The Practice of Self-Responsibility

To feel competent to live and worthy, of happiness, I need to experience a sense of control over my existence. This requires that I be willing to take responsibility for my actions and the attainment of my goals. This means that I take responsibility for my life and well-being.

Self-responsibility is essential to self-esteem, and it is also a reflection or manifestation of self-esteem. The relationship between self-esteem and its pillars is always reciprocal. The practices that generate self-esteem are also natural expressions and consequences of self-esteem, as we shall discuss in a later chapter. The practice of self-responsibility entails these realizations:

I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.

I am responsible for my choices and actions.

I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work.

I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships.

I am responsible for my behavior with other people-coworkers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends.

I am responsible for how I prioritize my time.

I am responsible for the quality of my communications.

I am responsible for my personal happiness.

I am responsible for accepting or choosing the values by which I live.

I am responsible for raising my self-esteem.

What does each of these items imply in terms of behavior?

The Action Implications of Self-Responsibility

I am responsible for the achievement of my desires. No one owes me the fulfillment of my wishes. I do not hold a mortgage on anyone else's life or energy. If I have desires, it is up to me to discover how to satisfy them. I need to take responsibility for developing and implementing an action plan. If my goals require the participation of other people, I must be responsible for knowing what they require of me if they are to cooperate and for providing whatever is my rational obligation to provide. I respect their self-interest and know that if I wish their cooperation or assistance, I must be conscious of it and speak to it. If I am unwilling to take responsibility for the attainment of my desires, they are not really desires - they are merely daydreams. For any professed desire to be taken seriously, I must be prepared to answer, in realistic terms: What am I willing to do to get what I want?

I am responsible for my choices and actions. To be "responsible" in this context means responsible not as the recipient of moral blame or guilt, but responsible as the chief causal agent in my life and behavior. If my choices and actions are mine, then I am their source. I need to own this fact. I need to stay connected with it when I choose and act. What difference would that make? If you would like to discover the answer for yourself, write six endings, as fast as you can, for the stem

If I take full responsibility for my choices and actions---

I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work. This is an example of the point I just made about choice. No one else can possibly be accountable for the level of awareness I bring to my daily activities. I can give my work the best I have to give, or I can seek to get away with as little consciousness as possible, or anywhere in between. If I stay connected with my responsibility in this area, I am more likely to operate at a high level of consciousness.

I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships. The principle just discussed applies equally to my interactions with others - to my choice of companions and to the awareness I bring or fail to bring to any encounter. Am I fully present in my encounters with others? Am I present to what is being said? Do I think about the implications of my statements? Do I notice how others are affected by what I say and do?

I am responsible for my behavior with other people-coworkers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends. I am responsible for how I speak and how I listen. I am responsible for the promises I keep or fail to keep. I am responsible for the rationality or irrationality of my dealings. We evade responsibility when we try to blame others for our actions, as in "She's driving me crazy," "He pushes my buttons," "I would act reasonably if only she would ... "

I am responsible for how I prioritize my time. Whether the choices I make about the disposition of my time and energy reflect my professed values or are incongruous with them is my responsibility. If I insist that I love my family more than anyone yet am rarely alone with them and spend most of my leisure time playing cards or golf, always surrounded by friends, I need to confront my contradiction and think about its implications. If I declare that my most important task at work is finding new clients for the firm but spend 90 percent of my time bogged down in office trivia that produces very little income - I need to reexamine how I am investing my energy.

I am responsible for the quality of my communications. I am responsible for being as clear as I know how to be; for checking to see if the listener has understood me; for speaking loudly and distinctly enough to be heard; for the respect or disrespect with which I convey my thoughts.

I am responsible for my personal happiness. One of the characteristics of immaturity is the belief that it is someone else's job to make me happy - much as it was once my parents' job to keep me alive. If only someone would love me, then I would love myself. If only someone would take care of me, then I would be contented. If only someone would spare me the necessity of making decisions, then I would be carefree. If only someone would make me happy.

Here's a simple but powerful stem to wake one up to reality:

If I take full responsibility for my personal happiness ---

Taking responsibility for my happiness is empowering. It places my life back in my own hands. Ahead of taking this responsibility, I may imagine it will be a burden. What I discover is that it sets me free.

I am responsible for accepting or choosing the values by which I live. If I live by values I have accepted or adopted passively and unthinkingly, it is easy to imagine that they are just "my nature," just "who I am," and to avoid recognizing that choice is involved. If I am willing to recognize that choices and decisions are crucial when values are adopted, then I can take a fresh look at my values, question them, and if necessary revise them. Again, it is taking responsibility that sets me free.

I am responsible for raising my self-esteem. Self-esteem is not a gift I can receive from someone else. It is generated from within. To wait passively for something to happen that will raise my self-esteem is to sentence myself to a life of frustration.

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