Complete and Total Responsibility

It Was Your Fault

You were approaching an intersection in your car and another car sped through a red light and almost blindsided you.  It was your fault.

Your spouse up and leaves one day for a different life.  It’s your fault.

Someone breaks into your house and steals thousands of dollars of electronics.  It’s your fault.

Somebody you encounter is downright rude for no reason.  It’s your fault

Does that sound a little harsh?  Are you thinking – but none of those things would have actually been my fault?

That’s a normal reaction to assertions such as these.  But there is power in learning to take complete and total responsibility for all things that happen in your life, whether good or bad, or whether or not they were under your direct control.

The Power of Total Responsibility

We’re all happy to accept responsibility for the things we appeared to accomplish or attain through direct effort, good ideas, and hard work.  But when bad things happen to us, including things that are completely haphazard, it’s much easier to point the finger at someone else.  And on the surface it might make complete sense to do so.

But then we miss the opportunity to take ownership of our reality.

Sure, when bad things happen and we didn’t plan them or foresee them they don’t seem like our fault in any way.  But by accepting the worst things that happen to us as our fault we build a deep sense of owning our lives.

We no longer devolve into victim mentality.  Ever.  Even when we legitimately could.  And when we stop playing the victim we also take greater ownership of our successes.  Nothing was luck, even if it was, and that changes the way we look at everything.

This fundamentally changes mindset and allows for a lot more positive action towards the things we want.

It also saves a lot of unnecessary frustration and stress.  In my own experience, amazing things happen when I take complete responsibility for everything.  I stopped yelling at people who cut me off on the highway or otherwise acted rude for no apparent reason.  That would be like yelling at myself if it’s my responsibility, and that makes no sense.  Yelling at that person wouldn’t have accomplished anything anyway besides raising my cortisol levels.  So it’s much better to avoid that altogether.  And it’s easy when I essentially see them as me. Now, if someone tries to physically attack me I’ll be fighting back.  Make no mistake.  But on a mental level I’ll still consider it my responsibility.

More than anything it’s a mind trick that has worked well for me.

On a more metaphysical level, I notice that the less I react to the negative things that cross my path, the less they happen to me in the first place.  Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s purely that my perception has changed and I don’t notice the negative things as much.  Either way I sense that my day to day experiences have skewed towards the positive.  And that’s really all that matters.

Give complete ownership of your reality a try, give it some time, and please comment on how it works for you.