How To Fully Take Responsibility For Your Life

You'll often hear the suggestion to take full responsibility for your life, to stop playing the blame game and hold yourself accountable. 

Well, you won't be shocked to hear I agree whole heartedly with this advice, and for a number of reasons. I think that when you do accept responsibility and stop blaming others it helps you to take control of your life.

That includes times when you've maybe been affected by an event that is someone else's fault and you could easily make excuses and blame someone else. 

But blaming others keeps you in victim mode. When you decide it's time to take responsibility it's more likely to empower you, put you in the driver's seat and more likely than not give you the power to change the situation or at least affect the outcome.

I genuinely think that when you take responsibility for your actions you're committing an act of self care and improving your personal development.

When you start taking personal responsibility it's like a gateway to happiness because you automatically start seeing the bigger picture and move away from a victim mentality. This is a fundamental step to learn to take responsibility for our life.

So I've got two tips for you today - both about taking action but in two very different ways.

One involves a step to start taking responsibility and the other is the opposite entirely, it's about ensuring that you're not taking responsibility. 

Don't worry, I'm not going to suggest you have to spend years in self-reflection and become all buddha like. Not at all. I'm going to share two simple ideas that will increase your power to choose and change things, and step away from unfair things other may say about you.

What got me thinking about all of this was a recent visit from my dad. He and his lovely partner Denise often take full advantage of our proximity to Gatwick airport and combine a short family visit before heading out to warmer climes.

I’ve got to admit jetting off to Malta does sound very appealing especially as I’ve got a rattling asthmatic chest right now. Even though I’m quite wheezy and my rattling cough is loud, I'm definitely not infectious. 

Nevertheless I’m sure a trip to Malta would be a better prescription than salbutamol sulfate. The NHS aren't offering that however so I’ll just have to settle for the inhaler.

Dont Blame Me

So anyway, last week my dad was down and I’d just handed him a cup of tea when I started to feel a cough coming on. 

I stepped back, moved well away from him to the other side of the room, turned and coughed into my arm. 

It was loud! I sounded like Tom Waits impersonating Mutley. If Mutley didnt' take care of his voice. And had a fifty a day cigarette habit. 

The walls shook and my dad, from the safety of the other side of the room, put his cup of tea down in horror. 

“You better not give me your cold,” he exclaimed. “I don’t want that just before I go away!”

“You’re fine. It’s not a cold."

“It sounds like a really bad cold. Don’t give it to me.”

“My airways get narrow and tighten up. It’s a . . .”

“Denise gave me her damned cold earlier this year and that was no fun at all.”

“It’s not a cold Dad. I’m just a bit wheezy. There’s no . . .”

“And Clare gave me hers back in February. That one took forever to shift. Awful! Was not happy with her at all.”

“Dad, it’s really not a . . .”

“Make sure you keep well away from me. I definitely don’t want yours. You can keep it to yourself.”

Take Responsibility

What's interesting to me in a conversation like this is this concept of 'ownership' of infectious disease. As if it’s a thing someone's chosen to purchase. An object someone's taken steps to possess, like buying a book or a jacket.

The colds attributed to his partner, and then my sister, are mentioned as if they were handed out like unwanted Christmas gifts.

I just know if he suffers even the smallest sniffle while he’s soaking up the rays in Valletta you can bet anything you like, it’ll be that particular cold that I gave him! 

The fact that he’ll have travelled for hours on public transport - first the train and then the plane, with hundreds of the great unwashed, in an enclosed tin tube with air conditioning systems recycling the germs freely - won’t come into the equation. 

To be fair my dad’s not alone in his ownership allocation of infectious disease. I still think it’s odd but listen out for it and you’ll often hear people giving voice to this idea. “I caught so and so’s cold” is quite a common thing to overhear. It really doesn't make sense but most people don't rationalise what they're saying. 

It got me thinking about ownership and taking responsibility in general.

It seems quite arbitrary when we decide to apply ownership of things outside of the obvious. I’m thinking particularly of non tangible items like opinions, thoughts and feelings.

Other People's Opinions

So this week’s (first) Top Tip is to consider more carefully what you take or accept ownership of.

Firstly, something I reckon you should avoid taking responsibility for: other people’s thoughts about you. 

Don’t take on board their opinion of you. Too often people can get really upset when someone else expresses an opinion about them that they feel is unjust. Or unfair. 

Relax. It’s just an opinion. You don't need to become exercised about it.

As you go through life you meet more and more people, and so more and more opinions are formed about you. You can’t ensure that they’re all nice but very often we’ll try to. 

Generally speaking it’s a pointless task. You've probably done nothing wrong so it's better to just leave the situation as it is - in their head alone.

It's important to remember that there are no benefits to taking it on board. It will just cause extra work and hurt and probably make not a jot of difference anyway.

If you’re in a leadership role, as I know many readers of this post are, then guess what? It means you're in the firing line. You've done nothing wrong but still loads of people hate you. Or at least have a negative opinion about you. 

That might be tough to hear, especially when the decisions you make are done with the best intentions. But it often comes with the territory.

As a leader there will always be something going wrong and it's often going to be seen as your fault. In your role you will have always upset someone or something you did was 'unfair' but those people need to be taking responsibility for their lives and thoughts about you. You don't need to join in. 

They didn't take it well and now they have a negative opinion about you. So what? Someone has an opinion. Let it go. By focusing on the ‘hurt’ you feel you’ll just exacerbate the problem. The benefits of taking this on board are zero and will not make you happy.

It's Just Part Of Life

It’s true, they might have got something wrong about you and their opinion is faulty but so what?! What difference does it make? It makes none. 

Most times it makes no difference at all. So it’s just not worth bothering about.

Oh, your professional reputation is being affected? Well, that’s different, get out there and put it right. If you believe you may lose work or your reputation then please, get up and at 'em.

But be honest, how many of us are being affected like this? It’s not the majority is it? Most people upset by an unflattering opinion aren’t losing work because of it.

There’s a few more caveats I should probably make about this tip. I’m not suggesting you ignore bullying. Or any sort of prejudice being expressed. Or whispering campaigns. No, not at all.

But when someone has a poor opinion about you there’s no need to take it seriously. It’s just what they think. What they think is usually less important than you believe.

It's an act of self-care to ignore them. Let them get on with it while you carry on. Use this idea as a defence mechanism it will help you live your best life. Don't take ownership of a thought that doesn't belong in your mind.

All feeling comes from within so don't give negative thoughts a leg up into your head. Show yourself a little more self-compassion, a little self-love and increase your personal power.

Take Responsibility For Your Life

The second area of ownership I got thinking about is actually the opposite to the first tip. An area where you should take responsibility but might not instantly realise that’s the thing to do. I mean to take responsibility whenever you can. Even when something actually is someone else's fault and they've done wrong.

There’s a phrase that I share with clients and ask them to adopt as an immediate response to difficult situations. I think this sentence is from the author Brian Tracy and it is very simply “It’s my responsibility, what am I going to do about it?”

It’s a fabulous line to say to yourself whenever anything rubbish happens to you. It prevents you from going into victim / blame mode and instead moves you straight into solution focused thinking. Blaming keeps you in victim mode so you want to take responsibility as much as possible and as quickly as you can. 

That line is often a real life saver because it prompts you into taking thoughtful, positive action. It doesn’t allow you any time to wallow, feeling sorry for yourself.

What happens when you start embracing responsibility at any opportunity is that you stop complaining and automatically become more solution focused. 

It forces you to stop making excuses. Even when it might not be fair that you’ve been put into this situation, by taking ownership of the next step you give yourself the best possible chance of a positive outcome.

It's a great self-improvement tip and adopting it will help you think more positively towards others. Taking responsibility for your life means that it's going to be nigh on impossible not to become a better person and enjoy a more fulfilling life.

Two Ideas To Take Full Responsibility

So that’s two Top Tips for the price of one this week. 

1 - Take immediate responsibility for problems and challenges you have agency over

2 - Don’t assume responsibility for other people’s thoughts - they're not yours to claim

And of course don’t go giving family members “your damned cold!” Keep it to yourself!