Whether you know it or not, responsibility has the potential to radically transform your life. When I use the word life, I’m encompassing every minute detail about who you are and how you show up in the world, not just one or two aspects. The tricky part is understanding why embracing responsibility transforms your life.
The Problem: The Blame Game
Most people can take responsibility for certain aspects of their lives, but they shirk responsibility in many other areas because, well, it’s just not their fault. I’ve experienced this myself, and you have, too. All of us have been on both sides of the situation.
When we deflect embracing responsibility, it leads to frustration and conflict, people defending themselves, and others pointing fingers until we’re caught up in a cycle of blame.
Eventually, it becomes who can play the blame game the best, and in doing so, you adopt a limiting mindset that prevents you from finding a solution to the problem. For some, it’s become such a normal way of life that you don’t even realize you’re stuck in the blame game, but that’s because you haven’t learned a better way.
However, the one realization you need to understand is that the blame game can only take you so far. There’s a ceiling or cap that you reach in life while playing this game, and the only way to push past that ceiling is to learn how and why embracing responsibility is the key to everything you’ve been looking for.
Before we discuss why embracing responsibility opens the doors to everything, let’s create a quick example of the blame game.
If you’re reading this right now and are taking any amount of offense to it, you’re playing the blame game. After all, who am I to tell you you don’t take responsibility in your life? As a result, you might feel a little consternation and think, who is this guy? Who does he think he is? If you happen to feel that way, then hopefully, these couple of sentences will ril you up even more.
Why would I want them to rile you up even more?
To illustrate the fact that it’s not my responsibility to control your emotions. My responsibility is to write about a topic that might make you uncomfortable so you can see how simple it is to get wrapped up in the blame game and, as a result, change the way you decide to show up in the world.
If you are experiencing any amount of frustration with this writing thus far, the problem isn’t with me. It’s with you!
How’s that for not alienating your readers? (This is me taking responsibility for the previous paragraphs, knowing it might offend some people)
It’s the harsh truth, though. Unfortunately, most of us don’t learn this lesson when we’re younger. Instead, we’re surrounded by adults playing the blame game themselves because nobody taught them how to play a different one. Hey, I played it ALL the time and didn’t even realize I was doing it, so no shame or judgment is coming from me. However, if you want to change your life, you must stop playing that game on all levels.
The good news is, there’s always time to change, even if you think it’s too late!
Why Embracing Responsibility is Key
Embracing responsibility is one of the first steps you need to take if you want to elevate your life.
Why is that?
Because if you’re constantly blaming others and outside situations for all your problems, you can never really begin to solve those problems.
The Solution: Radical Responsibility
The only problems you ever solve are the ones you begin to take responsibility for.
Hey! I like that. I think I’ll turn it into a quote and take radical responsibility for it.
“The only problems you ever solve are the ones you begin to take responsibility for.”
– Josiah Thibodeau
Whether you know it or not, each time I write, I learn something new. So it’s not that I just have all the answers and spit them out on paper; I have to go through a growing process, too.
My writing often forces me to learn and, in doing so, to take responsibility for how I show up to the world, to say, “Hey, dummy! It’s time you grew up some more.”
As I do so, as I take on more responsibility for my life: my thoughts, feelings, actions, and words, my life begins to improve.
When I don’t take responsibility, even if I’m not playing the blame game, my life doesn’t improve. It either stays the same or gets worse for a time until I remember, “Hey, dummy! You need to start taking responsibility here so you can get out of this hole you’re digging and start to live the life you want to live.”
Each time I take radical responsibility for my life, I start to see improvement and gain a deeper understanding of why embracing responsibility transforms my life.
Do you want to know what that understanding is?
It’s simple.
Why Responsibility Frees You
The more ownership I take, the freer I become.
That might sound counterintuitive, and it probably won’t make sense until you start living it.
However, Once you begin to live it, you can look back on life and see all the different paths and roads you’ve gone down and why things either did or didn’t turn out how you hoped they would.
As you do so, you begin to see that it’s not all the circumstances and situations you dealt with. It wasn’t all the people you thought were getting in your way or impeding your progress, causing you frustration, hurt, or however else they may have made you feel.
You begin to understand that it’s how you showed up to the situation, ready to take responsibility, whatever that may look like, and not associate blame or judgment or how you didn’t take any responsibility when you should have.
Blame is the easy way out. It’s why your life doesn’t improve how you want it to. Not to say it won’t or can’t improve for a while, but eventually, you’ll be stuck, and then you’ll have to go through this learning process if you want it to get better.
But if you want to radically transform your life, take radical responsibility for it.
What Does Radical Responsibility Look Like?
Radical responsibility is simply saying I am willing to be responsible for everything that happens in my life, no matter how large or small.
Regardless of the situation or people involved, I’m willing to take responsibility.
This doesn’t mean circumstances don’t occur that are entirely out of your control because that will happen until the day you die. Some of them you won’t be able to do anything about; you’re just along for the ride whether you want to be or not.
Responding to Life’s Challenges
In those cases, your responsibility isn’t in the event happening; it’s in how you respond to the event happening. It’s in how you live your life after the event has happened.
You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength”
– Marcus Aurelius
Let’s use death as an example.
When someone you love, someone who’s close to you, dies, that can be a very challenging situation—one of the hardest you might ever have to go through.
Yet, in that, you get to choose how to respond. You can allow yourself to get so wrapped up in the grief that you allow the world to pass you by, potentially for years, or you can deal with it in a healthy way and lessen the amount of time it takes for you to get through and process.
It’s not that you don’t grieve, pretend the event didn’t happen, or try to harden yourself to the point where you don’t feel. Merely that you grieve in a healthy way, which could encompass many things: writing, art, counseling, music, walks in nature, etc.
Embracing responsibility isn’t pretending that the world is perfect and nothing bad has happened to you or will ever happen again. It’s a mindset.
In reality, it’s taking control of your mind to monitor how you think and feel so that you can direct your life instead of not directing your life and allowing your thoughts and feelings to control you.
The latter generally sends you into a spiral that takes much longer to recover from.
While radical responsibility can transform how you handle major life events, it can also be equally powerful when dealing with smaller, everyday challenges.
For instance, in my home, my daughter has a short list of chores she is responsible for during the week. She made a chart for it, we decided on the chores and days she would complete them, and everything seemed like it was on track—there would never be any issues at all, ever! Right?
Wrong!
It’s a constant battle. However, the struggle is generally in my mind, and if it ever spills out, it’s because I’m not taking responsibility for it.
What do I mean?
Just because we’ve decided on a set of chores and created a chart, yada, yada, doesn’t mean she’s integrated the process into her daily routine. My responsibility is to continue to guide her through that process until it becomes routine without me needing to guide her any longer.
The issue we were running into was that I took my hands off once we decided everything and let her have at it. When she forgot to do her chores, there was a tendency to get a little frustrated because, after all, we agreed on everything, and she should be responsible for her end of the deal.
Eventually, I remembered she’s just a kid and hasn’t developed all the necessary skills to be socially responsible without me reminding her. So, instead of getting frustrated that she wasn’t doing her chores, I took a step back and decided to take responsibility for doing what was needed on my end to get her to the place where she takes on the responsibility without nudging.
However, I had to be okay with some nudging and reminding to get there. The further along we got into this process, the easier it became for both of us and the less nudging or reminding I had to do.
On the other hand, if I hadn’t taken responsibility and laid the burden solely on her, I would still be frustrated with her performance, and she would be frustrated with my frustration.
The more I accept responsibility for things that seem like someone else’s responsibility, the smoother my life progresses. This doesn’t mean I just do everything for everyone. It simply means I deal with my thoughts and emotions and don’t play victim to whatever happens.
Why Embracing Responsibility Makes Life Easier
The interesting thing about embracing responsibility is that all the difficult things you used to deal with don’t seem that difficult anymore.
As I mentioned earlier, you no longer blame outside circumstances or events for the internal issues you deal with because you relinquish your desire to blame someone or something else for your problems.
This allows you to release any judgment you hold and moves you into a state of acceptance, which shines a light on the areas where you need to grow as a person. It’s the growth that begins to transform your life and move you forward in a positive direction.
One of the most significant issues in my life was a lack of responsibility, a lack of ownership for how I thought about people and situations and how I felt about them.
Learning to take responsibility for everything meant I no longer relied on someone outside of me to fix my issues, whatever they may be; instead, I reclaimed the power to fix them myself.
The Ripple Effect of Responsibility
When you do this, it begins to have a ripple effect in other areas of your life. As you begin to limit the amount of judgment and blame you pass for yourself or others, things start to change everywhere. It really is amazing how it works.
You might not realize this initially, but you begin to see the patterns and notice the differences over time. There’s an air of not feeling as trapped as you used to feel because there’s no longer anything trapping you.
You begin to understand that you are the only thing holding you back from experiencing the life you want to live. Not your boss, spouse, kids, government, lack of education, or whatever you want to assign blame to. It’s you.
Realizing this is one of the most freeing experiences you can have because you’re not beholden to anyone or anything else keeping you from your dreams.
This doesn’t mean you won’t find moving forward difficult because there are still moments when you have to learn to overcome yourself. You’ll find a zillion instances, yes, A Zillion!, where you are holding yourself back, but that just means you take responsibility for it and begin to process through it.
When you understand this, you can get excited because now you don’t have to try to change anyone else—which is impossible, by the way. You can’t change anyone, so you work on yourself.
The more work you do, the better your life will be; the better your life, the more willing you’ll be to take on more responsibility. Soon, you’ll find that you enjoy the cycle and wonder what took you so long to get to this point.
Practical Steps to Embrace Responsibility
The first step is to stop worrying about what people will think.
You’ll never please everyone, so it’s fruitless to try. Instead, focus on embracing responsibility in everything you do.
For instance, you’re driving on the freeway, and someone does something to annoy or upset you. Rather than make the problem about them, focus on how you can take responsibility for your own thoughts and emotions.
After all, if you give in to those thoughts of anger or frustration, you essentially give your power over to that person, and they won’t even know you’re doing it. They’re going to go on with their day and won’t think about you ever again if they even knew you were there in the first place.
Take responsibility for yourself. Calm your mind and bring yourself back to a state of equilibrium. Getting there might take a moment, but that’s why you practice.
The second step is to work on this every day.
You will fail; be prepared for that, and when you do, don’t judge yourself for it. Chalk it up to a missed attempt and move forward with the thought that you’ll do better next time.
The goal isn’t to be perfect.
It’s simply making small incremental shifts at a time. This mindset will allow you to see more considerable gains than if you shoot for being perfect right now.
Step three is simply doing steps one and two until the day you die!
Will you be perfect? No.
Will you make mistakes? Yes.
Are you still going to face difficult situations, tough times, hardships, frustrations, feel like giving up, and that nobody cares? You sure will! Because that’s life.
However, this doesn’t mean you can’t find the beauty in the hurt or sorrow.
Finding Beauty in Life’s Challenges
Here’s an example of how I’ve personally embraced responsibility regarding grief and finding beauty in the sorrow when dealing with my father’s passing.
I miss my dad. He passed in early 2019, just before his birthday. Just trying to write this makes me cry, but there’s so much beauty in it, too. I remember him as a good man—as someone who loved me, his family, and his friends. He cared for his family the best he knew how, and I’m thankful for that.
Not having him here hurts sometimes, but how can you know beauty and love without the pain? How can you know joy without sorrow? He never got to meet my baby boy, who was born just a few months later, but that baby boy is beautiful, and when I look at him, I think of how my dad and I used to hang out and play games, just like I do now with my son.
When I write about these ideas and topics, if you’ve been following along for any length of time, it’s not that life is easy or doesn’t present any problems. It’s how you deal with it.
I could be bitter and angry about my dad’s passing. I could say it was unfair that we had to watch him waste away to cancer, and I could blame the world or God or anything else for how I feel about the situation.
But I don’t.
I never have with this particular story because I learned beforehand how to embrace responsibility for my thoughts and emotions regarding this situation. However, I’ve also failed at taking responsibility for many situations since, but as I keep working on this, I find my life gets better and better.
A quick caveat here: I know grief is different for everyone, and I’m not suggesting you have to look at this the way I did. We all process grief in different ways and at various times, depending on the situations and circumstances we find ourselves in.
The main thing is to understand that you don’t have to be a victim of your circumstances. You can choose to embrace responsibility for how you respond, even if the situation is out of your control, and in doing so, you can change your life for the better.
If this message resonates with you, take a moment to reflect on one area of your life where you can take greater responsibility—whether it’s in your work, relationships, or personal growth. Commit to a small, specific action this week and observe how it changes your perspective. Then, build on that momentum next week.
I hope this message inspired you. If you did, please share with someone who might benefit from exploring the power of embracing responsibility.
Josiah
