I had the privilege of experiencing the worst period of my life, starting 2020.
This privilege lasted for the better part of five years.
I got to experience issues in my personal relationships, work, finances and even my health.
I thought my worst days had been behind me, so this came a huge shock to my system.
Plus, because I was so much older and wiser than I was since I last experienced such difficult times, I thought I knew what I had to do and could bounce back fast. But this was not the case.
Things got so bad that I briefly thought about ending my life.
And even though I was able to leave that idea behind, my life still felt to me like it wasn’t worth living because of all the things that had gone wrong, and because of everything I thought I’d lost.
This feeling lasted until very recently.
Personal Responsibility
Looking back on it all, I realise that I had played a part in everything that went wrong. I was personally responsible for much of it.
But this is not how I chose to see it at the time. I wanted to play victim and blame everyone else except myself.
Though I had held lofty ambitions in terms of how I wanted to think and operate in life, when it came down to it, I took the easy way out. I chose victimhood and blame.
I thought I believed that I created my own reality and preached this to the world. But I was quick to say that it was someone else’s fault that I was experiencing a reality that I did not want.
I believe the term psychologists use to describe this (holding two conflicting beliefs at the same time) is ‘cognitive dissonance.’ Well, that was me.
Moving Forward
Even though I didn’t want to accept responsibility for creating the issues that were weighing me down, I was lucky enough that I was able to understand that it was my responsibility to work towards changing things for the better.
I was willing to accept personal responsibility for fixing my life. And this helped a lot.
And so, very slowly, and with a lot of resistance within, I stepped up and started.
As is always the case with taking personal responsibility (and actively creating a different reality), I had to change my thoughts and my behaviour.
I had the hard conversations. I made the tough decisions. And I did the things that were hard for me to do–but were the things I needed to do to make things better.
And so, very slowly, life began to get better.
Now, five years into it, I can finally talk about it publicly and write about it.
And I can accept that for everything that happened, I had played a part in making it happen.
Even if it wasn’t all my fault, it was at least partly my fault.
This is personal responsibility. And I’m finally at the point where I can own what happened with a sense of personal responsibility.
Bitter Pill or Magic Pill?
What does personal responsibility mean? And why is it important?
Yes, it’s a bitter pill to swallow: to say that you somehow created something that you never wanted to experience.
Blaming God or someone else is so much easier.
But blame equals disempowerment, and disempowerment steals our life force. More importantly, it keeps us trapped in painful situations.
Personal responsibility is the antidote to this.
When we take personal responsibility for something, we declare that we had the power to create it. When we do this, we’re also declaring that we have the power to undo it, or change things for the better.
So taking personal responsibility equals taking our power back.
It is empowering. And empowerment is life giving.
Taking personal responsibility frees us to create and enjoy a life of happiness and meaning, no matter the heartache and the obstacles we may have to face along the way.
So, I wish you freedom. I wish you happiness. And most of all, I wish you personal responsibility.