Take Responsibility, For Everything.

Responsibility is one of my favourite topics, it intrigues me but also leaves me extremely frustrated.

The latter is because of the power it holds over the trajectory of your life.

The former is because I constantly see people avoiding responsibility to protect their feelings in the short term, while simultaneously causing themselves more suffering in the long term.

If you could simply learn the habit of taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life, you’d greatly improve the control you have over it. 

Responsibility takes the power away from other people and the complete randomness of life and places it gracefully into your palm. 

People are able to take responsibility for two kinds of circumstances, the ones they have directly caused (which is the obvious one), and the less obvious ones, the utterly random and unforeseen circumstances we find ourselves in.

The Things You Have Caused

If you are unable to take responsibility for the things you have caused, I’d start here.

Taking responsibility is a learned skill, just like any other skill, you’re able to practise it and greatly improve at it the more you do.

Although taking responsibility for the things you have caused seems like something everyone should do, you’d be surprised how rare this trait actually is

Instead of doing this, people protect their feelings with a nice comfortable blanket of excuses.

They externalise blame, as it makes them feel better, but as I said previously, it only hurts them further in the long term.

Some examples of these are Poor health, lack of wealth, being in an unhealthy relationship, having terrible friends, hating your job etc.

We all have complete control over all of these, whether you’re able to see how or not.

I’m going to create a visual representation as an example: 

The left side is comfortable, it makes you feel good because it means it’s not your fault, but guess what, if it’s not your fault, it’s not in your control, and if it’s not in your control, you can’t change it. 

So, you’re choosing the short-term comfort of not being the problem, but causing long-term discomfort by remaining fat.

The right side, however, never feels good, because you’re admitting to it being your fault, but guess what, now you’re able to go and change it.

This is what taking responsibility for the things you have caused looks like.

So if you’re unable to do this, go work on this skill first.

Now let’s look at the next level.

Taking Responsibility For Things That Are Completely Out Of Your Control

Taking responsibility for things that you didn’t cause is not quite the same.

Instead of taking responsibility for the actions that led to the circumstances, you take responsibility for the way you react to them.

A baby gets left at your front door, a terrible traffic accident makes you late for a very important meeting, you're taking your yoghurt upstairs to eat, the dog barks, you jump and drop the yoghurt and it explodes everywhere.

None of these things could necessarily have been prevented, nor were they your fault.

The moment things like this happen, it’s done, nothing can change them unless of course, you have a time machine.

But you don’t, you only have one thing left to do, and that’s choose how you’re going to react.

Taking responsibility for these things simply means if the consequences of them affect you in any way, it’s your responsibility to act and react accordingly.

This takes quite a lot of practice, as it requires us to be hyper-aware of our thoughts, emotions, and actions. But once you get the hang of it, it creates an immense sense of freedom. 

This is because we go from constantly blaming external things for the way we feel, to realising we have the power to decide how they affect us.

Get the hang of this and watch the anger, frustration, stress, and fear all fade away. 

Once you have mastered taking responsibility for yourself, you could start to take responsibility for your friends, family, community etc.

This is the final step, it’s what any good leader does, it’s what parents do, and it’s what volunteers do. 

These skills have a major impact on the overall well-being of your life, if you’ve never deemed responsibility to be this important, it might be time to start.