Are you taking 100% responsibility for your relationships, fitness (physical and mental), career, and finances? Or are you blaming other people or circumstances for your failures?
Are your relationships, especially romantic ones, continually filled with strife and heartache? Are you overweight, underweight, or out of shape? Are you emotionally immature and unstable? Is your career off track? Do you have huge credit card debt? Is your life in disarray? Are you taking 100% responsibility for these failures?
Until you take a hard, honest look at these areas, you will continue to struggle and fail. Your fitness (physical and mental), career, and finances are usually completely under your control. Although there are two participants in a relationship, you have control of half.
This means you’ve mastered picking the right partners and friends. You’ve mastered the ability to set boundaries in your relationships. And you’ve mastered knowing when and how to end an unhealthy, unproductive, or unsatisfying relationship. Most importantly, you have developed yourself to the point where you enter relationships from a position of strength, not a position of neediness. In addition, you’re not loaded with a lot of baggage, e.g., huge debt, aimless career, or legal problems.
If you’re entering relationships with many problems, you’ll likely put unfair demands on your partner. Acknowledging that you have or are doing this and taking action to get your life in order is taking 100% responsibility. Blaming your partner or “the relationship” for your continued failings is taking zero responsibility.
There was a period in my life years ago when I unconsciously blamed everyone and everything for many of my problems and failures—mostly in the relationship realm. I looked for behaviors and actions by others that I could blame for my conflicts with them and my shortcomings. Here is what I eventually (it took years) learned.
Part of accepting 100% responsibility is facing the fact that you chose to be with the wrong lover or friend. It may have just been a bad match, or they did not align with your principles. But it would be your responsibility to end or distance yourself from the relationship.
Staying in an unhealthy relationship and trying to “make it work” would not be taking 100% responsibility. Making the smart choice and moving on would be. Here’s another example. Selling yourself to their principles and boundaries while giving up your own, would not be taking 100% responsibility. Establishing respect for your principles and boundaries while acknowledging theirs would be.
The change came when I learned to stand up for my principles and set boundaries on what behavior I would accept and not accept from people, regardless of the type of relationship.
I’ve been pretty driven for years in my fitness, career, and finances (I’m not motivated by money), but I was not always on the right path. (My article about unconditional self-love explains this in more detail.) The change happened when I embraced my true self (both my strengths and flaws) and stopped being influenced by the expectations of other people and society—e.g., “the way everyone else does it.”
By taking 100% responsibility for my success and happiness in these areas and by taking a stand and setting boundaries in my relationships, my life became calmer and more joyful. I also became much more confident.
I know today that my success in a romantic relationship, for example, depends on my ability to choose the right partner, let my principles and boundaries be known, and communicate my needs, desires, and dislikes tactfully and courageously. The courageous part means doing it and not putting it off. Finally, entering a relationship from a position of strength whereby I can easily end it gracefully if it’s not working and be happily unattached indefinitely has made a huge difference.
Taking 100% responsibility is one of the primary keys to success, contentment, and joy in all areas of your life. Anything less would likely result in you falling short of your dreams.