In Focus
Responsibility: A Brave New Attitude No-one can stand in the way of your goals once you take complete responsibility for your life – warts and all. Helen Rosing explains how.
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ny personal development book will, at some stage, raise the point that to be successful you need to take responsibility for your life. It sounds like a fairly simple concept – if someone approached you on the street and asked whether you have already accepted this responsibility, you would most likely respond with a resounding “yes”. But is that really the case? Many people believe they are taking responsibility for their lives and yet they still don’t achieve the results they want. Often, when we are disappointed or let down, we automatically make excuses for what has happened and lay blame, rather than take responsibility for the outcome ourselves. Blame includes both blaming another person and blaming the circumstances for the way things are, but you do have a choice:
Responsibility OR BLAME To take full responsibility for your life is to stop making excuses for the way things are and when things don’t go your way. It is to say, “I am responsible for everything in my life – past, present and future”. Adopting this attitude is both incredibly empowering and a huge burden at the same time. The power comes from knowing you can achieve absolutely anything you want in life, because no-one can stop you. It involves looking beyond all the things or people that have stopped you achieving what you want in the past, and working around them to achieve what you want in the present and the future. The burden lies in accepting that every result in your life – the good, the bad and the ugly – is a consequence of your actions and reactions. Choosing to be totally responsible for your life requires you to accept that everything that happens hereafter is also your own doing. In comparison, laying blame can make us feel a whole lot better in an unpleasant situation. It’s a lot easier to think that someone or something else is responsible, however laying blame also removes the power that you have over your own life.
What am I responsible for? You are responsible for two things in your life – your actions and reactions. Naturally, your actions refer to every action you take everyday, from getting out of bed in the morning to getting back in at night. In any circumstance you can choose how you act. You choose whether you get out of bed 45 minutes earlier to exercise in the morning or whether to spend your $1,000 bonus or save it.
October/November 2008
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Every action you take makes a difference to your results. Just as important is taking responsibility for your reactions. You have a choice in everything that happens to you and how you react in that particular circumstance. We often hear comments such as, “he makes me feel so…”. In truth, no one can make you feel anything. To put this into day-to-day context, consider being out and about in your car. On days when you are happy and feeling great about life, you probably don’t feel bothered when other drivers cut you off or tailgate. You shrug it off and keep on singing along to the song on the radio. But, what about those days when things aren’t going so well, or you’re feeling tired or unwell? Chances are that tailgating will prompt you to complain about inconsiderate drivers who “make me so mad!” What is the difference between those two days? The difference is in how you choose to react. In that moment, you have the choice.
Who am I responsible for? In the adult-world you can only ever be responsible for yourself. You are not responsible for the actions or reactions of others. Naturally, the level of responsibility is different when it comes to the supervision of children. You also cannot be responsible for changing someone else. In my coaching experience, I have worked with numerous clients who aimed to have other people change so that they would be happier or more successful.