How Far to Go with Responsibility

On the Boggle Queen's night out, we had a great discussion about the difference between laying blame and how far to go with taking personal responsibility. We discussed it like this:

Somethings going on in your life. We will call it x-situation.

You can say: "X-situation is really stressing me out."

or, you can say: "X-situation is happening and I am stressing about it."

The difference is that one is completely disempowered and the other is completely empowered. If you are laying the responsibility for your personal stress on something outside of yourself, you are completely disempowered - it is the fault of something else that you are the way you are. You can't change something else, so you are, essentially at it's mercy.

If you are taking responsibility for your own reaction to something else, that is an entirely different story. You are empowered, because you have the power to change your reaction and response to the situation in any way you want.

That's like day and night.

That's taking responsibility a whole lot farther. And it's making you into the person who can change your world.

Step by step take a look at your language over the next few days. Listen to what you say. Are you laying blame? Or are you going the full nine yards and taking responsibility at the source? Start looking at the times when you are saying things like so-and-so is pissing me off, or this situation is stressing me out, or that situation is making me sad. See if you can change the languaging to say, "so-and-so is acting in this way, and I am feeling angry about it," or this situation is happening and I am choosing stress as the way I am dealing with it," or "this situation is happening, and I am feeling sad."

And hence, you empower yourself. Once you have made yourself the responsible party, you are fully empowered to make things different if you want to.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop