Not taking personal responsibility for everything, and I mean everything in your life, is holding you back mentally and in the actions you take. The moment you don’t take responsibility and start pointing fingers at that person, this person, that event, that circumstance and all these things in your life, you’re putting yourself into what I like to call the, “I don’t want to grow” category.
The fact that you’re not successful, it’s no one else’s issue.
Sure, things might happen to you that might be unfair, but it’s your choice how you’re going to live. It’s your choice how you’re going to act. It’s your choice how you’re going to react. You’re accountable for this, not your high school teacher, not your parents who didn’t raise you right, not the kids that picked on you at school, not that controlling ex-partner. It is your responsibility and your responsibility alone to take action, to make decisions, to grow, to learn. It’s not the government’s fault that you can’t pay your bills because the taxes are too high. Maybe you’re overspending in certain areas. A big bug-bear of mine is when people say things are too expensive. They can’t afford to buy a house. They can’t afford to go on holidays. They can’t afford to go to a sporting event, and yet they’re not doing a single damn thing to better their lives financially.
How about upscaling? Why not cut back on unnecessary spending? Start sticking to a budget, set some goals, devise a plan, but for so many, it’s just easier to blame and to point fingers. If you can actually have the mindset and switch your mindset where it’s, everything is on me, it’s my responsibility, your whole world will change. Okay, let me put it this way. When you position yourself as the captain of a ship, of your ship, you take full responsibility for this ship and your life. You prepare for the high seas. You prepare for the upgrades of the ship, refuelling, what routes you’re going to take. Shit will still hit the fan when you’re the captain but because you’re steering the ship, you can take swift action. You make swift decisions. You’re not sitting there as this idle passenger just blaming and blaming and had no control over your life.
If you’re an idle passenger and you’re blaming, you’re not looking at the high seas and what’s coming at you. You’re not looking at what upgrades you need to make. In other words, how you can scale up your mindset and your life, you’re not looking at what routes you can take. In other words, what direction or what decision you need to make, what action you need to make because you’re too busy sitting there blaming other people and not taking responsibility.
You can see what I’m saying here. It hinders your growth. It hinders your development, it hinders your advancement.
Number two, stop playing the victim. This can be one of the worst mentalities you can have in your locker. Stop saying things like “all this bad stuff happens to me”. Start creating good. Start creating good goals. Start creating good challenges. Start working on your mindset, work on your fitness, work on your health.
If you’re in a work environment, stop blaming underperformance on, say, a manager that doesn’t encourage you enough, or that the work environment, it makes you feel uncomfortable, or that the work environment demotivates you. Instead, look at how you can bring your very best every single workday. What can you do to level up your skills to bring more value to your work and to yourself? The same goes for life. You need to look at what gaps that you have in your life and then boom, take action, boom, grow, boom, make a decision, and that life happens for you, not to you. I’ll say that again. Life happens for you, not to you.
Number three, be responsible for your feelings. Okay? It may not be your fault that you have to deal with an angry coworker, but it is your responsibility about how you allow yourself to feel. My friends, if you’re getting upset and sitting there because people are throwing negativity your way about your weight, about your age, about your sex, about your race, about your performance, about anything, it’s not their fault that you’re upset, it’s yours. Yes, they are being cruel. Yes, they’re being unkind. I’m not advocating that one bit at all, but it’s your responsibility about how you feel about the emotions that you use, how you respond and try not to get so easily offended. People are always going to be rude. They’re always going to be obnoxious, they’re always going to be disrespectful people, but it is always and always your decision to how you’re going to feel and how you’re going to react.
It’s your responsibility whether you’re going to feel angry, whether you’re going to feel calm. It’s not their fault that you’re upset. It is all in your hands. If you want to level your life up in this area, I have a playlist of videos which we’ll go through how to deal with difficult people, how to deal with toxic people in all different kinds of situations. Check that playlist out when you finish this video.
Number four, just like taking responsibility for feelings, you need to take responsibilities for your decisions and for your actions. You can’t blame other people for consequences on the back of actions and decisions that you’ve actually made. For example, you’re driving on the road. Someone smashes your car, you stop, you get out of the car, you walk over to the car and you punch him in the face. The police arrive and they charge you.
It is your fault that you got arrested, not their fault for hitting your car. You missed a work interview. It’s not the fault of traffic or the fact that you missed the public transport or the issue of public transport. It’s your fault for not allowing time for these miscellaneous things to happen. I encourage you to view the entire world like this. Something that I’m actually trying to do myself is to take full responsibility. Everything. Everything’s my fault. All right, so this way I can, A, go straight to action mode in a mindset of growth regarding what you can learn from every situation. B, allow the negative circumstances just to fall away because you’re no longer holding onto that anger, you’re no longer holding onto that resentment. I’ll leave you with this. The Dalai Lama has this quote and he says that holding on to anger and resentment is like holding on to a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone and the only person who’s going to get hurt is yourself.