The Crucial Difference between Shame and Accountability

The other day I ran across this quote:

“The key, if you want to build habits that last, is to join a group where the desired behavior is the normal behavior.”

– James Clear

I like Clear’s work, and I like this quote.

But.

In my opinion, it’s really important to put this quote in the right context. Because if the context is unhealthy, this idea can actually do a lot more harm than good.

If I were editing this quote, I’d make it something like,

” … to join a group with healthy values and boundaries, where the desired behavior is the normal behavior.”

Because if you join a group with disordered or unhealthy thinking … you’re going to normalize that. And that’s not good.

I’m sure, since you’re a human being, you’ve noticed how often there’s something we want to do differently, but we find ourselves getting stuck in bad habits and self-blame loops.

The larger group (our family, our school, our community, whatever) tells us to behave differently. But we don’t. And then we hide it, because the group wouldn’t approve.

When this becomes a pattern, it solidifies into shame. And chronic, toxic shame is really bad for you.

It’s also incredibly unhelpful for behavior change.

Shame creates a failure loop

A lot of our longtime not-so-great habits got started with a shame trigger.

1. We do the Bad Thing.
2. We get the message from our group that the Bad Thing is Bad.
3. We avoid thinking about it, because we don’t want to be a Bad person.

Now we have a little dark place in our thinking. A spot we just turn our eyes away from.

Which makes it easier to,

4. Do the Bad Thing again.

Sometimes the bad thing is actually bad. Sometimes it’s just bad in excess. So it could be smoking, not-so-nutritious food, sexuality, racism, conflict … just about anything that can be harmful.

For many, many folks, one of their chronic Bad Things is procrastination. People who don’t suffer from it think it’s a lightweight problem … but it really ain’t.

The Shame Failure Loop can last a lifetime. And it creates the illusion that it’s impossible to do things any differently.

Because with each cycle, we become more convinced that we actually are Bad, at our core.

The difference between shame and accountability

Accountability uses our social natures to keep us doing good things. That’s what James Clear is talking about, and it’s wonderful! Healthy group norms lead to healthy and beneficial behavior.

Shame causes our social natures to hide the truth when our actions go against our own values or the values of our community.

Shame creates dark corners where nothing good happens.

A very mild version of this is when you get really mad at yourself because you haven’t made progress on a project. Then you spend all morning getting on Facebook. Like you Just. Promised. Yourself. You. Wouldn’t. Do.

Yelling at yourself didn’t keep you off Facebook. In fact, it kept you from really staying awake to what you needed to do.

Again and again, when I see someone in a Shame Failure Loop, I see phrases like,

“I swear I don’t even get how I got here.”

That’s why I keep banging the drum about how unhelpful the advice is to “kick your ass” (or pay someone to kick it for you) to keep you moving forward.

It sometimes jars you out of the Shame Failure Loop for a moment. But it doesn’t take long to get right back to being stuck in the Loop … and blaming yourself for it.

I hereby give you permission to just let that go.

My friend Josh Hillis does a lot of work with detoxing people from the shame-based culture around fitness and body weight. Here’s his summation of the research on supporting better health:

“It turns out that it’s actually as simple as:

• Group support
• Creating effective habits
• Disrupting ineffective habits
• Creating an environment that increases exercise
• Creating an environment that increases healthy eating

“People do more work and get more results with positive support and basic habits.”
– Josh Hillis, RE: That new article going around about fat shaming being such a great idea….

We might be able to help you with that

I promise I didn’t steal the idea of our Creative Fierce community from Josh. But he and I do see human nature in very similar ways.

So our community of content creators, writers, and business owners probably won’t cause you to lose weight. But we did build it to include:

• Group support
• Creating effective habits
• Disrupting ineffective habits
• Creating an environment that increases focused work
• Creating an environment that increases self care
• Creating an environment that supports us in making a positive change in the world

The goal is to get you into a supportive framework for doing your best work, doing it consistently, and fostering balanced growth.

That growth, by the way, isn’t just financial. It’s also in your own well-being and the health of the world around you.

And absolutely no ass kicking involved.

Update, September 2021

We’ve been running Creative Fierce for almost a year now, and we’ve learned so much about what really works to help people sustain their creative output.

The group is closed to new members at the moment, but we’ll be opening up with a special workshop in October. If you’re on the email list, you’ll be notified when we’re ready for our next cohort.

I don’t send a billion messages about it, because that’s annoying. But I will let you know what the program includes, what you can expect it to do for you, and how to join the next cohort if you think it would benefit you.

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

This post was originally published in August, 2020 and has been updated in September, 2021.