Responsibility

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, pg. 71, Steven Covey writes,

“Look at the word responsibility – ‘response-ability’ – the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”

What Covey is talking about is BEing empowered or, more importantly, how to BE empowered. You see, every day you get to make the choice. Are you going to assume responsibility for your life or are you going to allow yourself to be bullied by external forces and circumstances?

In Technologies of the Mind, we talk about this in terms of Cause/Effect. Are you the cause for what is going on in your life or are you at effect of events going on in your life?

I cannot stress enough the importance in understanding the difference between the two. Cause is the condition of creating an effect. Effect is the end-state of the cause. We live in a causal world. For example, if you were to insert your key into your car’s ignition, you begin a chain of cause-effect events that result (hopefully) in the car starting. Twisting the key causes the effect of electronic contacts coming together. That causes the effect of an electrical current to flow through a circuit. That causes the effect of a motor to turn. That causes the effect of the engine begin to turn – and so on.

If you begin to assume responsibility for everything that happens in your life, you move into your full power as a human being. Have you considered that your world is the world of your own creation? That your reality is yours by your intentional creation? What I am suggesting to you is simply this… everything that you experience, whether or not you necessarily like it, you are the cause for. Wow! For some people that can be heavy! Pay close attention, you are the “cause”. It was a series of events and choices executed by you that resulted in your experience.

The next idea is simply this. If you are at cause for every event in your life then you are fully empowered to do something about it. Nice huh? Be the intentional cause for creating your life the way you want it. When you fully commit to that idea you begin to get the kind of results in your life that you consciously want. There is more work to be done of course – like letting go of your negative emotions and limiting decisions – you come to the conclusion that you totally deserve to BE, DO and HAVE what you want.

Being at cause for your life has nothing to do with being at fault or to blame. It has everything to do with being responsible. You see, stuff happens. I think we can agree on that. What our friend Mr. Covey is saying is that you get to decide how you are going to respond. I think the obvious answer is, respond in whatever way is empowering to you.

BE Amazing,
-Lane