PRINCIPLES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH, CHANGE, AND TRUE
SUCCESS IN OUR LIFE AND SERVICE TO
OTHERS
How to become all we can be and live at peace in our
world.
Principle
2 - We need to assume full responsibility for our lives,
our performance, our relationships, and how we respond to
what happens to us.
As a performance coach, we often say “We help people
accept full responsibility for improving their personal
and organizational performance.” Fundamental to
long-term success and peace of mind is the acceptance of
responsibility for our performance and our
relationships. There is one commentator, who on a
note of whimsy said, “Maturity comes when you realize
that the cavalry isn’t.” He means that we are only
fully mature when we accept the possibility and embrace
the opportunity that nobody will come to save us.
The cavalry is not coming; we are responsible for
removing ourselves from our own situation, or improving
the situation in which we find
ourselves.
Years ago, the old stoic philosophers in Rome pointed out
that we had to be fully in control of our lives and take
charge of the destiny we desired. Later on, the old
romantic poem said, “I am the captain of my
soul.”
All of this can lead to a certain rugged individualism
that has no sense of responsibility to others or to a
profound arrogance about our own possibilities.
That is not to be embraced; indeed, it is to be
avoided. But what this principle affirms is that we
indeed must accept the responsibility for not only what
comes our way, but what we make of what comes our
way.
A strong point of order and emphasis should be
made. We do not mean by this that we are to blame
for all of the things that we have received or that have
come to us. The universe is fully of tragedy,
misfortune, and, there are circumstances that we do
nothing to bring upon ourselves. This principle
does not believe that there is a certain karma to it
all. But what we do insist is that no matter what
comes to us, we, through service to others, the
affirmation of our own spirit, the language that we use,
and the responsibility that we assume can create to a
large extent the destinies that are before us. We
are not to blame for what we have received, but we are
responsible for how we respond. The motivational
speaker is partly right when he says, “If it is to be, it
is up to me.”
It has been noted that many men and women of times past
sought a way to leave an
endowment to the world and to others. Today it seems that
most people seek a way to get
an entitlement from others. We are overwhelmed
with the amount of litigation in our culture that is
symptomatic of the “I am a victim” mentality way of
thinking. We think we deserve something, and we
have a right to something. But what is true is that
we only have the right to serve others and to create
value for ourselves and others.
It has been noted that the power of confession, which has
long been lost both in religious and legal terms, is the
powerful acceptance of moral responsibility. To
confess is to make us more of a human being, we are
uplifted as men and women when we confess what we have
done wrong and what we are responsible for. It is
the mark of the man or woman who bears with them moral
responsibility.
All of this comes down to one of the principles for
effective and successful living. We do not seek the
salvation of our situation from any external source, nor
do we ask others to make our situation better.
We need to assume full responsibility for our lives, our
performance, our relationships, and how we respond to
what happens to us. To live otherwise is not to
live as full human beings.
Stan
Hustad
PTM Group