Taking Responsibility

Every day events occur in our household, in our neighbourhood, in our state, in our country, in the world that may affect our outlook for the day. They may affect our mood, and they may affect how we react to other people. It can be as trivial as someone in the family racing out the door and not saying goodbye; it could be a world event like a tsunami that makes us grieve for the loss that other people are going through.

We need to understand that we can’t control what occurs in the world, we can’t control political events, and we can’t control interest rates; what we can control is how we react to these situations. It’s about the decisions you make and accepting responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.

Perhaps we aren’t achieving what we would like to achieve in our life because of who controls or influences our life. It may be others, such as:

• Your parents
• Your partner
• Your children
• Your boss
• Your work colleagues
• The government
• World events
• The driver who cut you off in traffic today
• The queue at the supermarket

By allowing circumstances, events and words to affect us in a negative way, we’re passing control of our thoughts, mood, and experiences onto other people who are out of our control. When this occurs, we’re living a reactive life. The benefit of letting others control us is that we have someone else to blame – that lets us off the hook.

The alternative action is that we could take responsibility for our self.

Empower yourself in three steps:

Making the choice to be in control can be empowering you only need to control yourself. So here are the steps:

1. Recognise that you have the power to choose how you react to a situation
2. Recognise when you are not taking responsibility for your life
3. Practise stopping yourself when you are letting others control you and take responsibility

This is a new behaviour so practise is really important.

If you don’t run your own life, someone else will

John Atkinson

You can choose to take responsibility for your life.

Thank you and I look forward to sharing more tips, strategies and skills to support you to be more organised so that you too can create a better life.

“Be an inspiration to yourself and

you will be an inspiration to others.”