Principles of Self-Responsibility

In life, everyone is given a choice of the actions to take, the decisions to make, and the steps to take. While you have a choice of these, you also need to bear the consequences that will arise from them. You have to grow to a point of bearing the effects of your actions and being fully accountable for your choices and decisions - this is what self-responsibility is. In order to grow in life, you have to focus on taking responsibility for your life, not blaming others or some other things for the things that happen to you. Here, we shall take a look at the principles that can guide one towards achieving self-responsibility.

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The first one is to focus on solutions, not on finding excuses. It is true that things may not happen as you had planned them, but no matter the kind of excuse that you give, it cannot create the solution. What you need to do is to shift your attention from giving excuses to why what happened had happened, and then think of how to solve the problem. When you take away the mentality of excuses, then you have initiated the journey of self-responsibility. No one achieves anything worthwhile by giving excuses but by taking steps and actions to find solutions to the challenge at hand. Even though excuses may come easily, but the negative effects would definitely outweigh it.

The next principle is to criticise less and motivate more. People may not fulfill your expectations and you may want them to do more. You cannot achieve that by criticizing them for what they have done, but by motivating, encouraging, and influencing them positively. As a leader in your workplace for example, if you want your teammates to live up to expectations, then you need to motivate them to do so, and encourage them when they are trying. If you cannot motivate them, then it is better to keep quiet than to negatively criticise them, because the latter might become counterproductive.

Another important principle is to learn from mistakes. You have have tried a certain format or have taken a step that did not play out as expected, you do not have to dwell so much on it and allow it to have negative effects on you, rather you should learn from the mistakes and then pick yourself up and take another step. Whatever happens on your way to your dream will either be one of two things - to get you closer to your dreams or to teach you lessons. However, you do not only wait to make mistakes before you can learn from the lessons. You can learn lessons from the mistakes of others, so as to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes.

The next principle is related to the way you judge. Someone may do something, maybe as a response or reaction to what was done to them. The way you judge can tell a great deal about you. Instead of judging people based on their reaction to what you did to them, try to judge yourself for your attitude towards them. In addition to this, also learn not to be too quick to judge people. Trust me, there are things that you may judge people wrongly for, but if you are in their shoes, you may even do worse than them. Before you judge someone for their actions, try to put yourself in their shoes and then look at their intentions.

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The last principle is to strive to become the winner in the challenges of life, not trying to play the victim. Playing the victim can only attract pity from people, but will not solve the problem. You need to stand up and take the "bull by the horn." Do not allow yourself to be cast down by the feeling of self pity. Whatever comes to you means that you can handle it, so challenge your challenges. Remember that without confronting your challenges, you will not win. It does not matter how big they may look, but just focus on your ability to overcome. A lot of people have overcome much bigger challenges before, which should give you the motivation that you can overcome yours. Even if no one has overcome it before, then be the first to do it.

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