Take responsibility
There is no thriving without taking responsibility. We use the verb “take” because responsibility is really about you deciding to take it or not. No one can take responsibility for you (unless you are not physically and/or mentally able to do so then someone needs to stand-up and be responsible for you).
Taking responsibility is a tough job, one of the toughest ones in life. It means that you will stand in life and decide to be responsible for what you do. You will no longer hide yourself behind excuses, artificial walls that are very convenient but prevent you from actually gaining control over your own life. To a certain extent, you are making yourself a slave of yourself if you do not take responsibility.
This topic, “take responsibility”, takes you through two main aspects of responsibility:
the responsibility of understanding things around you
the responsibility of what you do inside society
Our goal is to support you to move towards you being able to tell yourself “i am responsible” and that the statement be aligned with evidences that you behave in this manner.
From the moment you are born, you are basically a new hard drive and the People around you, parents, teachers, family members, friends, will start pushing information on your hard drive (your brain). And most of us will let this information be written on their hard drive without challenging it. There is basically little, if any, filtering. Don’t forget that the information they push to you is information that was pushed to them by the People who actually control the monopoly game (how society works). And so if no one challenges this information, it becomes the norm. That’s why it matters to question things. Why are things the way they are and not in another way?
Taking responsibility has a lot to do with understanding. If you do not take the time to understand then it is very likely that most of your actions are conditioned by the understanding someone else wants you to get of the things. “You need to do X, Y, Z to fit inside society”. Well, do i need to do this and why?
You want to move to a mode where you do not let the information being written on your hard drive (your brain) without first applying some level of filtering to this information. If, based on this information, you are going to do something during a long time period or you are going to do actions that can potentially negatively impact your mind or your body then you want to take responsibility for understanding first.
And that means, you cannot delegate this activity or if you do then you should be certain that you can trust the person providing you this information.
What you do within society matters. Each one of us power society. let me ask you: what do you do inside society and have you taken responsibility for it? Are you pushing your own self-interest over the interest of other men and women? Are you actively doing activities that are supportive of the well-being of other men and women or are you hurting People?
Taking responsibility includes taking responsibility for what you are doing inside society. Some activities have a negative impact on the wellbeing and happiness of People. Taking responsibility includes asking yourself whether or not some of your actions are negatively impacting society. A part of the People are aware that they negatively impact society but they are not taking responsibility for what they do. Think about the politicians who signed the contracts with large pharmaceutical companies and then remain silent about what they did or hide behind excuses. Is that taking responsibility? No, it’s not at all and most of them know what they did to People.
Taking responsibility goes in pair with providing transparency on what you do. If you provide transparency on what you do and not just about what you say you do, you are likely to be perceived as someone responsible.