The Power of Responsibility: The First Step to Self-Improvement

I used to feel like a passenger on my own ship, along for the ride with no control over where it was headed. 

This was until I learned the skill that changed everything: taking responsibility. 

Taking responsibility for something means stepping up and taking ownership of a situation. It’s avoiding blame and focusing only on what you can currently do to best handle current problems. 

You can take responsibility for the things you’ve caused, this is a given. But you can also take responsibility for the things that were completely out of your control. 

Whether a team member made a mistake, you were hurt by someone you trusted or terrible unforseen weather ruins plans, you should take responsibility for it.

It’s not about taking the blame for how these things happened as blame gets eliminated altogether. It’s about taking responsibility for how you handle them, if they affect you in some way, the responsibility of acting accordingly is yours to bear. 

Without being responsible for who and where we are, we give all the power to the external factors we blame.

The problem with avoiding responsibility is it feels good. By blaming other people or random misfortunes for our situations, we shield our emotions with a blanket of excuses, but we simultaneously shield ourselves from change. 

If we aren’t responsible for what we don’t like about our lives, how are we going to change them?

This is why taking responsibility is the key to personal development, as, without it, all other traits and skills are rendered useless.

You could be the most disciplined, hard-working, driven and confident person in the world, but if you’re unable to take responsibility for something, you won’t change it.

This was the harsh truth that finally allowed me to stop blaming the misfortunes of my childhood for who and where I was, and allowed me to take responsibility for how I was acting. Since then, my life has vastly improved.

Having changed or improved almost every aspect of myself that I didn’t like, I can honestly say I owe it all to this one skill.

So, what exactly does taking responsibility do for us? And how can we learn it?

Regains Control

Although blaming external factors makes us feel better about our situations, it also gives them full control over us. 

Taking responsibility takes the power away from them and places it directly in our hands.

Everything suddenly stops being about how and why things happen and instead becomes about what we can do to best deal with them.

It shifts the focus onto our actions and decisions, giving us full control over the direction of our lives.

Builds Confidence

When you finally start taking responsibility for your problems, you’ll start to overcome them, and in doing so, you directly boost your confidence levels.

You start tackling and defeating the things you avoided for a long time. This leaves you wondering what else you can do, and start taking on more challenges.

You have more confidence in the face of adversity, as you’ll have first-hand evidence that you can move through it effectively. 

New problems that arise no longer have the same discouraging effect as before, you’ll simply keep your head up and ask ‘What can I do right now that would best handle this situation’, and then you’ll just go do that.

Improves Relationships

As you become better at taking responsibility, you’ll notice how much better your relationships become.

People will start relying on you during problems or times of crisis, as they’ll trust you enough to get them through them safely.

You’ll be better at communication, conflict resolution, and problem-solving, and become a much more mature person, all useful when dealing with others. 

Although it greatly improves your relationship with others, it also shifts your relationship with yourself.

When you become solely responsible for improving your life, it becomes very difficult to keep disliking yourself.

You’ll stop blaming the world for problems that arise, and instead have full trust in yourself to get through them.

Emotional Intelligence

Taking responsibility forces you to identify your emotions and reflect on them, it forces you to figure out how your emotions drive and control you. 

We can all make stupid decisions when we act emotionally, but if we refuse to take responsibility, we’ll never learn from them. 

If we’re always justifying our emotions by blaming everything else, we’ll keep ourselves from ever having true emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise, manage and influence emotions effectively, but the only way to do this is if we learn to become responsible for them first.

By becoming responsible for our emotions, and only when we do, we’re able to influence and adjust them in a way that suits us best.

How To Start Taking Responsibility

Taking responsibility will completely change your life, giving you the ultimate power over the trajectory of your life, but how do we develop it?

Taking responsibility is like any other skill, it can be practised and improved over time, you just need to know how.

Here are 3 things that will help you do just that and finally become the best version of yourself.

Develop Self-Awareness

The first step to taking responsibility is to develop self-awareness, as without it, how will you know what needs changing?

Self-awareness is identifying the aspects of ourselves and our lives that we dislike, and then reflecting on what we are currently doing that’s keeping us there.

You can start adding things like journaling and meditation to your daily routine that help you become more aware of your emotions and thought patterns.

Meditation will allow you to observe your mind and thoughts from a type of birds-eye view, giving you insight into the inner workings of your mind.

Journaling allows you to take note of how you think and feel to get them out of your mind, giving you the chance to see them differently.

Reframe Setbacks

Another way to build this skill is to change the way you view setbacks and mistakes.

Taking responsibility can be a lot harder when you view the mistakes you make as just that, mistakes. It can make taking responsibility feel like a burden rather than a tool for personal development.

However, reframing these and seeing them as opportunities for growth makes it much easier to take responsibility for them, as you can then see a clear way out.

Once something happens, no matter what it is, it is done. If you do not have a time machine, and I’ll take a wild guess and say you don’t, then there is nothing else left to do except react.

And what better way to react to setbacks than to use them as opportunities to become better versions of ourselves?

The next time something unforeseen happens or you make a mistake, ask yourself, ‘How can this make me a better person, and what can I do to make it happen?’

Take Action

This step is undoubtedly the most important when developing this skill.

You could become the most introspective and self-aware person on the planet, but without taking action, nothing changes.

Taking action is proof of responsibility. If our behaviour doesn’t change, there is no real evidence that we’ve learned anything at all.

Taking action could be following through with your commitments, having a difficult conversation or stepping up and volunteering to help fix a mistake.

We can all sit in our beds and say to ourselves, ‘I take full responsibility for where I am’, but if we do not then take action to change, are we truly responsible? 

After taking responsibility, you then need to ask yourself a set of questions:

• Am I able to change this?
• What can I do to make that happen?
• How can I break that down into manageable steps?

Write this down, because you will get answers, and seeing them written down in front of you makes them real. 

Then, you act.

Summary

Responsibility is the first and most important step in personal development.

You can only influence and change something once you’ve taken responsibility for it.

It’s how you can regain control over your life, build confidence, improve relationships and become emotionally intelligent.

If you want to learn the skill of taking responsibility, you must become more self-aware to identify what needs changing, reframe setbacks into opportunities and start taking action towards changing them.

So there you have it, what it is, what it does and how to do it. From here, it’s up to you.

What will you do to start taking responsibility and completely change your life?