What is personal responsibility?
What is personal responsibility?It is taking conscious control of your responses to the events and circumstances in your life. You are responsible for yourself whether you like it or not. What you do with your life and what you have done already is up to you. “Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn once again to exercise his will – his personal responsibility.” Albert Einstein
The ancient Romans understood the concept of personal responsibility. It’s said that after a Roman arch was completed, the engineer who built it had to stand underneath it when the scaffolding was removed.
Like discipline, responsibility is one of those words you have probably heard so many times from authority figures that you’ve developed a bit of an allergy to it. Still, it’s one of the most important things to grow and to feel good about your life. Without it you will never develop the attributes of a leader.
12 Ways To Win Through Personal Responsibility
1. Know there is always a price to pay. Leaders know there are prices and benefits for every good they desire. Mostly people want financial independence, but without having to pay for it, or think the price too high when they have no idea of what it takes.
EXERCISE: Write down two things that are very important to you, that you want. Ask yourself how much time will this take? How uncomfortable will I need to allow myself to be, to achieve it? How much money will it take? How much time?
2. Build your self-esteem. Why do people often have self-esteem problems? One key reason is that they don’t want to take responsibility for their lives: someone else is blamed and a victim mentality is created which damages relationships, ambitions, achievements. That hurt will not stop until you wise up to what you are doing and take responsibility for your life.
EXERCISE: List three areas in your life you have been avoiding taking responsibility in, that stop you moving ahead.
3. Give yourself permission to live the life you want. By taking responsibility for our life we not only gain control of what happens, we feel more deserving. It’s most often YOU that stands in your own way and in the way of your personal success.
EXERCISE: Write down where in your business you have not been giving yourself permission to excel. Why?
4. Taking action becomes natural. Taking responsibility for your life is that extra ingredient that makes taking action a natural thing. You don’t get stuck in just thinking and wishing. You develop habits that mean you become proactive instead of passive.
EXERCISE: List 5 areas where you’ve already created success habits. List 5 business areas you could develop better habits.
5. Understand the limits of your responsibility. It’s important to know where your limits are, otherwise you’ll create a lot unnecessary suffering for yourself and waste energy and focus by taking responsibility for what you can’t control.
EXERCISE: Write down 3 areas that don’t work for you and discuss with your coach what part of them is your responsibility.
6. Forgive Yourself And Others. People make mistakes. It’s inevitable. You do it. Others do it. Everyone does. If you mess up don’t beat yourself up over it. Just take responsibility and move on. Forgiveness clears the slate.
EXERCISE: FORGIVE ALL your mistakes. Now forgive those who have wronged you . . . it’s holding you back.
7. Stop Relying On External Validation. Don’t depend on other people to make you feel good. Being responsible means you stop relying on external validation like praise from others to feel good about yourself. If you need external validation to be happy, you surrender personal responsibility for making yourself happy. Start building a stability within your self. Developing your self-esteem will fuel your life with an inner spring of positive emotions no matter what other people say or do around you.
EXERCISE: It’s up to you to make yourself happy. What areas of your life could doing this improve? What will you start on?
8. Be Open To New Ideas And Beliefs. You should be constantly challenging your own beliefs and filters through which you view the world. If you have the same beliefs today you held last year, last month, then you’re not growing. Be open to change.
EXERCISE: Write down two things you have changed your belief about this week / this month. Where do you feel challenged?
9. Recognise Your Choices. At any given time and in any given situation you get to choose how to respond. You can choose to focus on something positive, no matter how negative a situation you are in. From now on, look for and at the choices you have available to you instead of feeling constrained. Learn to RESPOND out of choice, not REACT out of your ‘programs’.
EXERCISE: Write down one result you have in your life currently that you don’t like. Now write 10 choices you’ve made that set up that result. 10 thoughts, feelings, spoken words, actions which had that result happen. Don’t stop until you have 10.
10. Ask For And Give Feedback – Regularly. Without feedback you are like a pilot flying a plane with no instruments. You can do it, but it’s more difficult and you cannot fly in as many conditions. The more feedback you have, the more information you have to make the corrections that will keep you on track.
EXERCISE: How would you rate yourself in receiving feedback? How would you rate yourself on giving feedback?
11. Set Your Context. Context can make or break you and your team. It’s the environment you’re in. You set it by BEING.
EXERCISE: Each day this week, choose a character trait, one of your strengths: organisation, giving, patience, enthusiasm; and focus on creating context. Keep a journal each evening, answering: “What’s the best thing that happened to me today?” Towards the end of the week, choose a quality you are not so strong in, and work on seeing that, to develop other strengths.
12. Make & Keep BIG Agreements. Agreements get things done. As a matter of fact when you think about it, nothing really happens without good, strong agreements. If I have the solution to your problem, it means nothing unless you willing to agree to listen and do something about it. If you want to sell something to someone, the point is really moot unless they agree to buy it from you. Believe it or not, most people fear agreements. Big agreements may not be comfortable but they create results.
EXERCISE: Are you confident enough to make and keep agreements with others? Are you lacking in trust of yourself or others to clarify, make and keep agreements? Or, are you somewhere in between? Think about agreements you’ve made in the past or present on a scale of 1-10. How have you gone? Would you say you have really committed to them? Can you make bigger agreements in the future which could result in great progress and results? Why not do it now?
At the crescendo of his astonishing inaugural address, President Obama called “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world….” This statement has received a vast amount of press, good and bad, and yet isn’t this just as true for every human being, not just Americans? A cultural attitude of earnest desire to take personal responsibility for having ones life, health, wealth and wisdom for be ever be improved, would change the world. Check this out if you would like to know what are the top 6 Roadblocks to Accepting Responsibility For Your Business Growth.
Everyone is committed to something, but whether you achieve the results you want in life or not depends on what you make that commitment to. Most people are committed to reasons, not results. They want to appear reasonable. On the other hand, a commitment to results start with just that – results. Personal responsibility is a result of continual practice, and through insight and observation, correcting unwanted behaviours and establishing new ones. It leads to mastery. If you would like to hear about savvy strategies that can put this responsibility directly in your own hands, contact the person who sent you to this site, or email info@savvy-team.com
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I really enjoyed this post on personal responsibility and the winning tips you shared to overcome some of roadblocks that we create – ummm, yes – create! Thanks for that, Linda 🙂
This is a wonderful blog about what each of us in the Savvy Team is lucky enough to learn from the get-go which is that we are in control of our lives, choices and beliefs more so than anyone or anything else.
Thank you Linda, very wise words. 😀