5 Steps to Empowered Responsibility

Do you believe that doing what others want you to do or living up to their expectations is what makes you a responsible person? It amazing how many people sabotage their happiness because of this misplaced interpretation of responsibility. You may have heard of the responsible mother who gave up her dreams to bring up her kids, but you may not know of the secret resentment she felt when they grew up and left home. Or the responsible son who compromised his career to look after his aging parents grudgingly, but who never lost an opportunity to remind them about his immense sacrifice. Responsibility is not about compromise but rather about the freedom to choose your response.

For some strange reason responsibility is subconsciously associated with the sacrifice of one’s deeper desires. Is the boy who studies science only to fulfill his father’s dream of becoming a doctor choosing responsibly if his inability to cope leads him to commit suicide?

Abdicating your desires to please others is not what responsibility is about. Rather it is about choosing a desired course of action that is born out of a sense of freedom and inspiration and not imposed by the force of emotions upon yourself. When seen in this perspective responsibility makes you response –able even in complex situations when others may want different things from what you want. The amazing thing is that when you are response-able, you are often able to persuade others to accept your choices amicably and sometimes even enrol them into your vision about things.

If you are ready to embrace this empowering version of being response-able the following 5 steps will help you get there.

1. DE-VICTIMIZE YOURSELF

Regardless of what opportunities come his way, remember a victim remains powerless. He always has some excuse or reason why he can’t act or behave as he ought to. He postpones taking action, doubts his capabilities and fears failure. He spends an enormous amount of energy analyzing his issues or escaping them. He blames people and circumstances for his incompetency and failures. He projects his self doubts onto others and spends a lot of time whining or complaining about his life, circumstances and problems.

To be response-able you must be willing to let go of the need to blame others for what is happening in your life. You must be ready to take charge of your life experiences. You need to recognise that if you continue to behave as you always have, you cannot hope to get different results. You will need to step out of the comfort zone of brooding, complaining and procrastinating and instead get into action. Any action will produce some result, but no action will always give you no results.

2. RESET THE DEFAULT EMOTIONAL SETTING

Most people have a typical way of responding to stressful situations. Some get angry, others shout, still others become nervous or anxious and then there are those who instantly start to search for a scapegoat whom they can blame for the problem. This is their default setting on the emotion meter and they return to it each time there is a stressful situation. This setting is determined by the cumulative experiences in their history both from their present life as well as the karmic residues from past lives.

Once the subconscious memory of these past painful experiences is triggered through the stressful situation, they are automatically trapped into the default setting and end up behaving as they did in the past. They are no longer able to choose freely how to respond in the present moment as their response has been pre-determined by their history. So they just end up responding to the situation like they did the last time and the zillion times before that.

Now what happens when the father tells his son to stop chatting on Facebook and focus on his studies instead is that the son instantly locks into his default response of… I’m sick of being told to study, why the hell can’t he stop picking on me. Underlying this response lies buried an unconscious history of control and victimization. The moment this thought crosses the son’s mind, emotions of anger, irritation and frustration signal his stress hormones to rush into his bloodstream and his mind and body both become clogged with negative emotions. He can no longer see things clearly. He is unable to appreciate his father’s concern about his welfare. He is left feeling antagonistic and unloved by his father. Project responsibility has successfully been erased and overwritten by his default setting.

In order to chose your responses you need to circumvent your history by releasing the emotions trapped therein. This is best done by a therapist practicing energy psychology but can also be harnessed by living in awareness or using self help techniques such as positive self talk, re-framing challenging situations through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Tapping meridian points like in the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Breathwork and several others that can help you rise above your default setting and become response-able. A simple age old methods includes counting to 10 before giving in to your default response and breathing deeply. In the following video Ted Robinson demonstrates how you can use EFT to release your trapped emotions.

3. ENVISION YOUR HIGHEST VERSION

Each one of us is a brilliant work- in- progress, a partly sculpted piece of stone, waiting to become a prized sculpture. The stone may believe it is ordinary, perhaps even inconsequential, but if it only knew what it shall be worth when it is fully chiseled and carved, it wouldn’t view itself so disdainfully and hold itself in such low esteem.

To be response-able you must hold the vision of your highest version, of who you can dare to be and become in your mind. This will give you the energy and impetus required to strive in the direction of that ideal because the destination is worthy of your effort. You have discovered purpose and purpose inspires you to action. It also gives you the resilience to deal with all the pain that the chisel and hammer of life shall inflict upon you in order to carve yourself into a beautiful work of art.

4. BLOCK NEGATIVE SELF TALK

Approximately 137 negative thoughts cross the human mind every minute. Often we are unconscious of this stream of thoughts flowing through us but many of these include negative labels and self deprecating judgements. We are constantly running ourselves down. We tell ourselves that we are not good enough, capable enough, intelligent enough or worthy enough. We compare ourselves with those who appear to be better off but rarely if ever appreciate our merits and true strengths. Even someone, who on the surface appears to be arrogant or boastful, is merely hiding behind false pride. In his head he is simply not good enough and he hides his feeling of inadequacy by wearing a proud mask.

This mental dialoguing weakens your energy body and makes you chronically fatigued resulting in a confused mind and paralyzed action. You keep thinking all these terrible thoughts in your head but are unable to get up and perform the smallest actions that can cause a change in your status quo. Negative self talk only leads to paralysis of purpose. Be watchful of this inner dialogue and block it at the very first sign of its appearance. You cannot choose a powerful response when you are feeling weak and incapacitated.

5. MOVE TO ACTION QUICKLY

I remember, many years ago, asking a very successful CEO about the secret of her success and how she managed such a diverse portfolio. Her answer was, I do not waste too time worrying about a problem. I move to action quickly. That was a great lesson for me too at that time and it has been my mantra ever since. Thinking keeps you stuck in analysis and paralyses you with anxieties and apprehensions. When you think about a problem for too long you allow all your self- doubts and past failures to entangle you and keep you shackled and stuck where you are. You must act fast before your past catches up with you. For that you must remain very present in the moment and be fully focused on the task at hand.

Action makes you shift into the inspiring energy of purpose. It gives you power to change how things are and affect outcomes. It makes your action meaningful and constructive in that present moment regardless of what happened in your past. It allows you to influence your life’s experiences making you a catalyst in your success. It gives you freedom to choose what you want to do, be who you wish to be and become who you dream of becoming. It delivers you to the doorstep of that powerful place where you are ready, willing and able to be response-able.