Are You Really 100% Responsible For Your Life?

Personal Responsibility is one of my most favorite topics. EVER. I admit it. I definitely write about it a lot, and talk about it even more. I’m so passionate about this principle because I truly believe it is the key to all empowerment.

If you want JOY, BALANCE, and SUCCESS in your life, then taking responsibility for everything that you experience in your life is a definite requirement. Many experts call this process “taking 100% responsibility.”

This stance of “I created everything that I am experiencing“ is not an easy one to take, because we would admit having created everything unpleasant that has ever occurred in our lives. And although there could be some truth to that in many situations, it’s not exactly true.

The philosopher Sophocles once said: “It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself and no one else has made it.”

Well, this might resonate with you. As you look at

your income,

your bank account balance,

your health reports,

the level of joy, energy, and excitement in your life,

the quality of your relationships (with God, yourself, and others),

your state (body, mind, spirit),

maybe you can take responsibility and acknowledge you created it all.

And I say maybe, because I was raised in a slum, had epileptic seizures, was abused all my childhood, and I really can’t take responsibility for any of that. It was NOT my fault.

Many of us are truly victims of events, circumstances, and situations that are outside of our control and definitely not of our creation.

Are you really 100% responsible for your life?

The 100% figure throws many people off. Taking 100% responsibility for our life does not include experiences that are outside of those things we didn’t and couldn’t choose. And many choices we make are actually unconscious.

I’m not responsible for being molested as a child. I was 3!!! It feels yucky to believe or even think that I “attracted” this vile behavior from a trusted adult. Let alone that I created it. Ugh!

So the 100% is figurative and it only covers the choices we make. And so now that we covered this technicality, let’s use this principle as a tool to empower ourselves.

Eleanor Roosevelt put it this way:

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” 

We are certainly 100% responsible for our choices. That’s what 100% responsiblity is about.

Rather than blaming, making excuses, or complaining, we can take a position of power to know that we can always exercise our agency, our power to choose, to create the results we want.

Now, there’s a caveat here too. And my body is feeling this. Because sometimes we are presented with very poor options we can even choose from. But let’s keep talking about this principle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One of my mentors, New York Times bestselling author and co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, Jack Canfield, uses a simple formula that illustrates this concept perfectly:

E+R=O

E is for the events that occur in our lives

R stands for our response to each of those events

O is for the outcomes we experience as a result of our responses

Two people can experience the same event, and because they choose to respond differently, their outcomes are significantly different, sometimes opposite!

[Tweet “E+R=O / event + response = outcome #mindsetformoms”]

We can creating our experiences, relationships, and overall results based on three major responses:

1. our thoughts (self talk) and beliefs (conscious and unconscious)
2. our behavior (including your words – what we say and how we say it)
3. our visual imagery (or the visual images we focus on, including those of the future)

Notice the word “response.”

This response comes AFTER something that happens in our lives.

If you take a closer look to the life you are living right now, I guarantee you that you will start to see patterns that will help you understand where your choices created your circumstances. That’s one of my mottos!

I invite you also to give yourself compassion where you didn’t choose, and would never choose, what happened. It wasn’t your fault and you didn’t deserve that!

For everything else, it really helps to see our part, not to blame ourselves, but to learn from it. These instances can be empowering because if we did indeed choose it, then we can probably change it.

Albert Einstein warned us:

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will – his personal responsibility.”

Knowing that even Einstein recognized this issue makes me feel a little better. We humans have the tendency to look outside ourselves for the culprit. Not that referring to ourselves as culprits is the goal, here!

We’ve all been conditioned. We blame someone, make excuses (blaming a circumstance), or complain when something does not go the way we would hope. We blame the country we live in, the economy, the weather, our parents, our spouse, or even our kids!

Blaming the event, shaming ourselves for the event, and complaining about the event, are all choices. Taking personal responsibility is a more empowering choice that can create a different outcome of the event. Taking personal responsibility is more favorable and can ultimately lead to our happiness.

There lies the catch. To live the life we want, we are required to lay down the sword – to forever give up the right to:

• make up “reasons,” excuses or alibis
• complain (focusing on what is wrong with no plan to fix it)
• see ourselves as powerless

When something happens (or doesn’t happen) in life, it’s healthy to ask empowering questions. Some questions can help us get back on track and regain our personal power.

When I attended UPW with Tony Robbins (where I walked on fire!!!), he said something really powerful about this:

“The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask on a daily basis.“

5 Questions To Help You Reclaim Your Personal Power

When we have made a choice that leads to an unwanted result, we start by asking the right questions.

1. How did I create this situation? How did I encourage it? How did I allow it?
2. What thoughts/beliefs got me here?
3. What did I say or not say that led me to this outcome?
4. What did I do or not do to create this result?
5. What do I need to do differently next time to get the result I want?

As you give yourself permission to move past the emotions you may be feeling (anger, powerlessness, guilt, resentment, frustration, etc.) and consciously and deliberately reflect on your choices, you start to design the results you experience in your life.

I always say that “progress is success” because it’s all about taking each step that’s required to move forward.

My first face-to-face encounter with personal responsibility happened when I found myself a single mom after a dysfunctional and abusive three-and-a-half-year marriage.

After an intense blaming and shaming session, mostly to self, I decided to transform my present (and future) life, rather than focusing on what was now my past.

Don’t get me wrong… I had to practice a lot of compassion for myself. I also gained a lot of awareness about what was not okay in the situation. I could now see the red flags I didn’t see before. Those were not my responsibility – not at all.

And to quote Carl Jung (the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology), when we are victims of someone who hurts us, we can declare:

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

Mastering the lost art of taking personal responsibility is so liberating. It removes many triggers, stressors, and drainers that create imbalance, misery, and undue failure. It also increases trust, respect, and confidence from others – and yourself.

I invite you to accept and take full responsibility everything you choose in your life, including your successes and failures. I encourage you to act as if you could really change the outcome of every single event in your life, based on your reaction.  Better said yet, based on your responses.

Repeat after me: “Every outcome I experience can be influenced by my response to life events.”

With this incredible awareness, are you willing to take full responsibility for your current internal and external experiences and take charge of your life to create something different in each area of your life?

It was not your fault, but healing is your responsibility. That’s true empowerment – and that’s what I wish for you, my darling!

Founder of the Positive MOM® and creator of the S.T.O.R.Y. System: a blueprint to craft and share powerful stories that will transform your results and help others do the same. Dr. Elayna Fernández is a single mom of 4, an award-winning Storyteller, Story Strategist, and Student of Pain. She’s a bestselling author, internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, and 5x TEDx speaker. She has spoken at the United Nations, received the President’s Volunteer Lifetime Achievement Award, and was selected as one of the Top Impactful Leaders and a Woman of Influence by SUCCESS Magazine. Connect with Elayna at thepositivemom.com/ef and follow @thepositivemom. To receive a gift from Elayna, click HERE.

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