Taking personal responsibility is HARD.
It involves taking a full 360 deep, honest and sometimes uncomfortable view of your life and then putting the effort in to making changes. But I can tell you from experience that the positive outcome awaiting you will be worth it.
There are reams and reams of evidence to back the transformational power of how creating positive thoughts and habits can change your life and one of the steps involved is learning to take full responsibility for the choices you make.
We are living in a blame culture where it is so easy to point the finger at other people or events for the situations we find ourselves in and our subsequent state of mind but the reality is that how we feel is totally in our control and ours only and so the degree within which you can take personal responsibility dictates the ultimate success of your goals.
When something happens in your life one of three things will happens, you will justify, lay blame or take responsibility.
When you justify you are offering yourself a reason, most often untruthful, as to why you haven’t done something.
For example:
“I can’t exercise I simply don’t have the time”.
When you lay blame you are willingly assigning someone else the ability to significantly impact your life.
“I can’t change my career now I’m too old”.
For example:
“It’s my parents fault I’m not more confident”.
“My partner doesn’t let me do the things I need to do”.
So what can you do about this?
THE FIRST STEP IS TO TAKE A FULL AND FRANK INVENTORY OF YOUR LIFE, BRINGING YOUR AWARENESS TO THOSE AREAS IN WHICH YOU ARE JUSTIFYING OR BLAMING.
Take your time here, this step can raise emotions that have been buried so it’s important to take care of yourself while you work through this exercise. Get a journal and ask yourself,
“Where in my life am I justifying?” then,
“Where in my life am I laying blame?”
ONCE YOU HAVE YOUR INVENTORY IT’S TIME TO ACKNOWLEDGE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR CHOICES.
This can be a tricky one especially if you’ve spent a long time holding onto a belief and being comfortable in the state of justifying or blaming.
But it’s time to accept that the state of your life and the direction it has taken it the direct result of your choices. How you choose to think, feel and respond to situations and people is no one else’s responsibility but your own. No one else has that power except yourself.
ACCEPT YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE.
You have the power to let go of the blame.
You have the power to forgive yourself for your mistakes.
You have the power to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
You have the power to let go of anger.
You have the power to walk away from toxic relationships.
You have the power to regain control of your health.
You have the power to be honest with yourself.
You have the power to prioritise your needs.
You have the power to set new goals.
You have the power choose the direction of your life.
You have the power to move on.
QUITE SIMPLY. THE POWER IS YOURS.
IDENTIFY THE REPEATING PATTERNS.
Look at your inventory, identify the repeating pattern of thought that occurs.
Do you always blame your upbringing?
Is it societies fault?
Your job, your partners or an event?
Something I hear time and again is, ”It’s just who I am”. This is not a justification for not taking action to change your life, it’s simply justifying.
Once you’ve identified the repeating patterns of thought you can break it down and get to the underlying belief. THEN you can change it. TaDa!!
AND FINALLY, CREATE A PLAN OF ACTION.
Now that you fully understand the state of your life is a direct result of your own thoughts and choices, you’re ready to take responsibility and make those changes!
Avoid overwhelm and create a plan.
Pick the top five areas that you want to change and start with those, as you begin to make changes the results will naturally cascade to every area of your life and positive change will occur.
There it is, the five steps to empowering yourself through personal responsibility.
Take an inventory.
Acknowledge sole responsibility.
Accept you have the power to change.
Identify repeating patterns.
Create a plan.
And the final word from me, there will always be external factors that have the ability to influence how you feel but the ultimate responsibility for how you respond to these events is yours.
I believe there is nothing more empowering than learning to take full responsibility for yourself and your life so I dedicate a whole session to this in my 12 week ‘Watch me Grow’ one on one coaching programme where you get to work through all of the above plus a whole lot more with me as your cheerleader!
For positive and lifelong results book your call now and let’s get you going on the path to positive change. BOOK YOUR CALL HERE