What Does Taking Responsibility Mean

There is an importance for learning how to take responsibility and own your actions. If we cannot master this skill we will be forever stuck. Taking responsibility is how one expands beyond their set boundaries. To own your actions is a necessary skill of any successful person.

In order to create a happy, healthy and successful life, you need to take responsibility. Taking responsibility is not a onetime action. You need to take responsibility for each and every decision that you make in your life. The things you choose to do and are proud of as well as the things you choose not to do or are not so proud of.

How Does One Define Responsibility

According to the Oxford Dictionary responsibility is defined as, “the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something”. Talking from personal experience humans beings are experts at taking responsibility for the great, amazing things in life. Cure for cancer? Yes I created that! New highly sought after book? Yes I wrote that! Grammy Award Winner? Yes, it was all me.

It is when the wheels turn to the mistakes, the failures, the hard times. This is when taking responsibility becomes the hardest thing to do, in my opinion. Who wants to take responsibility for not making rent, for weight gain, for not meeting a deadline!? No one. It is hard to own up to it when you’ve made a mistake or failed. But here is the thing we cannot hope to accomplish anything or grow into our best self if we do not first take responsibility for every action we take!

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Building the Right Mindset for Taking Responsibility

Relating this topic to my career as an educator, I teach my grade one students that making mistakes and failing is the most important part of learning. Instead of pretending to know it all and fail at a new task we can ask for help, we can do some research, we can look for a new tool and we can try again!

Those who do not accomplish their goals are the people that fall down, that fail, that make a mistake. They stay down after failing because they refuse to take ownership and stand back up. Those individuals are the ones who continue to blame the weather, that there is never enough time in the day, that if that one person would not have done that one thing you wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

I have a quote up in my classroom and it goes like this, “[T]he expert in anything was once a beginner”. So let’s stop thinking failure or a mistake is the end. Instead let’s switch our mindset to see it as an opportunity to grow and come back stronger. This growth begins with taking responsibility for our actions.

Excuses Get the Best of Us

When you give excuses for an undesirable result or situation you are giving your power over to another person, to their life agenda and placing your desires and needs on the back burner. If I may, why? Why give your power to another?

What if instead you took ownership for all of your actions? If you owned the fact that if you were driving a little slower you would have been able to stop your car sooner in the rain and not slide into the back of the car in front of you. Own the fact that we all have the same 24 hours. You, me, Einstein, Beyoncé, Ryan Reynolds. No one is handed “extra time” or can “freeze time”.

Own that you are in charge of your life, of your current reality, of who you are and what you’ve accomplished. Take responsibility.

Growing into Taking Responsibility

I work on the skill of taking responsibility every day! The  hardest thing that I have had to own up to has been my financial situation. As a recent university graduate I have collected a fair amount of debt. I used to blame the school for being too expensive, part-time jobs for not paying enough and even my parents. When in reality it was my actions that lead me to the debt I am in.

When I started working at sixteen I did not have any plans to save.  I had heard my friends talking about always putting 50% of what they made into a savings account for school. Not me. I figured future Kaitlyn would take care of it, but for now, the stress of university fees was still so far away.

This mindset manifested from my parents. I love them to bits and pieces, but they did not teach me about money. Money was not talked about. And my dad would say things like “[E]njoy life. There will always be more money” And though I now understand what he means and I agree that money should not be a person’s sole focus, let’s be real money is important.

Taking Responsibility Always

The human society is not a cheap club to be a part of. When university happened so did a giant loan from the bank. I used it. All. I never checked my bank account. My thinking was if I do not know it or see it, it cannot hurt me. How naïve I was. Honestly, though, I was scared. I knew I had money, but not really.  I had no idea how a loan worked or anything to do with billing and finances. It was not until I was twenty-three that I decided to own my situation.

It is hard to admit that my current financial situation is the result of my own choices, but now I have taken steps to learn about my banking, how to pay it off quickly and I have taken on three jobs to help speed up the process. I am finally in control. It all started with taking responsibility for my actions. My financial situation is my responsibility.

Opening Up, Owning Up

Not going to lie, opening about my financial situation was not easy. However I feel it is an important message that needs to be put out into the world.

No one is ‘perfect’. Everyone is responsible for who they are and what they do. To be responsible and take responsibility we now know are two very different things. Taking responsibility will lead you to live a much more fulfilling life. We must take responsibility for our lives. The easy and the hard stuff.

How to Know if You Are Taking Responsibility

So how can you know if you are taking responsibility in your life or creating a nice, soft cushion of a façade? Read through the following four signs that you are taking responsibility for your life.

Four Steps

1. Be clear on what you want. When you know what you want from life it is easier to take responsibility for the decisions you make because you know the reason for taking those actions. Regardless if they worked or not to bring you closer to your goals.

2. Don’t blame others. This is the easy way out. Much like my grade one students, many adults revert to “it was an accident” or “they did it first” arguments when being confronted for a less than ideal situation or event.

3.Be honest with yourself. This means letting go of your excuses. You’re not too busy, too old, too young etc. If you want it take action and own up to the actions you take, all of them.

4. Know that you always have a choice. The infamous line from our parents, “just because your friends did it does not mean you have to”. Like I teach my grade ones, you always have a choice. Saying “I didn’t have a choice” is simply an excuse. You are in control! From what you eat for breakfast to where you live and what job you have it was your choices that lead you there. Not your mom’s or your coworkers. YOURS.

What’s Next…

First off thank you for stopping on and reading my article of the significance of taking responsibility on the Excellence Addiction: Life Design page. I look forward to growing alongside you with every post I write!

Next week we will look at the importance of time. What is time and is there ever enough of it. We all say we are so “busy”, but are we actually? 

Until Next Time, stay healthy and stay excellent!

Kaitlyn

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