According to Roger Connors and Tom Smith, the authors of The Wisdom of Oz: Using Personal Accountability to Succeed in Everything You Do, accountability powers you toward your goals, and these guidelines for unleashing its power will get you over the rainbow to what you want.

1. Redefine accountability.

Does the mere mention of the word accountability make you shudder? Staying true to yourself and your goals should not be drudgery. You must view your accountability as a gift to yourself, a voluntary mindset to ensure success, not something you’re force-feeding yourself even though you hate it.

2. Think as if your life depended on it.

When you shift to a determined, creative mindset, you begin to discover solutions for challenges that you may have believed were out of your control. If your life depended on it, would you come up with a new idea or strategy to save yourself? Absolutely.

3. When you can’t control your circumstances, don’t let your circumstances control you.

Whether you get off the couch on your own or require a little nudge from somewhere else, the point is to get out there and do something.

4. You’ve got to want it more than you don’t want it.

 Everything will exact a certain price from you—energy, effort, patience, resources. It’s natural to want the good things in life without paying the price: You want to lose weight but don’t want to exercise or sacrifice your favourite foods. You want a promotion but don’t want to put in the extra hours. Success comes when you hit a tipping point and begin to desire your goal more than you dread the cost of reaching it.

5. Don’t let gravity pull you down.

Just as massive planets produce gravity—drawing everything toward them—it seems that tough problems and challenging obstacles have enough mass to pull you away from getting what you want. Don’t give in.

6. Every breakthrough requires a bold stroke.

When you discover your own internal power, you see that you have the right, the ability, even the obligation, to create your own best reality.

7. Ask for feedback.

Soliciting advice and criticism from others creates accountability. For this to work, you will need to convince the mentor, friend, colleague or significant other whom you’re appealing to that you want to know what he really thinks. Feedback is key to overcoming blind spots and achieving better results.

8. Ask yourself, Am I a renter or an owner?

We care more for the things we own than for the things we rent because we don’t have as much invested in things that are temporary; there’s not as much at stake. When you own something—whether it’s a car, a work assignment or a relationship—you make an investment, usually involving some degree of sacrifice. If you’re really committed to achieving your goal, go all in.

9. Prepare to move a lot of dirt.

 Finding solutions is just like digging for gold. The more pay dirt the miners process, the more gold they potentially find. In the end, they must move several tons of dirt to find just 1 ounce of gold. It’s hard work, but it yields rich rewards. Their bottom-line secret to success: Keep digging.

10. Make it happen!

How do you do that? How do you really make personal accountability work for you? Wouldn’t it be easy if there were just some switch you could flip? An Easy Button you could push? Maybe an app you could use? Well, there really is a flipping magical switch-app-button. It’s called making a choice and acting on it. You have the choice to fulfill your aspirations or wallow in the blame game and victim cycle.

See more at success.com.