Responsibility for one's own life

Responsibility for oneself - for one's own life choices, actions, thoughts, feelings, in general - life and destiny.

Such an amazing creature as a man is able to live irresponsibly, including to himself: destroying his health, his opportunities, his development and his future. Therefore, responsible people think over their interests and their future, determine their goals and objectives, after which they ask themselves for their own obligations.

To the extent that I inform others with responsibility for myself: "You don't have to worry about me, I will solve my problems myself", this is a manifestation of social responsibility (or irresponsibility). If a person takes responsibility for himself - to himself, this is his personal responsibility.

Anyone who does not take responsibility for his life on himself, shifting it to others - needs the approval and attention of others, is a non-self-sufficient person. Look

Responsibility for oneself develops in those who are used to always seeing their choices. Whether I work here or at another job, quarrel or be friends with my boss or colleagues, stay here or quit - all choices are considered. Should I meet with this person or stop, have a difficult conversation with him or later, be offended by him or is it inappropriate - someone who is used to seeing his choices can be responsible for his life and is not in the position of a Victim.

Responsibility and self care

If a person is not able to take care of himself, then he is unlikely to be able to help other people. A responsible person always takes reasonable care of himself - at least as an instrument that still has a lot to do in life. Look

To understand why people avoid responsibility, the first step is to ask yourself the following questions: “What is responsibility?” and “How to understand where a person takes it upon himself, and where not?”

I would call responsibility scope of human control. We take responsibility in those situations where we exercise control over what is happening, take part in it, perform some actions that contribute to obtaining the results that we need.

It turns out that avoidance of responsibility- this is a refusal for one reason or another to influence the situation, the expectation that the situation will change itself, or someone will change it for us. When someone is told: “Take responsibility for your life”, they usually mean: “Finally start doing something so that your life becomes the way you want, instead of complaining about the circumstances, continuing” to go with the flow".

Here it is worth recalling such a well-known concept in psychology as locus of control. This property of the individual to attribute their successes or failures to internal or external factors. Usually, if a person is more accustomed to considering himself the cause of those things that happen to him in life, it is considered that he internal locus of control(internal). If a person believes that in general he does not particularly affect anything in life, and what happens is determined by fate, karma, God, aliens, different people or any other circumstances, then it is considered that he has external locus of control(external).

Of course, in a normal situation, for most people, this indicator will be somewhere between the two extremes, shifted more towards one or the other pole.

People whose locus of control is very much shifted to the outside usually play the role of a victim of circumstances. Everything is wrong with them, they do not influence anything, others are to blame for everything. They are not at all responsible for their lives, they move where the stream takes them. Like small children who experience helplessness in the face of emerging problems and instead of a solution, they can only be offended or blame others.

For example, a person has no friends, but he blames others for this, is offended by them and even angry because they do not understand him, do not want to understand, do not appreciate and do not love, instead of understanding the real reason, and that change something in yourself, take some action to build the desired relationship with others.

People who have a highly inward locus of control often take responsibility even for things they cannot influence. For example, for other people's emotions or decisions. These people are prone to strong feelings of guilt and self-blame when something goes wrong.

A good example would be working with a guy who experienced a number of unpleasant emotions if a girl refused him when he met. He always took any refusal personally, believing that he was doing something wrong, while believing that if he had done everything right, he would have received a positive answer. He could not understand in any way that there were other circumstances that he could not influence with all his desire and with all the “correctness” of his actions. When we began to understand, it turned out that something similar was happening in other areas - the conviction that everything always depends on him. But this, of course, is not so. There are always a number of factors that influence, especially when there is an interaction with any other living system: an animal, a person, a group of people. I once really liked the wonderful example that Robert Dilts gave: if we kick the ball, with some experience and skill, we can calculate the trajectory of the ball, where it will land. If we kick a dog, we never know for sure where the dog will be in a few seconds.

Of course, if we have known a person for some time, we know his habits and features, then in this case it is already possible to more or less calculate how he will react to our action. But also not always. Moreover, we cannot control everything and always in this world. Many things happen one way or another against our will, and nothing can be done about it.

Remember the peace prayer? “Lord, give me the peace of mind to accept what I cannot change, give me the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other” – this is just about a balanced locus of control. It is very important to be able to take responsibility and take action where possible and just let go of control, accept the inevitability where there is no possibility to change anything.

It is also worth noting that when talking about a person's locus of control, a certain general indicator is calculated by averaging the level of control in different situations. That is, the general tendency of a person to take responsibility for events in different areas of his life on himself or to shift it to the outside world. But, interestingly, despite the common denominator, in some areas a person can have a completely opposite locus of control. For example, in the areas of business, health, self-development, a person takes responsibility for the results (internal locus of control), and in the sphere of personal relationships, he is convinced that nothing depends on him (external locus of control).

My experience is that this has a lot to do with the person's beliefs that have been formed in the process of growing up. For example, a person may have an external locus of control in the sphere of relationships, because at some stage of his life he formed the belief that God or fate will send him a "soul mate", that everything should happen by itself, so no special actions are taken. undertakes in this area.

Sometimes, on the contrary, a person believes that he has a “crown of celibacy” on him and also does nothing, but goes to psychics, hoping to “remove” the curse, instead of analyzing the reasons for failures and changing something in himself. It turns out that here he shifts responsibility for the result in this area of ​​his life to others.

Now that it has become more clear with responsibility, let's try to figure out the reasons why people avoid responsibility in different areas of their lives.

A few main reasons that come to mind:

1. The conviction of a person that it does not depend on him, that he cannot influence it. When, for one reason or another, there were convictions that this cannot be changed. I already gave one example above, but more can be added. For example, the belief "Nothing will ever change in this country." With such a conviction, a person does not even try to change anything.
In this case, it is necessary to work with these beliefs, expand the understanding of a particular area, help in finding methods to change the situation and achieve results.

2. Avoidance of responsibility due to inability and ignorance of how to do something, and as a result of waiting for someone else to do it for me.

Usually such a problem occurs in dependent people, those who have been super-cared for since childhood and were not allowed to do anything on their own. Such people simply do not know how and are not accustomed to straining to get something done. They were taught from childhood that if they tried something and didn’t work out the first time, their mother would come running and arrange everything. Usually such people, even in adulthood, if something did not work out right away, do not seek to independently find a solution, make efforts. They make a bewildered helpless look and wait for their mother to come, or for someone adult to replace their mother. And if they are not helped, they sincerely do not understand why, and are offended by the bad people around who do not like them, because they do not want to help. Often the problem is aggravated by the fact that since for many years all problems and tasks have been solved by others, a person has not formed enough skills and personal experience that he can rely on. The scope of work is very large. When a person wants to do something, it all piles up at once, it seems unbearable, and it is easier for him to return to his usual patterns of behavior. By the way, often such people have an inner feeling that they are still small and do not know what is right, but other adults know better what to do.

Of course, I described an extreme case, but such extremes occur. For some, this is manifested partially or in certain areas of life. Someone in all at once.

Therapeutic work with such people will consist in the consistent learning of independence, the development of strategies for finding solutions and achieving results, in the formation of skills and confidence that he himself knows what to do. All this should eventually lead to the gradual maturation of the personality or that part of the personality that is stuck in childhood.

3. Avoiding responsibility for fear of making mistakes. Usually this reason for throwing off responsibility is manifested in people who were constantly punished, criticized for mistakes and failures, who were exposed to excessive demands. Sometimes they simply showed how the fact that he did not cope with something badly and terribly, how much upsets his mother. In general, to put it simply, a person’s failures / mistakes are associated with something terrible and painful, so he tries to avoid them by any means. Usually such people are perfectionists, because how else can you avoid mistakes? That's right, do everything perfectly, be perfect. But there is nothing perfect in the world and cannot be. Moreover, a person cannot but make mistakes, because this is a normal part of any training. Therefore, as a rule, those areas where it will not work out perfectly, a person avoids, tries not to take responsibility for the results, because any failure will be painful for him. Surprisingly, such people are super-responsible and can feel guilty even where they cannot do anything. But at the same time, those situations in which they are not sure that they will cope 100%, perfectionists will try to avoid. They often play the game “I didn’t really want to” with themselves. That is, they simply do not do something that they can fail at, thereby maintaining the illusion of ideality. Usually such people are not prone to experiments and rarely go beyond the usual. Any attempt to do something new with them is accompanied by strong anxiety and resistance until they gain the proper degree so as not to make mistakes. Often another problem is the desire to do everything the first time. If it doesn’t work right away, the person gets upset and doesn’t try anymore. Even once it is very painful to experience failure.

In many ways, of course, they take responsibility and get results. But in areas where they may fail, where there may be criticism against them, they will avoid taking responsibility at all costs.

Therapeutic work with such people will consist in removing the fear of failure/mistake, working through the feeling of guilt, learning to accept one's imperfection and love oneself as one is, regardless of one's achievements or failures.

4. Unwillingness to take responsibility due to disbelief in one's own abilities. A person ceases to believe that he can cope with something in the case when there were a lot of failures in the past. As a result of multiple unsuccessful experiences, he develops the belief that he can’t do anything or that something is wrong with him. And with this conviction, he no longer even tries to try, because he expects failure in advance. Moreover, each new failure "clings" and lifts up the pain of past failures, forcing a person even more convinced that something is wrong with him and he is not capable of anything. Then a person simply does not even try to do something and manage something, he avoids any responsibility. Why, if all the same, as a result, nothing will come of it except pain and disappointment?

Therapeutic work with such a person will consist in finding internal resources, in reassessing past experience and finding out the real reasons for failure, in forming effective strategies for achieving results, forming positive beliefs instead of negative ones about one's abilities and reinforcing them with successful experience. He will need to gradually build a “foundation of success”, first achieving results in small things, and then relying on these achievements as a resource, gradually achieving more in his life.

Of course, "pure variants" are described here, but in real life they are often intermixed, so the work goes on several different fronts. And such work is worth doing, it can change lives very much. Studies show that people with an internal locus of control are happier, more likely to realize themselves in various fields life, less anxious. It is not surprising that such people live much better than those who have an external locus of control. The latter, not having enough influence on what happens to them, often become victims of circumstances, experience anxiety due to the inability to influence what is happening and are forced to rely on others, which makes them dependent. Under the yoke of external events, they make the wrong decisions, go in the wrong direction, and, in the end, just live the wrong life. But work on oneself allows one to turn from a “victim of circumstances” into a “master of life”, who plans, acts, makes decisions, achieves results, and builds his life himself. In the end, this is not something magical, but a set of supportive beliefs and effective thought patterns that can be taught to a person. And these are not empty words. For example, when I went through a program to work with drug addicts with Frank Pucelik, he told how in his centers, from essentially dead people, whose personality is destroyed by drugs and the way of life that they led, they make quite successful members of society. Not all of course, only those who had the strength and desire to go through a long program (from one and a half years). And I saw these guys, talked to them. They are open, they have a clear speech, they are self-confident, they work, raise children, they do not look like former drug addicts. I want to be friends with such people. Looking at them, you understand what a person’s potential for positive changes is, you just need to help him open up. It's not easy, but it's quite possible.

If you take responsibility for your life, gradually everything will begin to change. Only for this you must be serious and decisive.

Indecision in this case, perhaps, is the worst thing. How often we go with the flow, not managing our lives, allowing external circumstances to determine our fate.

Here is what famous entrepreneur and life coach Anthony Robbins advises.

1. Make a decision at the moment of a surge of enthusiasm.
2. Make a commitment to see it through to the end.
3. Tell yourself that your decision is final and everything will happen as you planned.

Unfortunately, most of us constantly break our promises to ourselves, that is, lie to ourselves. And if you do not trust yourself, you simply will not be able to change anything in your life. How to be?

Challenge yourself

Don't dismiss this article. Don't put everything off until tomorrow. Make up your mind Today. Let it be what you have long wanted or planned to do. Promise yourself that you're halfway there. Tell yourself that you already have all the necessary qualities. After all, otherwise this idea would not have tormented you all this time.

When we make commitments, especially publicly, the very desire to appear consistent motivates us to act on the decision, researchers have found. Can Commitment Change Behavior? A Case Study of Environmental Actions..

When we make a decision, we build a certain idea of ​​ourselves that corresponds to our new behavior.

We begin to perceive ourselves in accordance with this decision. If, as a result, our behavior for a sufficiently long time (about 4 months Commitment, behavior, and attitude change: An analysis of voluntary recycling.) corresponds decision our attitudes are changing.

Fake it until it's true? No. Make a decision to change and follow it. You don't have to pretend, but.

Finally

Make a decision, take responsibility for its implementation and communicate it to others. Make a rough plan of action. Think about what you want to achieve and what you need to do to get there.

And then create conditions in which you will inevitably fulfill your plan. Leave no loopholes for yourself. Over time, a responsible attitude to life will simply become a habit.

Is responsibility really that bad?

In order for you to cleanse yourself of inner negativity and change your life for the better, along with understanding the sequence of changes, you must take full responsibility for all your actions, words, thoughts, emotions, feelings, actions and decisions.

If you read the book, but do nothing, start looking for those responsible for your problems or excuses for your inaction, then this means that you do not want to take responsibility for everything that is happening to you now and what should happen in your life in the future.

This is a consequence of not understanding the important role that responsibility plays in your life. Many are generally very mistaken and consider responsibility only from the point of view of taking on heavy burdensome duties.

Yes, you need a certain willpower and discipline, consistency and determination in order to take responsibility, and indeed, certain duties arise in this case. But no one says it will be easy. However, do not forget that responsibility must also be considered in terms of choosing not only your problems, but also your happiness. Doing right choice, you choose not only heavy responsibilities, but also your happiness, joy and love.

In other words, you have to pay for everything in life. If you want to be happy, successful and prosperous, surrounded by harmonious relationships, pay for it with your personal time, attention, presence, consistency, determination, perseverance and hard work of your soul.

In addition, the choice is always yours, it belongs to you and it is completely in your power. You may not take responsibility for your life. This is also a choice. But always remember. If you are not in control of your life, then someone else will be in control. And it will not always be the person who loves you. In addition, I will tell you one secret. In fact, being a responsible person means being a free person. Or does freedom also scare you?

Let's see what gives you the assumption of full responsibility for everything that happens to you in your life and whether freedom of choice is so terrible.

Responsibility gives you complete freedom in choosing your own life path, goals and aspirations, people and relationships, their actions and deeds, thoughts and words, their own reactions to events and actions of other people.

Responsibility gives you complete control over your life. You become the master of your life in any of its areas: professional, family, personal, social.

Responsibility gives you the opportunity to build your life in accordance with your inner values ​​and the voice of your heart.

Responsibility gives you the right to make any decisions regarding your life and be fully responsible for them. Be it business, career, work, family, loved one, friendships and business relationships.

Responsibility gives you the opportunity at any time and in any situation to make a choice in the direction of good.

Responsibility gives you the right to say “yes” or “no” in any situation in your favor, while protecting your interests, aspirations and life values.

Responsibility gives you the opportunity to initially refuse unfavorable conditions for you, destroying unequal relationships and any other negative that does not serve your good in the present.

What is the result?

It turns out that responsibility gives you not only duties, but also all life privileges and rights and protects you. With responsibility, you can improve your life. You can enrich your inner world and make yourself a happy person. You can surround yourself with your beautiful values ​​and good people you love.

Do you see how powerful responsibility is?

Responsibility is the freedom to choose your life path and achieve any of your goals and aspirations. Don't be afraid to take responsibility for your life. You will feel the lightness and freedom that you so lacked in life.

If you do not know what to do in this or that situation, if you cannot make the right decision or make a certain choice, then this means only one thing - you are afraid of responsibility or freedom of choice. In this case, you need to look for internal negative reasons for such fear and always remember that responsibility gives you power over your life, fills you with personal strength and vitality, cleanses you of negative problems, including fear, destructive relationships and problem people. . Responsibility strengthens your faith in yourself and makes you the master of your life.

Sincerely, Irina Olkhovskaya.

Joe Vitale: RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE!

I am guided in my life and in my relationships with people by the following principles.

1. The physical universe is the embodiment of my thoughts.

2. If my thoughts are harmful, they create a harmful physical reality.

3. If my thoughts are perfect, then they create a physical reality exuding LOVE.

4. I am fully (100%) responsible for the creation of my physical universe.

5. I am fully (100%) responsible for the transformation of harmful thoughts that create a harmful reality.

6. Nothing exists apart from me. Everything exists as thoughts in my mind.

Joe Vitale and Dr. Ihaliakala Hugh Lin "Living Without Limits - THE SECRET HAWAIIAN SYSTEM for Health, Wealth, Peace and Happiness"

Ecology of life. Psychology: There is a wonderful phrase that characterizes the acceptance of responsibility: "Whoever wants, he is looking for a way, who does not want, he is looking for an excuse" ...

There are such banal and obvious thoughts that it is even inconvenient to talk and write about them. “To live, you need to breathe” - it is difficult to imagine a more banal thought. Any person to whom you say such a phrase is perplexed, why discuss this. After all, everything is clear by default.

Approximately the same thing happens when you say that the conscious management of one's own life begins with the fact that a person must take responsibility for his own life. With the exception of a very large army of admirers of the "destiny of fate", usually no one questions this thesis. Yes, you have to. And in general it is not clear why you are talking about this, because it is so obvious. You would also say that in order to live, you need to breathe.

Indeed, somehow everything is obvious and banal. With only one difference. Everything breathes. But they take much less responsibility for their lives.

“Responsibility for your life you say? Take over? So who's arguing. This is clear to the horse. You took on this responsibility a long time ago. You better tell me…” Most often, this is followed by a question that completely refutes the previous phrase, and indicates that no one took any responsibility.

This is very easy to determine by the way the question or problem that the person wants to solve is formulated. Who wants to, can conduct an experiment. Set the article aside for now, grab a piece of paper and a pen and do the following:

1. Write ten problems or tasks that you would like to solve in the near future.

2. What way of resolving the situation do you see at the moment?

3. What prevents you from solving this problem now?

Now let's look at the ways that a person uses to relieve himself of responsibility.

It turns out that not everything that “the horse understands” is accepted by the horse as a guide to action.

Nine excuses for doing nothing

1. I can't. Probably the most common way to absolve yourself of responsibility. I can't start going to the gym. I can't find the time. I can't control myself. Can't get together for... Can't.... I can’t… I can’t… Usually a “can’t-man” is looking for a magic recipe on how to still be able to do it without straining. And since there is no such solution, either a person spends his life in search of magic, or, disappointed in the search, resigns himself to fate.

2. Transferring responsibility to others and the search for those responsible: "The director is a goat." “Husband is a tyrant”, “Parents do not allow to do ...”, “Dad did not arrange for Good work... ". In the relationship of partners "Because of you ...", "If it were not for you ...", "It was you who pulled me in ...".

3. Shifting responsibility to circumstances:“Not born there”, “No conditions”, “A career can only be made through pull”. "Not we such, Life is such".

4. Attempts to change the situation by changing other people:“I want management to appreciate me”, “How to explain to my parents that I am an adult and do not need their control”, “I want a husband ....”.

5. Shifting responsibility to the current situation:“Now is not the time ...”, “I will do it, but after ...”. “First you need….” Of course, situations often arise when the moment is not quite right. For example, opening a business during a crisis may not be the best option, and such a delay in the decision may be fully justified. Although people who absolve themselves of responsibility will always find a reason why they will not start doing anything.

6. Formulations."It makes me mad". "He annoys me". "I'm upset", "I'm not appreciated." If you analyze the phrase, you will see that there is an element of passivity in the wording. Someone or something outside influences my inner state. But we ourselves are responsible for our inner state. And when we use such formulations, we relieve ourselves of responsibility for our feelings.

7. The game "Cripple". The person playing this game says his "trump phrase": "What do you want from a person like me?". He finds some flaw, either in himself or in his life, and this explains his problems and his passivity. The reasons for the defectiveness of the “crippled” can be both diseases and the origin of “poor family”, “I live in a small town with no prospects”, etc.

8. Search for an answer to a question that cannot be answered. It can be either general issues, to which there is simply no unambiguous answer: "How to succeed ...". Or search for guaranteed ready-made recipes "How to convince that ...", "How to open guaranteed profitable business …».

9. Designation of conditions for starting actions. The formula for this excuse has the following construction: “If only…. Then I would….” "If I lived in another city, then I could make a career." “If my husband allowed me to work, then I would…”. "If the leadership was adequate, then ...".

All these methods allow you to relieve yourself of responsibility. Question for what? The answer is simple. Justification of passivity, which allows you to maintain a stable self-esteem. Everything is “ok” with me, it’s just… Self-deception.

There is a beautiful phrase that characterizes the acceptance of responsibility:

"Whoever wants, he is looking for a way, who does not want, he is looking for an excuse."

Now go back to the issues that you have formulated and see if the language you have written contains elements of shifting responsibility. If you have found a similar mechanism, then you need to formulate the problem, taking responsibility.

9 ways to take control of your life

1. I can't. It all starts with installation "I can". Of course, there is something that we objectively cannot. For example, jump from a place up three meters. But this is more of a hypothetical example. Most of the problems are in the zone of our “can”. I believe that for the development of a person the attitude “It is not the Gods who burn the pots” is very important, which means the basic attitude “I can”.

“I can’t” implies a lack of opportunity, hopelessness, which means why rock the boat. Although in reality this is not the case. It is important to formulate the problem in such a way that it contains the opportunity to fix it, and it becomes clear how to do it.

It is necessary to reformulate I can’t, into “scary”, “difficult”, “risky”, etc. If we replace the excuse “I can’t”, with “scary”, then it’s clear that we need to work with fear, overcome it. "Risky" - learn to calculate options, minimize risks.

2. Shifting responsibility to others is a very convenient excuse. It turns out that I am good, and he is a bastard, so something is not going well with me. But! We cannot change another person. We can change ourselves, our behavior, and then the behavior of others around us will change. In this case, it is important to designate your area of ​​responsibility for yourself, and ask yourself the control question: “What can I personally do to change the situation.” The answer should not be recommendations for other people, only for yourself.

3. Shifting responsibility to circumstances. It echoes the previous point. Many circumstances are beyond our control. You can either adapt to them or change the environment of circumstances. No development opportunities in a small town? You can move to a big one. Grow your business with the help of the Internet. Unpromising job? Happens. Who's stopping you from finding a friend? Just don't say there are no jobs. You are single because "there are no real men." Understand that this is nonsense, and one can always be found.

4. Trying to change the situation by changing other people. I already wrote that we cannot change others. Think about how you can change yourself. One woman, whose husband is a successful entrepreneur, complained that he did not take her seriously. Why did she decide so? She approached him with a request: "Open me some business." He naturally refused, because. with a similar wording, a business is not opened. And she kept trying to figure out how to get him to start a business.

5. Wrong moment, maybe really wrong. But there are people for whom all the time, all their lives, the moment is not right. So it's not about the moment. The point is in the excuses that a person comes up with, justifying passivity.

6. Replace wording like "it annoys me" with I-statements, for example "I'm nervous." In the first formulation, something external affects our internal state, and we cannot do anything about it. When using I-formulations, our state depends on us, so we can manage it.

7. Stop playing Cripple. Are you okay. If you return to the image of the "Cripple", then you should deal with self-esteem.

8. Stop looking for a ready-made recipe for success. It doesn't exist in principle. Try to understand yourself, master the technologies of efficiency, create your own recipe.

9. Remove “If only…” from your vocabulary. This is an excuse. If yes, if mushrooms grew in your mouth. Your “If only…” are just excuses.

Summary:

Taking responsibility for your life means focusing on opportunities.

Answer to the question:

What can I do to make a difference?

Only with this approach we will manage our lives. This cannot be done until a person takes real responsibility for his life.

To be fair, it should be said that there are situations that we cannot influence. But we can always change our perception of a situation.

Just a week ago, we were returning from vacation, and we were late for a transfer in Istanbul. It was the fault of the airline. We did what depended on us.Changed tickets. After that, we calmly went to rest in the hotel. There were other latecomers who shouted something for a long time, threatened with courts, and were terribly indignant. It just didn't affect the outcome.In the morning we met on the plane. We were rested, and people were nervous, sleepy and tired. They simply could not accept the situation, which they could not really influence.

Responsibility is a key principle in human life. And, as I tried to show in the article, it is not as obvious as it seems at first. published