HABIT #5--TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
Stop blaming fate, others, your less than perfect partners, circumstances--or anything else--for your setbacks and never-starteds. Failure to take responsibility for our own difficulties is success enemy number one to many success coaches. As stress reduction authority Lucinda Bassett, says, if you have yet to realize your own dreams, you probably spend a significant portion of your life "blaming someone else for why you're not happy, why you don't have peace of mind, why you're not successful, why you're not healthy or thin or why you can't quit smoking or have a good relationship or get the job you want, or why you can't overcome your anxiety."
In addition, when we blame our problems on others, circumstances, fate, we undermine our own motivation by sending our unconscious a "What's the point in trying?" signal. The unconscious naturally switches off all the internal signals necessary to achieving our goal: enthusiasm, motivation, excitement, interest--and we give up in defeat, often before we truly begin.
However, far too many people, according Dr. Wayne Dyer, "want to say, 'I couldn't help it,' or 'It was someone else's fault,' or 'I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,' or 'I was dealt a dirty deal,' or 'Family circumstances created my misery,' or whatever other excuse you have developed to absolve yourself of responsibility."
Accepting responsibility for our own situation, our own mistakes, and our own failures is essential if we are to maintain the motivation needed to achieve our dreams. "We tend to blame whatever happens to us on those external things," Jim Rohn has written, "but we need to take personal responsibility. I used to say, 'I sure hope things will change.' Then I learned from my mentor, Earl Shoaff, that the only way things would change for me is when I changed. We cannot change the circumstances, but we can change what we do. The ability to design our future is in our hands, if we wish it to be."
Steven Covey agrees, "Highly proactive people take responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling."
How does someone do this? Especially of they have a habit of putting the responsibility elsewhere? Recentering the responsibility from exterior factors and on to ourselves isn't difficult. The first step is to stop blaming your parents, your first husband (or wife), that bitchy coworker.
Lucinda Bassett writes that, when you can say, "I'm the reason for my 'have-nots'--I accept responsibility for your own discontent and unhappiness--It's nobody's fault that I'm the way that I am. I want to change my life and I have the courage, the power, and the energy to do it,' then you're on the way to controlling the only thing you really have control over--yourself. You're on the path to releasing yourself from guilt, anger, and blame, and taking responsibility for your own fulfillment and peace of mind. Recovery is just around the next curve"
"You must be 'completely honest with yourself' if you are ever to rid yourself entirely of blaming others," Dyer tells us. "The way to begin is to take total responsibility for everything that you are in your life right now. Say to yourself, 'I am the sum total of my choices up until this moment.'"
* * * *
"Champions take responsibility."
Billie Jean King
"Take responsibility for where you're going. And how you're going to get there!"
Keith Lowry
* * * *
HOW TAKING RESPONSIBILITY MAKES YOUR SUCCESS "ALMOST CERTAIN"
When you take responsibility for yourself, your situation, and achieving your goals, success is virtually assured, says Bassett, speaking from experience. "Once you are on the road, fully committed to being responsible for yourself and stopping the blame, success is almost certain. I know because I was as anxiety-ridden as anyone could be and I recovered. If I could do it, so can you."
Success authorities in other fields agree:
Business and career. Taking "responsibility" is a sine qua non of success in business, says Marcille Gray Williams. "Accept responsibility for your actions," she advises and recounts the famous anecdote about Harry Truman keeping a sign on his desk, when he was president, that read, "The buck stops here." Gray notes there is an important point here for anyone on a serious career track.
"If your career is sputtering, you might be tempted to blame your lack of progress on [others]. Nevertheless, you must assume responsibility for yourself. In business, you must make things happen for no one is going to do it for you. If you make a mistake, excuses are unacceptable. Management ... will be watching you to see if you display the strength of character to accept full responsibility for your actions and those of subordinates as well."
As Etheline Desir, an executive search consultant, tells audiences, "I find that people tend to not want to take full control of their career. I think the most critical thing in your career is to understand that it is your responsibility to know what you want and to write down your goals and what you want to accomplish--be it marketing, sales, high-tech field, or whatever it is you want to do."
Personal change and recovery. Assuming responsibility for who you are--and where you are--is also said to be key to success in these fields as well, whether it's performing better on the soccer field, developing a more assertive personality, or surmounting destructive habits. As Bassett, founder of the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety, points out, research on those who suffer from serious anxiety shows most had alcoholic parents, were victims of abuse, or otherwise had troubled childhoods.
But, she notes, there comes a time when, as an adult, in order to heal and recover, you have to take responsibly for your present and future--and for the past as well. For, "the past is the past and affects you only if you let it. 'Okay, I've been through some difficult stuff,' you may say, 'but if I'm not healthy, happy, or successful as an adult, I'm doing it to myself.' We must each claim our own power and recognize our own part in the creation of and recovery from anxiety disorder. In the final analysis, recovery is completely up to each individual."
Bassett came by her knowledge the hard way. She, too, once suffered from anxiety disorder, but tells audiences that when she admitted to causing her own anxiety problems, she begin facing the very things she had been running from her whole life. "Denial was ending. So was blame. Up until that night, it was so easy to point a finger and say, 'This is why I'm anxious. You're the reason I'm so unhappy.' Barrett wasted so much time wondering when she would ... "find peace of mind, when I would like myself or be good enough for myself or for anybody else. Little did I know that I could be free and happy as soon as I gave myself permission to be."
Relationships and romance. Relationship gurus from John Gray to Barbara DeAngelis tell us there is no hope for a satisfying relationship until we stop blaming our partner for its deficiencies and assume responsibility for making it better ourselves. As Steven Covey, who places as much emphasis on personal as professional success in his books, writes, "If I have a problem in my marriage, what do I really gain by continually confessing my wife's sins? By saying I'm not responsible, I make myself a powerless victim; I immobilize myself in a negative situation. I also diminish my ability to influence her--my nagging, accusing, critical attitude only makes her feel validated in her own weakness.
"If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control--myself. I can focus on being a great marriage partner, a source of unconditional love and support. I can take responsibility to be a better listener, to be a more loving marriage partner, to be a better student, to be a more cooperative and dedicated employee. Hopefully, my wife will feel the power of proactive example and respond in kind. But whether she does or doesn't, the most positive way I can influence my situation is to work on myself, on my being. Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice."
* * * *
"A winner makes commitments; a loser makes promises"
Fanuel Tjingaete
"If you are the kind of coach who wants to be the 'best' then you will make a total commitment to excellence."
Vince Lombardi
* * * *
HOW BEING RESPONSIBLE PAID OFF FOR SAMUEL CYPERT
Samuel Cypert, who worked for the Napoleon Hill Foundation and helped co-author Believe and Achieve with Clement Stone, likes to point out that taking responsibility, although important for its own sake, can pay off big in terms of material rewards, as well. Many years ago Cypert was writing a brochure for a client against a tight deadline, while simultaneously moving out of the apartment he and his wife shared and into their first home. When the day the Cyperts were supposed to move into their new house arrived, they loaded everything they owned into a truck and drove over--only to discover the previous owners still very much present due to a mix up.
Cypert found himself in a cheap motel room, with most of the family possessions in storage, sitting at folding table with a typewriter and a stack of paper, working furiously on the brochure, which was due the following day. His wife thought he'd taken leave of his senses. "Why not you call your client and explain the situation?" she asked. "No one in their right mind would expect you to finish that job under the circumstances."
"I can't stand the idea of my client having to face his client empty-handed on Monday morning," Cypert explained. "Besides, I committed myself to the responsibility of meeting his deadline when I took the job. He's counting on the brochure for an important meeting, and my copy must be in his hands tomorrow to make the printing deadline."
However, Cypert's client was thrilled with receiving the brochure on time, especially when he later learned through friends, what Cypert had gone through to meet his commitment. Soon after, the client learned of a lucrative assignment he thought would be ideal for someone with Cypert's talents, and recommended Cypert, saying, "He's the most reliable, most responsible person I know."
Cypert got the job at a thirty percent increase over his normal fees.
EXERCISE: FROM "IT'S NOT MY FAULT" TO "I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY" IN TWO EASY STEPS
Here's a proven approach to self-starting your responsibility factor. If you've been prone to go the "reasons beyond personal control" route when you couldn't get started on that exercise program, or you were the first fired in a layoff, or found your relationship suddenly falling apart, this simple, two-step exercise will help you master the baby steps of becoming a responsible person.
In the main, psychologists say, the things we have difficulty accepting responsibility for are the things that go wrong--or we do wrong--in our lives. If we can learn to consciously take responsibility for the worst of these, experts add, then we won't find it difficult to shoulder responsibility for the rest.
Typically, when we screw-up, or find ourselves in the midst of apparently unavoidable disaster, the refrain is: "It's not my fault!" Recite a few of these and observe the affect on your own commitment and motivation. Are any typical of you?
"It's not my fault I didn't review the Collins file, like I promised the senior partner. I'll make up an alibi later."
"It's not my fault I put off talking to my lover about my transfer to Dallas. It's going to be a major emotional scene when I do."
"It's not my fault I didn't make that sale. That purchasing agent had a bad attitude right from the start."
"It's not my fault I didn't keep to my diet today. They had a birthday party with cake at work, and it would have been impolite to refuse."
"It's not my fault I didn't get out to look for work today. I was too depressed to function."
"It's not my fault I screamed at my cousin. He always puts me down."
"It's not my fault my business failed. The hours were eating me up alive."
"It's not my fault I lost the championship. The way the crowd acted threw me off that day."
"It's not my fault I didn't do as good a job of putting the siding on that house. The owner's wife was breathing down my neck every moment, and that's the week Joe asked for a divorce."
If we take advantage of the power of words to predispose and program our minds, and instead of saying, "It's not my fault...," we spin those self-defeating phrases on their heads and begin them by stating, "I take full responsibility for..." Try it yourself, and see the difference and the sense of empowerment saying things this way gives you.
"I take full responsibility for not reviewing the Collins and breaking my promise to the Senior partner."
"I take full responsibility for putting off talking to my lover about my transfer to Dallas, and thus putting off the major emotional scene I don't want to face."
"I take full responsibility for not making that sale. Plenty of prospects have a negative attitude, but I could have tried harder to turn it around."
"I take full responsibility for blowing my diet and eating that cake. I could have refused politely, and explained I am on a diet."
"I take full responsibility for not looking for work today, and sitting around feeling sorry for myself, instead."
"I take full responsibility for screaming at my cousin. I wanted to descend to his level and return the negativity I receive from him."
"I take full responsibility for my business failing. I didn't want it bad enough to put in all those long hours."
"I take full responsibility for losing the championship. I let something external affect my game."
"I take full responsibility for doing a lousy job of putting the siding on that house. I was in a bad mood from the divorce, and projected my resentments on to the owner's wife."
Now, it's time to put this newly found knowledge into practice, and transform yourself from a blame-maker to a responsibility-taker. Here's how.
1. List ten events, problems, or behaviors you don't feel you should be held accountable for. Make each one complete sentence. Begin each of your ten sentences with the phrase, "It's not my fault..."
2. Take responsibility for each of the above behaviors by rewriting each of the above sentences and replacing "It's not my fault..." with "I take full responsibility for..."
3. Pause a moment and read each one out loud in order to help fix it in your mind. Repeat each silently twice, to reinforce the affect.
4. When you find yourself in situations that begin to trigger your, "It's not my fault..." litany, quickly tell yourself, "I accept full responsibility for..." instead.
Experts say you will be astonished at the sense of empowerment and renewed motivation this will give you.
)
