The only method to growth in life, to obtaining everything that you want, to living to your true potential is to begin taking responsibility for your actions. Why? Because the only way that you can make changes to your present and future, is to realize that you are the pilot of your life. With the realization of control, comes the ability to make changes to do better. In other words, claiming CONTROL over your life also known as responsibility for your life, is the ONLY WAY to live authentically.
One of the best sayings in life is ‘When you KNOW better, you do better!‘ The only way to know better is to remain consciously aware of the things that are going on in your life. If you are constantly battling the same problem in life chances are it is because you aren’t taking responsibility for your actions. For instance. If you never have any money, cannot seem to save or being swallowed in debt and have been fighting this battle for years and years, chances are you aren’t learning the lesson. Instead of taking responsibility for over using the credit cards, for spending too much each and every week, for NOT paying your bills on time you are probably blaming an outside source. You might complain that you don’t make enough money, that you don’t have a good job, that you don’t have an education to better your job potential. Bottom line is all of those things you use to blame your LACKS on, are something that YOU and YOU ALONE have control over.
How often have you seen someone get pulled over for a DUI, and then blame the bar that served him or her drinks for getting them drunk? Or what about the lawsuit several years back where McDonalds was sued for serving their coffee too hot after a patron spilled it on himself in his car? How about the young adults who have had a difficult childhood and then spend their adult years blaming their parents for their personal bad decisions? In nearly every facet of life today, in every platform known to humans, there are vivid examples of people not taking responsibility for their own actions. We have become a society that is not just content but is reliant upon blaming others for what isn’t going right in our lives. Can anyone else smell the bullsh@t?
Life strategists work long and hard with clients in order to teach them how to take responsibility for their life. The following tips are used most commonly with people in order to help them take responsibility for their actions, based on the fact that this ownership empowers positive results.
The first lesson is to understand WHY you are so quick to blame others for your faults. Obviously, this behavior works for you on some level. If being angry with your parents enables you to be lazy and angry or gives you an excuse to not make progress in your life then THIS is clearly your payoff. Rather than bettering your life, you are allowing yourself to sit back on your laurels and accomplish nothing based on a dated excuse, which steals all of your control. Even with children, not accepting responsibility for their actions (blaming others) brings them some sort of payoff. When you can figure out what the payoff is for you by making excuses and blaming others you can systematically begin to let them go in order to regain control over your life.
Another reason folks do not take responsibility for their life is because they are living in fear or in the past. Sure, all of us come forward in life with hard lessons from our past. We may have been hurt by someone or something a long time ago. And this hurt, was so blatant that it completely stymies us from moving forward. Often, it isn’t personal hurt that limits us, but perceived hurt from those around us. For instance, there are countless people in this world who choose to remain single and lonely because they saw how unhappy their parents were in their marriage. So they hang on to this hurt and don’t take any risks based on fear of the past. The past is definitely something that we should all learn from, but it shouldn’t be a roadblock to the future. If it is its time to work on letting it go.
Taking responsibility is also about facing consequences.
If there is a scapegoat out there somewhere who wants to be the one to face the consequences? One of the most common pieces of advice offered to parents is to be consistent with children, and to provide consequences for their actions. It is the consequences of our actions that enable us to learn. If we cannot face the consequences, or refuse to learn from the consequences we will be completely stuck in a pattern of lack. Going back to the money example if you cannot learn from your financial mistakes, or refuse to face the consequences of your actions, which could be selling your car or downsizing your house in order to pay off bills you will never make things better.
Bottom line. In order to succeed at anything, you have to CLAIM IT. And unfortunately, this also means claiming the things that go wrong in your life. If you screwed up, then owning the screw up is what will give you the momentum to move forward and do better. And this includes our thoughts and our attitudes as well as our actions. There is no harm in making mistakes in life. There is no harm in failing. Unless of course, those mistakes or failures are turned into excuses filled with blame. Blaming others or blaming things on ‘circumstances’ steals all of the control that you and you alone, have in your life.
