Responsibility means being accountable for what we think, say and do. Personal responsibility involves working on own character and skill development rather than blaming others for situations and circumstances. It means choosing to design a life that honors our values and purpose.
As I’m a third year student, the main responsibility of main is to learn languages, to be well-educated and to become a master in my future profession. But also I am responsible for ourselves, whether I like it or not. What I do with my life and what I have done already is up to me. And while I may not be able to control everything that happens to me, I am nevertheless responsible for how I think, act, and feel in response to those things. Traditionally, we have viewed the notion of “responsibility” in a negative way; it is a matter of obligation or of having duties. But accepting personal responsibility for our lives is actually quite liberating. There are all sorts of benefits that we will realize.
To be honest, taking responsibility for our lives is great. But that is also all that we have to control over. We can’t control the results of our actions. We can’t control how someone reacts to what we say or what we do. It’s important to know where our limits are. Otherwise we’ll create a lot unnecessary suffering for ourselves and waste energy and focus by taking responsibility for what we can’t and never really could control.
When something goes wrong, do we immediately look for some external culprit? It doesn’t really matter whose fault it is, anyways. What happened, happened. The question now is: how are we going to respond to it? Unfortunately, too many people fall into the trap of responding by blaming someone else for the problem. They shift their own responsibility onto someone else, and judge the other person for having failed. Now it’s just that much harder to move forward and respond in a productive way. Frankly speaking, we spend our energy focusing on the wrong thing, like resenting another person, when we could use that energy to advance in our goals.
At any given time and in any given situation, we have a choice of how to respond. It doesn’t matter how dire our circumstances are. We could be locked away in an extraordinary rendition prison, but we still control our mental state. We can choose to focus on something positive, no matter how negative or un-free a situation we are in.
Accept responsibility for who we are right now. It’s not other people who made us the way we are, but only our own thoughts and actions. Sure, many of those thoughts and actions were conditioned in us by our family, society, friends, or any other external influence. But we don’t need to be happy with our situation or our life as it is, we just need to accept ourselves. While negative circumstances may have had a significant impact on us and we may have experienced huge amounts of social conditioning, dwelling on them or blaming others won’t help us improve our situation. Only through accepting personal responsibility we can move forward.
We should forgive ourselves and others. People make mistakes. It’s inevitable. You do it. Other people do it. Everyone does. We must learn to forgive ourselves and to forgive other people for any mistakes. If we mess up, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it. We just should take responsibility and move on. When someone else messes up, we shouldn’t hold it against them. If we cling to a desire to blame them, then we are shifting the focus away from our own personal responsibility for our lives.
And one more important thing is not to forget to take responsibility in everyday life too. Life consists of each day. It is not sometime in the future. So should not forget to take responsibility for the little things today too and not postpone it. Taking responsibility for our lives can be hard and taxing on us. It’s not something we master over the weekend. So we might as well get started right now. Because people waste precious years while believing that there will be more time tomorrow than there is today. Today is a perfect day to accept and develop our talents.
In a word, we can control our ability to design our lives. Personal responsibility allows us to live from an inner core of integrity. It will bring a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. It goes without saying that taking responsibility for our lives can be a very challenging and lifelong process, but it is necessary if we truly want to be happy.
