How to Hold Yourself Accountable to Goals
Feb 17, 2026Summary
Have you ever set a high-energy goal on January 1st, only to find yourself completely unmotivated and alone a month later? Most of us fail not because we lack vision, but because we lack a system of support to keep us moving when the newness wears off. In this practical episode of the Arise, Women of God podcast, host Tamara K. Anderson joins Wendi Christensen and Kari Anjewierden to answer the question: How do you set goals and hold yourself accountable?
We move from the lonely struggle to a divine partnership by breaking down the mechanics of follow-through. Wendi explains how to use the "Stress CBT Approach" to categorize your goals (Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Financial) so you solve actual problems rather than just creating busy work. Kari shares the "Nashville Buddy System"—proving that a simple phone check-in can increase your success rate to over 90%. We also discuss the "Doable Goal" principle (why 5 minutes of scripture is better than an hour of guilt) and the importance of finding a mentor to help you skip the messy middle. If you are ready to shift your mindset from performance to stewardship, this episode will help you stop quietly quitting on your dreams.
Episode Takeaways
- The Stress CBT Approach: Wendi suggests categorizing goals based on your current stressors (Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Financial). If you are stressed about health, set a goal there. Don't set random goals; set goals that solve your pain.
- The Nashville Buddy System: Kari shares how she walks "with" her sister in Nashville via phone. You don't need a local gym buddy; you just need a commitment to check in. This simple act skyrockets success rates.
- The Doable Goal: Set a goal you know you can achieve (e.g., 5 minutes of reading) rather than an ideal goal (1 hour). Consistency builds confidence. You can always increase the time later, but you can't build a habit on failure.
- Mentorship Shortcuts: Sometimes you don't need a buddy; you need a guide. Tamara shares how consulting a doctor for weight loss helped her skip the "messy middle" of guessing. Seeking wise counsel is a form of spiritual stewardship.
Resources
Need a buddy to keep you on track? Join our Accountability Group at Women Warriors of Light! You can also download our FREE Guide to Goal Setting to help you categorize your stressors and find your starting point. 👉 Download the Guide Here: https://www.womenwarriorsoflight.com/offers/WyaLn2gS/checkout
Need accountability? Check out our Women Warriors Accountability Group for free for two weeks! https://www.womenwarriorsoflight.com/join-now
Reflection Questions
- Look at your current stressors. Which category (Physical, Financial, Spiritual) is causing you the most anxiety right now? Is your current goal helping to solve that?
- Do you have a "Nashville Buddy"? Who is one person you could text today to ask for a weekly check-in?
- Are your current goals "Doable" or "Ideal"? If you are failing, how can you shrink the goal to make it 100% achievable this week?
- Read Luke 12:42-43. How does viewing your goals as "stewardship" (taking care of what God gave you) change your motivation compared to viewing them as "performance"?
Transcript
Tamara K. Anderson
00:00:00.640 - 00:02:01.980
Have you ever set a high energy goal Jan. 1 or at another point in the year only to find yourself completely alone and totally unmotivated a month or two later? Most of us fail not because we lack vision, but because we lack a system of support to keep us moving when the newness wears off.
Today we're answering the question, how do you set goals and hold hold yourself accountable and by the end of today's episode, you will understand the importance of buddy accountability and solve the pain point of quietly quitting on your dreams. By shifting your mindset from performance to stewardship. We're moving from the lonely struggle to the partnership with God and those around us.
Stay tuned. Ordinary Women Extraordinary Faith When God calls, we say yes.
The Arise Women of God of God Podcast hello and welcome to another episode of the Arise Women of God podcast.
I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson, and joining me today are Wendi Christensen, my co founder of Women warriors of Light, and Kari Anjewierden, a member of our advisory board. And we're breaking down the mechanics of follow through today. First, we'll talk about the stress CBT approach to categorizing your goals.
Second, we'll include the Nashville Buddy System and why having an accountability partner can increase your success rate to over 90%. Third, we'll discuss the doable goal principle and how to avoid the trap of scripture overload.
And finally, we'll share how to find a mentor who can help you skip all a lot of the messy middle of your progress. But first, Wendi is going to explain why it's important to categorize your stressors using a technique that she uses as a therapist.
Wendi Christensen
00:02:02.300 - 00:04:38.280
What I like to do when I'm looking at setting goals is looking at certain areas and that helps me to go where do I start in setting a goal?
So for example, I like to look at a technique that we use in cognitive behavioral therapy where where you're looking at different aspects of a person's life. So I'll look at the physical aspect and usually I'm looking at stressors, right? Like what are the stressors that I have or that this person has?
And as I start looking at the stressors, I like to take that and look at goals. So for example, I'm going to look at the physical stressors somebody might have.
Maybe they've got some health problems, maybe they're feeling tired, they're not sleeping well, their appetite's down, maybe they're not hydrating.
So I like to, when I'm setting goals, look at how am I doing in those areas because nutrition and how we take care of ourselves, our sleep, our rest, you know, downtime as well as exercise, all of that does have an impact on our mental health. So how am I doing in that physical area then? Looking at my mental health or my emotional health, how am I doing in that area?
Do I need to maybe set some goals of oh, I'm so busy, I never have downtime, maybe I need to exercise downtime, maybe I have too much downtime, maybe I have too much social media time on my phone, maybe I'm playing games too much or scrolling too much. So I feel like that contributes all to my mental health. And then socially it's really important for people to connect.
And so how am I connecting with others? Am I connecting, am I going to lunch with people? Am I talking? Am I reaching out?
Or am I just isolating and staying at home, not really interacting with people because that's not healthy. And then the last couple, I guess spiritual is another one. And I think we're spiritual beings.
And so looking at how am I connecting to God and what helps me to connect to him, whether that's listening to maybe music or scriptures or prayer. Yeah. And then the last one I always like to look at too is financial. Maybe just financially, how am I doing?
Because finance, finances are such a stress for everyone. But I will say when I'm looking at all those areas, it can be overwhelming.
So narrowing it down so I might just do one little teeny tiny thing in each area. Or sometimes I'm like, I just need to focus on physical. That's it, I'm just going to focus on physical.
Or maybe I'm just going to focus on spiritual and not all of them at once. My whole point in this is if I categorize that helps me to go, where do I look for these goals and how do I set it?
What do I need that allows me that to then set a goal?
Tamara K. Anderson
00:04:38.480 - 00:05:02.080
Categorizing your stressors helps you see where you actually are, where you actually need a goal, rather than where you think you should have one. But even the best laid plans can fall apart if you're the only one who knows about it.
Cari is now going to share the secret to staying in habit mode, which is never walking that path alone.
Kari Anjewierden
00:05:02.560 - 00:05:56.480
I always need a buddy. I think a buddy is very helpful.
They don't have to be doing it with me, but somebody to be accountable to and following through that makes me more successful. And I guess actually God can be that accountability partner if you need him to Be.
But sometimes it's nice to have somebody else that can help you with that. I know for me, right now my sister and I are doing what we call walk and talks. So we're trying to get our steps in and our water in.
And so we check in with each other at night. Hey, I'm headed to bed. Those kinds of things to just check in. But. But then we actually will exercise together.
But she lives in Nashville and I live here. And so we just do a phone call and, and it maybe doesn't happen every day, but maybe three or so times a week. And it gets the motivation going.
It gets you going into habit mode.
Tamara K. Anderson
00:05:57.090 - 00:06:29.200
That check in makes all the difference between a wish and a win. When you add a buddy to a specific measurable goal, your success rate skyrockets.
I saw this in action just this morning because I had a goal on my whiteboard and a friend waiting at 6:30am I was out the door in 15 degree weather when normally I would have probably just preferred to stay under the covers. Wendy is now going to share a little bit about making doable goals, build durable habits.
Wendi Christensen
00:06:29.760 - 00:07:55.280
I think you also making it specific and having accountability and a reward. And I think the last thing I would add is make it a what we call a doable goal.
And that means you can do it like it's something you know you can accomplish. You know, I, for example, don't go to the gym. I love to go do what you do and I just go out for a walk.
I love going out in my neighborhood and walking around. Let's say I set a goal to go to the gym and I'm not a gym person and I set it to go five days a week. That's not a very doable goal.
I am most likely not going to do that. So you want to start with a goal that you know you can do. So make it specific but also make it when you can do so.
If I set a goal, for example, in the spiritual area, that I want to read scriptures and I'm going to read 10 pages every single day, I also know realistically that is not going to happen because life is busy. And so I might set a goal instead to read for five minutes, I'm like, I can do that.
And then as I accomplish it and I'm feeling good about it and then maybe I can go, hey, I think I'm going to increase that to 10 minutes now. And so doing that and seeing how I do it now, if I get confident in it, I can bump it up 15:20 minutes, whatever.
If I'm not feeling confident, keep working at it until I get my five minutes every day. So it seems doable because you're less likely to drop off doing it and stay consistent in doing it.
If you set something that you're like, I can do that. That's doable.
Tamara K. Anderson
00:07:55.520 - 00:09:50.190
But sometimes we don't need a buddy, we need a guide. We often set goals in areas where we simply don't have the knowledge yet.
Now going to share about being flexible and seeking a mentor, which can help us avoid unnecessary mistakes. But sometimes we need a mentor or someone to guide us through it.
I happen to have an appointment with one of my doctors this past week, and one of my goals is to release some of the weight I put on during perimenopause. And it was really neat to just counsel with her about that because she has way more knowledge and experience with the human body than I do.
And so sometimes having a mentor or someone who knows so much more, because I can google it, but this woman has experience, right? She knows exactly what she's talking about. She's helped people with this before.
So it felt really good to me to just bounce ideas off of her and see what she suggested back. So sometimes getting a mentor to help guide you because it's okay that you don't know everything.
If not, you wouldn't have set this goal because obviously you're lacking in knowledge. So find people who are qualified. You know, don't just find the answer on TikTok.
Find people who actually have the knowledge to help you through the process. They can help you skip some of that messy middle stuff that maybe you would have to go through on your own if you didn't ask.
A mentor can help you skip the messy middle. When we combine that guidance with a commitment to God, we stop just being busy and start being faithful stewards.
Accountability isn't just about a checklist, although those are great. It's about who we are becoming in the process.
Carrie is now going to share a Bible verse while Wendy wraps it up with some powerful ideas about Christlike characteristics and a habit rule.
Kari Anjewierden
00:09:50.670 - 00:10:17.570
I love the scripture in Luke 12. Who then is that faithful and wise steward? We're trying to be wise stewards with our lives, and we need to be faithful and we're blessed.
It says, blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. It's in the doing, but pairing with God as we do it. Success comes by doing it with him and not doing it alone.
Wendi Christensen
00:10:17.730 - 00:11:10.240
I love that. And why do we even set goals? It's because we're trying to create a better person or continue to improve upon ourselves.
We're in that constant state of becoming. And I want to develop Christlike characteristics and qualities in myself.
And as I set goals, I feel like it allows me to become more like Jesus Christ. But it's helping me to learn kindness and patience not only for others, but even for myself in setting those goals.
Because as I become consistent in those goals, it changes me as a person. And I I'm not needing to be perfect right here, right now and be perfect at goals. And you don't either.
But I think the biggest thing is just learning to be consistent as you become consistent becomes habitual. Like a good habit. They say it takes 21 days to kind of start creating that habit and about 66 to keep it right.
Tamara K. Anderson
00:11:10.720 - 00:11:52.430
Accountability is the bridge between a dream and reality. Whether it's a sister in Nashville, a mentor in a doctor's office, or the Savior himself, you are not meant to achieve your goals in isolation.
If you're looking for that specific buddy or community to keep you on track, join our accountability group at warriors of Light. And don't forget to download our free A Guide to Goal Setting for Christian Women. I'll drop the link for those in the show notes below.
So, my friends, go find your buddy and take your next doable step today and until next time, may you arise. Do it God's way, God strong.
