosmos if your goal and your aim is to build sexual integrity in your life. And in today's episode, we're going to conclude our mini series that we've designed specifically, to help you get the most out of this very difficult and interesting pandemic that we're going to as a globe. And we wanted to end it with accountability partners because we can't express enough how important it is to have your own accountability partner. But the fear involved in asking somebody to be a part of your journey back home, back to your True Self is, is enough to cause people to not get an accountability partner and we want to break that curse.
We want to allow you the opportunity to reach out and ask somebody, ask a great person to help you build more integrity, and have more freedom in your life. And so please listen up if you really want to have a breakthrough, if you want to curate a life, so that you're in love with your life and so that you stop having shame and fear and doubt associated with any aspect of your life. Then listen to this episode and apply these lessons and you will see a better day. I promise you. So enjoy. Welcome back, everybody what is happening?
Welcome to another day of life here on earth, and you're listening to Love, Life and Legacy. This show is all about giving you tips and tools and strategies on how to create sexual integrity and how to navigate this hyper sexualized society so that you win, so that you win at life in general by your own terms. So, today is the last of a mini series we're doing. It's a strategy series, all about tactics and tools to, what to do during this global pandemic that we are facing. And I guess any subsequent pandemics, if you're listening to this in a year later than 2020. But basically you can apply this anytime. But we wanted to make sure to get this info out to you ASAP due to the fact that we have a lot of people around the world who are quarantined.
They are stuck in their apartments or their homes, and they have more time than usual. They have a lot of, in many cases, anxiety. People are freaking out because they're watching the news. And the news is saying that the sky is falling and it's very believable. They have really good graphics. So we want to just rest your nerves, calm your nerves a little bit by understanding that you might not be able to control the state of the global economy and this virus. But what you can control is how you use your time and emotions, your thoughts, your energy.
So let's get into it. Today, we are going to talk specifically about accountability partners.
Okay. And this is an extremely practical and very easy in many ways, you know, tactic to use. And it's, it's so fundamental that it eludes most people. Most people do not get accountability partners, whether it's for fitness, with for reaching some goal, some financial goal that they have, and especially in the area of building sexual integrity.
We had Sam Black on our podcast and he works for Covenant Eyes. And Covenant Eyes is an amazing software. But you know, they have an outlandish number - I forget what the percentage was. But a huge number of people that sign up for their service pay money for their service. But don't ever bother doing the one thing that they're supposed to do, which is get an accountability partner. Their software is specifically designed to help initiate conversations between you and the person that you want to be accountable to. That's where the magic happens. But so many people sign up for the service and don't do that because that's the hardest thing to do, which is to bring a human being into your journey. And so I want to sell you on this point. But I also want to let you know that if you would like to know more and take a deeper dive, we have this really cool tool on our website. If you go to highnoon.org, you can find an entire free, it's like a mini online course about how to get an accountability partner, and how to be an accountability partner.
So we're basically we made it as easy as possible for you to understand the need for an accountability partner. But also, if you find somebody and you want them to be your accountability partner, that you can just send them this video series to explain to them what it is that you would like help with, okay? Because we know that this is part of the fear, is that you, you don't know what to ask somebody or you, Hey, oh, excuse me, I'm, I have this porn thing. And can you just help me? And you just worry that they're gonna judge you and I get it. I totally get it. I totally get it.
That's why we made the video series. You can find it on our website. Just look up accountability partner in the search tab and you'll find it, you'll find it. It's all there. Don't worry. But this episode, I'm not going to get too much into the details, we're not going to go into the weeds of accountability partnership and all that. I just want to sell you on some very basic points so that you can understand the need that we all have for accountability in all areas of your life, especially the areas that we have secrets in where we hide stuff. Oh, and by the way, I was just recording and my microphone was unplugged.
And so I've already recorded a lot of this and I forgot to mention this time that I'm recording that Sammy can't be here this episode because he has created a human out of his, you know, semen, and with the help of his wife and she formulated out of her bone and they have a daughter, and that daughter just woke up from a nap and is just screaming her head off so he can't join us here. Wow, that was a roundabout way of just saying his daughter is cranky. Anyway, that's what happened. When you give me a microphone and spare time, I just make up weird ways of saying simple stuff. So accountability partnership. Here's the deal y’all and I want y’all to hear me?
Do you hear me? We lie to ourselves a lot. We make a lot of excuses. We justify lazy behavior. We justify self-destructive behavior. We say I'll do it tomorrow. We get around, we'll say I'll get abs when I have time, when I have the money to get abs. I will have those perfect teeth when I have time to floss my teeth, etc, etc. And if we let ourselves be guided by whatever standard we permit ourselves to live by, then there is nothing really to change us at all and the trajectory we're on. So if you're, if, if you have bad eating habits that can go on for years and decades and could potentially never stop unless you have, you know, some sort of heart attack or some, some problem with your body. That happened to a very good friend of mine, who was morbidly obese; he was, you know, 250 pounds on a small frame. And he would, he had, he had a very rough life. I love the guy. He was my best friend for a long time. He was older, he was in his 50s, he had a pretty rough life, one of the best comedians I ever knew back when I used to do comedy a lot. And he was a pro, you know, he's just such a cool guy, but he had some, some emotional issues and he would overeat. At one point, at one point, his body just shut down and he had, he had to get a liver transplant from his brother. And you know, it was like it was too late at that point. You know, his body.
The writing was on the wall, you know, you, you've abused for long enough, and at some point, you know, he knew that he had bad eating habits, but he just couldn't change it. And he never had accountability for his lifestyle. He lived by himself. He never got married, never had kids. So he had nobody to really be like, and I didn't. I wasn't aware, I guess I was blind to it, or I just didn't want to judge him or anything. So I never said anything. But if somebody had interjected and been there for him, maybe he could have avoided the health issues that subsequently ended up killing him. He died, you know, maybe five years ago, and it was really, really sad. He died in his 50s. He shouldn't have died. And so with our own life, you know, and especially in sexual integrity, since sex is such a personal issue. A lot of times, people do not ask us how we're doing in this area. So we just keep it all inside. And this eats away at us. Especially when we have porn and self destructive habits. We have this weird relationship where we want to quit porn, but we always go back. And if we're not bringing somebody else into our journey, then we're just left to conclude that our life is going to be this endless cycle of hope. And then hope squashed hope. And then hope squashed. I'm gonna fix this problem. I can do this. Oh, no, I can't. And it's because we get into porn by ourselves. For the most part, people are exposed to porn, maybe at a friend's house, but a lot of times they're just online when they're little kids, and they stumble into it. And so most people, I would say, from my experience, have, they were exposed to porn by themselves, but we don't get out of addiction by ourselves. We need the involvement of other people and here's why. Because that's the purpose of our existence is connection. That's why we covered connection in a previous episode. We need to involve other people into our lives, so that we can show them the best of ourselves when we overcome our limitations and we can invite them to celebrate with us so that they can pat us on the back. We need that validation. We, because we're so hard on ourselves, a lot of times we forget to celebrate our victories and we sometimes we don't even see them, sometimes we are so clouded in self loathing that we can't even see our good points. And to have somebody to remind us when we're doing well, that we're doing well is fantastic, but also somebody to be there for us when we make mistakes to learn the skill of admitting I fell short of my standard. I wanted to do this, but I didn't do this or I didn't want to do this, but I ended up doing it again.
To be able to exercise that muscle with somebody else allows you to stop shouldering the weight of your mistakes. Because for many people tell me if this is true, we've all done this, I'm positive at some point some of us more than others. We relive our mistakes again and again and again. And we torture ourselves with the mistakes that we've made. So one mistake that you made, you can maybe relive it 20,000 times, within a few years, just by reliving this mistake. And every time you do it, you're reassuring yourself that you are that mistake and that you become intertwined. You become one with your mistakes. And learning how to talk about your mistakes with another person helps you separate yourself from those mistakes and you start to objectify those mistakes. You take them out of your heart. And the sense of that they're a part of your identity. And then you just make them these things, these things that you did. But you are not these things. And this person by talking about it, you can see where you made the mistakes, you can see your patterns more clearly. And then you can have a more sober mindset when you approach life because you, if you can see your pattern, then you can know where to stop short and redirect yourself so you don't go down the same road towards your own demise. So having accountability partners, really inviting somebody into your life to report on an ongoing basis, how you are doing in respect to the, the goals that you have. So in terms of sexual integrity, what we're asking everybody to have is accountability. And for especially if you're struggling with porn, I highly recommend that you find somebody that's willing to help Are you out every single day, at least somebody that can read your text every single day, ideally, somebody that can get back to you and let you know that they, that they've read your report, and maybe give you advice if they have it, but mostly just to receive it. If you're not struggling that badly, if you're doing pretty well in life, so you're pretty happy still to have accountability for when you are acting in a very risky or self destructive way. When you see yourself taking more risks than you think you should. But conversely, also, when was the last time that you had accountability for the amazing things that you did for your wife? Because sometimes, sometimes, your wife is very happy, but she doesn't let you know.
But you can say hey, bro, the other night I gave my wife a 45-minute massage, and she loved it. And then the person be like, Yeah, that's a great idea. And then you can spread positivity that way, right. And you can also get validation. It's not self-serving to get validated for being a good people. It's a basic human need. We all want our parents to be like you did well, you did well. We want that and that's fine. It's, it's bad to need that. It's, it's destructive to not function without it. But to receive it and to get it, it's, it feeds us. It's a, it's a good healthy thing. So it's kind of like, an accountability partner is not necessarily like a parental figure. It can be like an uncle or an aunt figure, depending on you know, the gender could be like a brother or sister figure. Typically at High Noon, we recommend that people find an accountability partner who's on more stable footing than you in, in their sexual integrity.
So somebody who has more sobriety than you that had, that, that is clearer than you. Because if you're struggling and the person that you're accountable to is also struggling, sometimes that can bring you down. Because if you see no hope, and then you tell somebody else, and they're barely hanging on, then it could bring you guys both down, or gals both down. So it's important to be able to tell somebody, hey, I'm struggling and to know that they're not struggling as bad as you. Because somehow that brings us hope. And for some people, it's not good to have somebody who's too far ahead because they, you, can feel like sometimes, I get that sometimes because I've been on this journey for a long time. I really don't struggle with porn at all, at this point in my life, like it doesn't factor into any of my days. And so for some people, they feel really crappy to hear that because they feel so far away from that wherever they are in their journey. And it's not an assessment about better or worse. It's just where we're at in our journeys. And if somebody seems too far away, sometimes it's just not helpful. And if and if somebody is doing worse than you, then yes, of course, you probably shouldn't ask them to be your accountability partner. So to find somebody with slightly more stable footing is extremely helpful. And it's important I'm going to say the last thing. The last major important part is to define your relationship and to define your expectations. Because if you are getting an accountability partner to save your life, then you're never going to be satisfied because that's not their job.
And nobody can do that for you. You have to do the work. An accountability partner, you know, it's good to first figure out how often are you going to talk and communicate with this person. Are you going to text them? Are you going to message them on Facebook? What's up cookout, etc, etc. Are you going to call them ever once a week, once a month? Are you going to Zoom and have face-to-face? Are you, if you live in a similar geographical region, are you going to meet up for coffee once in a while? It's good to figure this out so that you can really expect what to expect and also to for them to know what you expect from them. Hey, listen, I just want to send you reports every day. And if you could once in a while, give me some feedback, I'd love to hear it. Or if you could, you know, let me know what you think, positive or negative, it would be appreciative, but like to really lay it out clearly what, what you expect so that they can deliver on that. And it's really good to do it, ask them for a certain period of time. Because if somebody, if somebody thinks that you're asking them to be there 24/7 for them for the rest of your life, chances are they're going to not commit to that at all, because that's a very frightful commitment. So it's much better to say, hey, for the next three months, right or the next month. But three months is a very good period of time, because it's a season and it's not easy to report every day for three months, right? It's a challenge, but people can handle three months.
So you say, hey, for the next three months, can I report to you everyday, say, at the end of the day, or whatever you agree upon, and I'll report these things. And I would love to hear from you maybe once or twice a week, to, to know what you think and see if you see any patterns or anything like this. And I'm telling you, people are waiting to help other people, especially in this time of history. Everybody wants to give. Not everybody. There's some horrible, horrible humans out there, you know, they just want to hurt people. But the vast majority of humans, I would say the vast, vast, vast majority of humans are in a position in our evolution, where they want to give, they just don't know how. And I guarantee you there's somebody in your life who wants to help you build sexual integrity, and they just don't know how to ask. They don't sometimes even know what question to ask. But if you initiate a conversation, they will be more than happy to accommodate if you give them some clear guidelines, right? Then, then the expectations are clear. And all they're really committing to is reading a message a day. In some cases, having one call a week, people can handle this we have time. Especially like in the last episode Sammy was mentioning, you know, our phones now give us weekly reports about how much we use them. And so many people say I don't have time for that. So I don't have time to look at your phone, your phone will tell you exactly how much time you have that you're wasting on each app. It'll tell you a breakdown of Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, whatever.
So I guarantee you there's somebody in your life who is not only willing to help but who wants to help, but you just need to do the legwork of asking. And maybe it's not the first person you ask. Don't be discouraged. Some people are genuinely busy. Some people are also afraid. Just keep on asking and you will find the right person. And again if you ask for only three months, then at the end of three months, you can say, hey, this really works. Can we do it again? Or hey, I was, I was thinking maybe it was a good experiment, but I'd like to maybe try somebody else. I felt like whatever, whatever, you can just evaluate, you can tweak or you can just totally change everything. It's up to you, but just know that it's possible and that it's super important. And people sign up for gyms, but people don't change their body. You know, the people who really change their, their bodies are people who join up for things like CrossFit, people, because then you're accountable to other people. Or if you get a coach or hire a personal trainer, somebody that you're accountable to your chances of really transforming your life increase exponentially.
So, with all this, I feel like I just had a coffee and I spoke at triple speed. With all these words said, I just want to say in conclusion, that if you are seeking transformation and total and utter sexual integrity to live by your own terms and to stop falling victim to your lower urges. And to, you know, some others, other version of you that you don't admire or love. If you are committed to transformation, then please get an accountability partner. And we can give you much more details if you go onto our website at highnoon.org. It was a pleasure doing this series. Thank you so much for listening. Please, as always, if you have any questions, reach out to us at our website, highnoon. org. If you liked us, please give us a review. We need more reviews so that we can spread the word and get this message out. If you, if you have issues with us, contact us and let us know and we'll talk it out. We appreciate all the feedback we can get. So thank you so much and we will see you next time.