The power of taking responsibility
Learning to take responsibility is a game changer, in every facet of your life. Relationships, sport, work, your own personality. Blame is useless, all the matters is how we response to the situation we find ourselves in.
Now that doesn’t mean needlessly taking responsibility for stuff that’s not yours. But own your issues and take responsibility for those.
You must realise how you react to situations is down to you. No one else can control that. You can take a failure and run with it, blame others, blame issues, blame anything. It’s all a waste of time. What you need to do is focus on yourself and particularly the response you have to the perceived failure. Taking this level if responsibility is immediately life changing.
Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviours necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behaviour, and social environment. If you don’t have it, you blame anything and use it as an excuse to give up. Those who do have high self-efficacy believe they have more control over their faith constantly fare better in life.
When you have high self-efficacy, you emphasise your responsibility in whatever the issue is. Missing out on a job, missing a deadline, not winning, nor performing at your best. When you take responsibility, you take control and you become more successful as you analyse your faults and learn from them. This ultimately leads to less stress, less internal pressure, and a longer life. It leads to change, to success and ultimately the place you’re looking to get to.
Realising you can change you situation or, influence the issues and not have to accept it all, makes you a happier person.
In coaching this is called the CIA model.
What can you change?
What can you influence?
What do you have to accept?
However, the key is taking responsibility for your situation whatever that may be.
If you feel helpless in your life and this spills into every situation, this is learnt helplessness. Built from bad experiences that you couldn’t prevent, you then over generalise and became a slave to helplessness, believing everything you do is bound to fail, so why even try.!
When you realise your actions can change your situation, you will begin to flourish.
Don’t like your job…look for a new one.
Don’t like your relationship, leave it.
Don’t like your personality, do something to change it.
You have control of your own life. If you believe that, then it will be. The only person that can take control of your life, is, YOU.
It’s called the no blame principle. Taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens to you. The good and the bad.
Responsibility for actions, conversations, everything. Focus on elements of life you can control. Most of us focus on the faults, the bad things. This causes over generalising.
Avoid over generalising in tough situations, find your strengths and concentrate on them. Be optimistic don’t get dragged into a pessimistic mindset.
If you screw up, own it. Don’t look to blame external factors. Concentrate on what you can control. If you can’t control the factors, then control how you respond.
High performance is about how you respond to pressure. Losers look for blame. Winners look to themselves.
Learn the difference between fault and responsibility. Take your strengths and focus on them. Don’t look at your weaknesses unless you’re going to change them or work on them. Don’t use them as a reason for failure. This is low self-efficacy. If you believe you’re going to fail, if you believe life is full of obstacles, then your brain will Catastrophize. This is when you assume that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.
Take believe that your issue is specific, temporary, and external.
Specific is recognition that the issue is only a singular aspect. Look at all the parts that are going right instead of just focusing on the bad.
The situation is never permanent, thoughts like, this always happens, I never get it right, it never goes the way I want it. That’s all-permanent language. Thing of the issue being temporary, then the issue isn’t inescapable.
Don’t believe the issue is personal, deep rooted and a flaw. That’s never helpful. Take control of the situation, it doesn’t have to be your fault, but it can always be in your control. Especially the way you react to the issue or mistake.
So, life and the way you response to it will give you the outcomes you expect. In other words, if it doesn’t go your way focus on the way you respond and don’t instead blame life, this is the way you move forward to get the outcome you want.
Take responsibility, focus on your response. Do something about it.
