Anna Levesque
Hello, welcome back. Today I’m talking about the importance of accountability, holding yourself accountable as a mental agility skill for navigating both the river and your life with feeling more empowered and working your way towards your goal. And accountability is on my mind, especially with my healing journey.

To those of you who have been listening and tuning in, thank you. You are aware that I herniated a disc, S1L5 in my lower back about five months ago. For those of you who are just tuning in, thank you for being here. I appreciate you. And yeah, thanks for joining. And when I first sent myself over the edge, I was in excruciating pain and

All I could do was lie on my stomach and do some basic, basic PT and walk very slowly and with difficulty. And now five months later, I am sitting comfortably, walking, stand up paddle boarding quite a bit, thank goodness, because it’s given me an option to get on the water and it feels good. It’s very good for core stability and my back. And I am actually, you know, looking forward to the potential of getting back in my boat in another month or so, hopefully fingers crossed. And what has gotten me from lying on my stomach and excruciating pain, barely able to do anything, sleeping was a challenge. I mean, it was just,brutal to where I am now and hopefully where I continue to go is accountability and accountability for practicing easy moves in easy water at first, right? Doing the basic, just what I could do, which was very basic and graduating to maybe some harder moves in easy water.

And eventually, hopefully hard moves in hard water. And of course you get to define what hard is for yourself. And I get to define that for myself and without the accountability of, okay, I’ve got to do what I can. And every day I’m going to walk because walking is good for my back. Every day I’m going to do PT, right? I’m going to go make my appointments for PT chiropractic and rolfing.

and stay on the path has, I think, helped me tremendously in my journey. And when it comes to navigating the river, I recently had an experience where, because I am doing some teaching on my paddleboard actually, and where some folks were disappointed

that their role wasn’t as robust as they thought it would be. And when I asked them, you know, what’s your, how often do you practice? Have you been going to pool sessions? Have you been, you know, practicing so many times and you’ve been out? And they hadn’t been practicing at all. And so the takeaway for me is that it’s not effective.

to be disappointed or hard on yourself if your role isn’t working, if you haven’t been practicing it, truly. And it doesn’t matter how good you are, if you paddle a lot and never flip over, you will lose confidence and ability in your role because it’s something that needs practice, right? Use it or lose it. So.

On the other hand, if you know you haven’t been practicing and then it’s not working, but you’re like, well, I haven’t been practicing. So maybe now I need to go practice. At least you’re being realistic with the situation. And so I think it’s really important to, if you say that something is important to you, right? Whether it’s the roll or a move on the water or a stroke, whatever it is, and you don’t practice it because it scares you, then you can’t expect to be good at it. And yeah, rolling. I mean, I see this so much in rolling. is throughout my 20 plus years of teaching kayaking, coaching kayaking, you know, is a recurring, this is a recurring story that I hear.

So if you want your role to be good, or if you want to keep up your skills, for instance, this winter, then go to pool sessions, right? And even if it makes you nervous to flip over, like find the fun in it, gamify it, do something that will help you work through the fear into your discomfort zone so you can continue to learn. And sometimes, like I mentioned already, it’s easy moves in easy water, right? Don’t push yourself if it’s…

you know, not working, then take a moment, reflect, maybe go back to basics, like super basics. There is a lot of power in going back to basics. And the other reason why accountability is on my mind is because the reboot, refuel, fall reset is next week. Well, actually when this episode drops, I’ll be in it in the middle of it. And

It’s one of my favorite programs to facilitate. We work on morning routine, sleep, and part of it is resetting your gut. So you reset your gut microbiome. There’s the gut brain axis, right? So our gut is our second brain. So there’s a lot of importance to taking care of your gut. So part of it is like really simplifying your diet to

a few vegan meals for five days to help reset your gut. it require or it doesn’t require part of it is to let go of some of your favorite foods that are not beneficial for your gut perhaps. And one of those things is coffee. And throughout this healing process, one of the joys in my life has been making my morning latte.

Anna Levesque (07:08.18)
And I know this sounds super trivial and super simple, especially in the world we’re living in right now. I get it. And we all have these things and we have to start with ourselves and getting real with ourselves. And even with the small challenges, that’s how we build resilience and courage and self-awareness. And so part of me is saying, well, it’s been so hard and that the latte is like my one joy. so…

I should just be easy on myself and maybe like not give that up for the reset. Like what’s the big deal? But for me, it is a big deal because that’s not holding myself accountable and it’s drifting into victim mentality, right? Yes, I want, it’s important to be kind to myself, but actually being kind to myself is doing the full reset, which I know I always feel way better at the end.

clearer, stronger, lighter, know, just freer. It’s just a, I love it. And so that is being kind to myself, right? Letting myself off the hook, which sometimes it is a good idea. It can be a good idea to do. So I don’t want people, you know, I don’t know. Like these days, sometimes I…

get so worried about like what I’m saying, because there’s always a gray area, right? There’s always a gray area. So sometimes you do need to be kind to yourself. And what I’m talking about for myself, and I’m talking to folks who can relate with this and that this might help you out in your life is hold yourself accountable. And being kind to yourself does and can look like holding yourself accountable to doing hard things. It can. And so there’s that.

With that is accountability is a leadership quality and important, so important leadership quality, right? If you want to be an effective leader and have people trust you and respect you, it’s important to hold yourself accountable, right? And so for me, leading the Reboot, Refuel, Reset, so important for me to walk my talk and do it fully and support and role model what I…

I am coaching. Same thing on the river, right? I want to role model what I’m coaching. you know, if I’m, and that means upkeeping my skills so that when I’m demoing a fairy, right, I am, it’s a nice demo quality fairy, or it’s a nice demo quality boof, or Eddie turn or whatever it is. And also role modeling, you know, challenging myself.

in rapids or on rivers, you know, that are at my limit of comfort getting into my discomfort zone. So there is, so for me, accountability is important to keep you moving towards your goals. It is, it can be being kind to yourself to hold yourself accountable. And it is a very important leadership quality. So my challenge to you,

in today’s episode is to reflect on your accountability. And to, so my challenges are for you to set small daily accountability goals for yourself. You know, what accountability goals are you going to hold yourself accountable to this week?

Again, easy moves in easy water. It’s okay to start with easy moves in easy water and grow from there. Right? So could be a morning routine. It could be practicing your role. It could be, you know, some a task at work, but set start to set some accountability goals for yourself. Use a system, some type of system to help you check in that could be your calendar. It could be an accountability buddy. It could be your journal, right? So get with someone else or a system that helps you hold yourself accountable. And remember that it is not about perfection, right? So if you’re paddling downstream, if you miss a stroke, it doesn’t mean that you’re still not moving downstream or that you can’t regain

your momentum, right? So be, stay on course. It’s important to not have an all or nothing attitude like, I missed my accountability goal today. So I may as well just give it up for the whole week. It’s like, no, the deal is when you get offline, you scramble to get back online, right? That’s how we run rapids. We don’t just give up in the middle of a rapid. So hold that line to the best of your ability.

And I want to invite you to reflect on an area where you can hold yourself accountable this week. Right? And if you want an accountability partner that is by your side cheering you on, also, you know, holding you accountable to doing the hard stuff you say you want to do, then check out my private coaching programs. You can check those out at mindbodypaddle.com forward slash coaching, or you can email me at Anna, A-N-N-A at mindbodypaddle.com. So I hope y’all have a fun week holding yourself accountable. I know that sounds weird, but it can be fun. It feels good. It grows your confidence and your courage when you hold yourself accountable. And I will…

See you next week. Thanks for listening y’all.