Accepting Responsibility for Oneself: Becoming CEO of Your Life

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Dr. Gloria Edmunds

 

Accepting responsibility for oneself, taking responsibility for self, being responsible for self, personal responsibility or self responsibility is an expectation of adulthood and this responsibility is linked to healthy adjustment in adulthood.

From childhood to adulthood and maturity, a person’s level of responsibility is expected to increase.  However, accepting responsibility for self or becoming CEO of your life is a learned life skill and requires training, coaching, opportunities, and experiences to acquire this responsibility in both youth and adults.

Promoting the life skill of accepting responsibility for self is a community, social, or collective responsibility involving parents, families, friends, educators, counselors, coaches, mentors, elected officials, media, educational and religious institutions, community services, businesses, and governmental agencies.

Hence, it takes the entire community to prepare children, youth, or teens for adulthood. The community has to create essential opportunities, training and experiences for young people to have the life skills for taking responsibility for self in adulthood.

Children or youth are part of a community’s greatest wealth since they are the future leaders, problem-solvers, and decision-makers. Therefore, it becomes essential for the community to invest wisely money, time, energy, and resources in our youth so they will have the skills to take responsibility for self in adulthood as well as to provide an useful contribution to the community.

This informational website provides guidance on what it takes to promote accepting responsibility in self and how to inspire this responsibility in children, students from pre-school to college, and others. The promotion of being responsible for self encourages self-development.

This website can be an useful resource for people who are interested in self-reflection, self-improvement or self-development and who seek a deeper understanding of what it means to accept responsibility for oneself.

Since accepting responsibility for oneself is a life-long process, this website also can be a beneficial resource for those who seek a periodic refresher on accepting responsibility for self.

Accepting responsibility for oneself is the starting point to taking  responsibility or charge of your life, to mastering your destiny, and to becoming an effective CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of your life, which involves:

  • becoming the author, director and manager of your own life by giving your life direction and focus through establishing goals and plans, and dealing effectively with the process and challenges to achieving goals;
  • achieving self-reliance and independence by acquiring basic survival and adaptive skills, positive feelings about self and realistic expectations of others;
  • accepting the role of choices in shaping your life by striving to make wise choices with positive outcomes and avoiding poor choices with negative consequences;
  • owning your own problems by admitting problems, and taking the necessary actions to correct the problems as well as by avoiding making excuses or blaming others and circumstances for problems; and
  • acquiring healthy coping perspectives for life challenges by facing life challenges with a positive perspective that encourages forward movement and by acquiring sound self-care habits.

In general, accepting responsibility for oneself or taking responsibility for self heightens your self-awareness, encourages you to take a serious look at yourself, highlights areas of your life that you can influence and control, emphasizes aspects of your life that only you can address for yourself, and fosters effective self-management skills. Accepting this responsibility can enhance your sense of empowerment.

Accepting responsibility for self is a lifelong challenge that requires a constant need for self-awareness, self-reflection, self-improvement and self-development. Aspiring to accept this responsibility can assist you with releasing your true self and capabilities and your spiritual awareness.

Go to the Key Categories section on the upper right to learn more about different areas of accepting responsibility for oneself.

 Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

 

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General Information on Accepting Responsibility: Key Life Skill for Adults and Youth

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Dr. Gloria Edmunds

In general, accepting responsibility for oneself, taking responsibility for self, being responsible for self, personal responsibility or self responsibility emphasizes people’s responsibility for their actions and the course of their lives.  Although others can help a person, this responsibility emphasizes things a person has to do for oneself.

Accepting responsibility for oneself also emphasizes the things a person has to face alone despite the support and presence of others throughout one’s lifetime.  This situation can happen when a child goes to school for the first time, when a person leaves home to go to college or enter the military, when a person copes with a serious or terminal illness, etc.

Accepting responsibility for self is a learned life skill requiring ongoing training, experiences and opportunities for both adults and youth.  Also, being responsible for self is important in self-development.

Promoting the life skill of accepting responsibility or taking responsibility for self will help to prepare youth for the challenges of adulthood and will empower people with skills to become an effective CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of their lives.

Equally important, promoting the life skill of accepting responsibility for self will help people to become an asset to the community since the overall functioning of its members influence the welfare of the community.

Frequently, we use terms like independence, self-reliance and       self-sufficiency to refer to the expectations in adulthood. These terms may not fully capture true expectations of adulthood. Accepting or taking responsibility for self may come closer to true expectations of individuals in adulthood.

An effective program on accepting personal responsibility requires a comprehensive understanding of the different parts and takes the effort of the entire community. These writings will focus on the different areas of this responsibility explained in “Accepting Responsibility for Oneself.”

These different areas of accepting responsibility or taking responsibility include:

  • Becoming Author, Director and Manager of Your Own Life: Achieving Success for Adults and Youth
  • Achieving Self-Reliance and Independence: Preparing  Youth and Young Adults for Adulthood
  • Accepting Choices and Consequences: Shaping Your Life by Choices
  • Owning Your Own Problems: Being Honest with Yourself or Facing the Truth about Yourself
  • Acquiring Healthy Coping Perspectives for Life Challenges: Moving Forward Perspective

The information provided on accepting responsibility for oneself or being responsible for self will focus on how to enhance this responsibility rather than on the multitude of reasons for a lack of responsibility.  Although the focus is not on why people do not accept responsibility, some insight may be gained from the information.

 

Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

 

Portrait of Personally Responsible Behavior in Adulthood

The following description incorporates essential characteristics associated with accepting responsibility for oneself.

In adulthood, mature individuals understand and accept they are ultimately responsible for their lives.

These individuals have a sense of identity and life purpose. They give direction to their lives by establishing realistic goals and developing effective plans to achieve them. Goals are pursued with courage, discipline, determination, perseverance and patience.

Personally responsible individuals understand the importance of developing competencies in key areas such as academics, social interactions, household activities, health maintenance, money management, decision-making, and employment possibilities.

They not only focus on developing their skills, abilities, and talents to meet daily challenges and for personal fulfillment but also focus on becoming productive and constructive members of society.

Personally responsible individuals realize life may not always give them what they want or think they need.  However, they accept their responsibility to make the best of whatever they have and take advantage of whatever opportunities are provided.

They acknowledge that skills, talents, wealth, inheritance, intellect, physical attributes, privileges, and experiences are not fairly or evenly distributed, but they adapt to their own unique situation.

Personally responsible individuals realize regardless of their background, past or current predicament, they are responsible for facing life challenges and devising healthy and constructive strategies to address them.

Personally responsible individuals accept that they are responsible for the course of their lives and understand that their lives are frequently influenced by their choices.  They understand how important self-knowledge and understanding are in making wise choices.

They seek awareness of choices available to them in different situations as well as plausible consequences associated with those choices. When a choice is made, they willingly accept its consequences.

Personally responsible individuals do not blame others or make excuses for their actions.  These individuals will examine difficulties or problems to determine how they have added or contributed to their misfortune.  They willingly accept ownership of problems by admitting them and taking corrective action.

Personally responsible individuals do not overly rely on others for direction.  They establish their own standards of behavior and are not governed solely by acceptance and approval of others.  To be sure, they will consult others in making decisions and avoid infringing upon or violating the right of others, but they realize the ultimate decisions of their lives rest with them.

If a decision would put them at odds with their own standards, they willingly pursue a course at variance with what others may desire or expect of them. These individuals accept responsibility for their well being and happiness and realize that this responsibility cannot be relegated to others.

Regardless of the relationships that personally responsible individuals have with others, the relationship that they have with themselves always needs to be developed, nurtured and cultivated. They acknowledge that the relationship with themselves serves as the foundation for their relationships and interactions with others.

They accept their mature interdependence upon others but maintain realistic expectations of others and an acute awareness and appreciation of their own ultimate separateness.

 

Something to Remember

If personally responsible behavior is an expectation of adulthood, it needs to be an integral part of how the community rears, educates, socializes, and prepares youth for adulthood.  Personally responsible behavior is a key learned life skill and requires the effort of the entire community to develop this behavior in youth as well as to promote this behavior in adults.

So, it is the community responsibility to invest, support and assist with the development of personally responsible skills in its members.  The community includes, but is not limited to: parents, family members, friends, educators, counselors, coaches, role models, mentors, media, religious and spiritual guides, businesses, elected officials, and social and governmental agencies.

When the community invests in the development of personally responsible behavior in its members, these activities will not only prepare a person to meet the challenges of adulthood but also will provide its members with the skills to be an asset and a resource for the further development of the community. Hence, the community’s investment in providing opportunities for people to acquire personally responsible skills will have a reciprocal benefit for the community.

Program Planning for Accepting Responsibility

Writings on accepting responsibility tend to focus on certain parts of this concept. Promoting the life skill of accepting responsibility for self requires combining the different parts of accepting responsibility and not focusing solely on certain parts of it. The different parts of this concept tell us pieces of the truth, but they have to be brought together to grasp the topic in its entirety. A tale, The Elephant in the Dark, gives a glimmer of how accepting responsibility is approached commonly in writings and program planning.

  • There was a city where all of its inhabitants were blind. A King, traveling with his entourage, came near the city with his elephant. The people of the city had no knowledge of elephants but wanted some firsthand information about elephants. So a group of city folks went to observe the elephant by touch. Each gathered information by touching a certain part of the elephant. When the group returned to the city, others waited anxiously for information, and asked about the form and shape of the elephant. One person who had only touched the ear told them that the elephant was “large, rough, wide and broad like a rug.” Another person touched the trunk and told the people the elephant was like “a straight hollow pipe, awful and destructive.” A third person touched the feet and leg of the elephant and reported that the elephant “is mighty and firm like a pillar.” Each person who touched the elephant thought that he knew the truth about the elephant but each had only part of the truth. 1

A comprehensive understanding of accepting responsibility facilitates our ability to encourage this responsibility. On this website, a broad perspective of accepting responsibility for self is presented, which can be used to develop and promote a comprehensive program.

  1. Shah, I. Tales of the Dervishes (London: The Octagon Press, 1984), 25.

Go to the Key Categories section on the upper right to learn more about different areas of accepting responsibility for oneself.

Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

 

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Becoming the Author, Director and Manager of Your Life: Achieving Success for Adults and Youth

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Dr. Gloria Edmunds

Becoming the author, director and manager of your life is one of the key areas of accepting responsibility for oneself. This area of responsibility highlights a person’s role in creating one’s life story, maintaining a sense of purpose for one’s life, guiding the direction of one’s life, and doing what is required to achieving success.

The idea that people are responsible for being the author, director and manager of their lives is stressed in an African Akan maxim: “Life is as you yourself make it.” 1  The philosopher John Paul Sartre also maintained a similar way of stating this idea, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” 2

The essence of these sayings is people have to accept responsibility for their role in influencing the course of their lives. Although these maxims stress life is as you make it, they do not ignore the reality that there are things in a person’s life that are beyond one’s control.  Many things can control and influence our human lives, but the challenge is to distinguish between things we can, and cannot control.

People do not choose or control their birth, their biological parents, their sex, their racial and cultural background, their country of origin, or their families’ social-economic status.  There are people who think and feel that they were placed on this earth into a difficult, if not impossible situation. Also, there are some people who might treat a person based on uncontrollable circumstances into which they were born.

Regardless of specific circumstances of one’s birth as well as one’s past and current conditions, each person has to take responsibility for identifying and managing those things in one’s life that are within one’s power to control and influence, while also acknowledging things that are outside of one’s control.

Becoming a successful author, director and manager of one’s life involves taking constructive action to influence one’s life in particular directions.  A constructive approach involves:

  • Establishing realistic goals; and
  • Devising a systematic plan to achieve each goal.

After establishing goals and plans, the next essential step is managing oneself effectively during the process of achieving goals in the same way that a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) manages his or her business to be successful.

Obtaining success at achieving goals is a process with challenges that requires:

  • Pursuing goals with the best effort, discipline, patience, and determination;
  • Identifying strengths and admitting limitations related to attaining goals;
  • Finding ways to take advantage of strengths and overcome limitations to achieving goals;
  • Identifying opportunities that will facilitate achieving goals and taking advantage of these opportunities;
  • Identifying people and resources that can facilitate the attainment of goals;
  • Avoiding situations, things, or people that can hinder or distract progress towards goals;
  • Avoiding hopelessness when encountering challenges and obstacles to goals; and
  • Tracking progress or lack of progress toward goals.

In essence, you are the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of your life. You need efficient administrative and self-management skills associated with knowing what you want to achieve and then strategizing effectively to achieve these goals. Effective leadership in designing, directing and managing your life can provide guidelines and a framework for leadership and success in other settings or circumstances.

Something to Remember Concerning Goals and Achieving Success 

Goals are not achieved without challenges and success requires a strong willingness to overcome these challenges or obstacles without becoming discouraged.

Frequently, when pursuing a goal, you do not move forward without fear but proceed in spite of fear. Overcoming your fear might be your specific challenge to achieving your goal.

A crucial element for success is preparation. Therefore, if you want to be successful, you need to prepare for this success. You have to build the foundation for your success.

Success requires both the acknowledgement of one’s strengths and limitations. Frequently, a person will acknowledge one’s strengths towards achieving a goal, but fail to address one’s limitations, which can be equally or more important to achieving success.  

Four Sayings  Emphasizing Your Responsibility for Your Success

“The key doesn’t open the door, you do.” (Nubian)

“If you wish success in an undertaking, provide all the necessary instruments for it.” (Unknown)

“Do your best for that’s the best you can do.” (Nubian)

“Decide what you want to give now for your success.” (Nubian)

Youth, Goals, and Achieving Success 

Youth require training in the life skill of becoming the author, manager, and director of one’s life. This life skill involves setting goals and striving to attain them. When a youth is young, goals need to be simple with easy steps that can be achieved within a short time frame. As a youth ages and matures, goals can be more complex with a more detail plan that might require a longer time frame to achieve.

Youth need coaching from parents, guardians, teachers or mentors on establishing realistic goals and facing the challenges to achieving goals. The scenario below reflects what can be involved when working with a youth around setting a goal and meeting the challenges for success.

  • Torrie is a thirteen-year-old who plays the saxophone in middle school. He has achieved the second chair in his class but wants to move up to the first chair. Although he has the talent to achieve, he does not like to practice. Torrie’s teacher tells him if he wants to progress he needs to put in the time and effort to improve his skills, which he has not done. The teacher also tells him there is no guarantee he will advance to the first chair but he needs, at least, to take the necessary steps to achieve his goal. Torrie listens to his teacher and starts allocating more time for practicing with discipline, determination, perseverance and patience. As a result, he eventually achieves the first chair in his class.                 Excerpt from “Accepting Responsibility for Oneself”

Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

1. Gyekye, K. African Cultural Values: An Introduction. (Pennsylvania: Sankofa Publishing Company, 1996),48.

2.  Sartre, J. P., Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: The Wisdom Library, 1957), 15.

Go to the Key Categories section on the upper right to learn more about different areas of accepting responsibility for oneself.

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Achieving Self-Reliance and Independence: Preparing Youth and Young Adults for Responsibility of Adulthood

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Dr. Gloria Edmunds

Achieving a level of self-reliance and independence, the ability to stand on your own, is another key area of accepting responsibility for oneself. As a person matures and prepares for adulthood, one moves from dependency upon others to more self-reliance and independence.

Once a person reaches maturity, this does not preclude assistance and support from others, but comes with the realization of not over-burdening others with one’s own responsibilities.

Reaching adulthood or the ability to stand on your own highlights the importance of self-development and requires a solid foundation, including basic survival and adaptive skills, positive feelings concerning self and realistic expectations of others.

Achieving self-reliance and independence requires skills in areas such as education, communication, relationships, social interactions, leadership, computers, household or domestic activities, money management, and health maintenance.

Other essential skills are self-supporting skills, the ability to make independent decisions and the appropriate management of feelings and emotions. All these skills enable a person to deal effectively with daily affairs and challenges.

Growth in self-reliance and independence necessitate developing and maintaining a healthy and comfortable relationship with yourself. This relationship requires self-knowledge in relationship to your values, beliefs, attitudes, convictions, interests, passions, goals, gifts, talents, strengths, and limitations.

Developing a healthy relationship with self requires learning to like yourself, and acting in ways that support your values, beliefs, and goals. This relationship also includes having realistic expectations of self and being your own cheerleader or support person when necessary.

In maintaining a healthy relationship with self, such person needs to seek relationships with people who are supportive, while avoiding those who put you down, treat you badly, and cause you to doubt yourself.

Attaining self-reliance and independence involves having realistic expectations of others. It is important to do what you can reasonably do, and allow others to do what you cannot reasonably do for yourself. It is natural to desire companionship, support, assistance, affection and love, but your desires and expectations need to be realistic or appropriate.

Two sayings  emphasize a need to consider what you can do before seeking assistance.

“The helping hand you are looking for is at the end of your arm.” (Nubian)

“If you get your bundle ready, you will be helped to carry it.” (Akan)

The scenario below also highlights the need for a person to do certain things for oneself.

  • Marvin is a sixteen-year old who needs to mail a letter.   He never goes to a post office to purchase stamps or to mail his own letters. His mother always purchases stamps, places them on his letters and mails them. As usual, he gives a letter to his mother to mail. His mother is very busy, and forgets to mail the letter.   He misses a deadline associated with the letter and is extremely upset with his mother. His grandmother, with whom he has a close relationship, tells him she understands his disappointment and anger.  However, he needs to stop depending on his mother so much. She tells him that regardless of the past arrangement, he needs to start buying stamps and mailing his own letters. He decides to do this.  He also starts identifying other things that he can do for himself.                  Excerpt from “Accepting Responsibility for Oneself”

In the scenario, Marvin depends on his mother to mail his letter, which is something that he can reasonably do for himself. Since his mother forgot to mail his letter, he is now disappointed/upset/angry with her. Sometimes, when a person requests someone to do something and this action can easily be performed independently; this request can potentially create unneeded tension in the relationship.  Marvin’s grandmother observed this potential source of tension in Marvin’s relationship with his mother and suggested that he mails his own letters in the future. Marvin’s grandmother suggestion encouraged Marvin’s independence and self-development as well as reduced a potential needless tension between him and his mother.

Thoughts on Preparing Youth for Responsibility of Adulthood

As parents or mentors, youth, like Marvin in the above scenario, need opportunities and training to become more self-reliant and emotionally independent.  These self-reliant training experiences will encourage self-development and help to prepare youth for the responsibility of adulthood by providing the necessary skills that will enable them eventually to become adequately independent or to “leave the nest.”  Without these essential skills and experiences, their capacity to function independently is stifled or their “wings are clipped,” which makes it difficult for them to leave home and to be reasonably self-sufficient and emotionally independent.

Something to Consider

At times, a person will express a desire to be self-reliant or independent. However, essential skills are required to achieve self-reliance and the person has to accept responsibility for acquiring these necessary skills.  If a person is unwilling to assume responsibility for acquiring self-reliant skills, this person might have a misguided idea of independence.

Unnecessary dependency on others can lead to frustration, disappointment or anger, particularly in your home setting  when you expect others to do things that you can reasonably do for yourself. In some situations, accepting responsibility can involve seeking assistance from family, friends, or others for things that you cannot reasonable do for yourself since excessive dependency can generate stress in your relationships.

Something to Remember Concerning Self-Reliance and Positive Feelings About Self

The capacity for self-reliance is enhanced by positive feelings about oneself.  However, having positive feelings about self or being comfortable with self  is not something  once  achieved will endure indefinitely.

Over time, positive feelings about self can vary depending upon life experiences and challenges. These life experiences and challenges can either enhance or erode your feelings about yourself.

Hence, there is no guarantee that a person who feels good about self will continue to have these feelings nor is there any guarantee that a person who lacks positive feelings about self will continue to feel this way. What is certain is that a person has to accept responsibility for building and maintaining positive feelings about self throughout one’s lifetime.

Building and maintaining positive feelings about self require, but is not limited to:

  • behaving consistent with your values, beliefs, and goals;
  • showing the courage to pursue your aspirations;
  • believing in yourself and in your skills, abilities, or talents that can benefit others;
  • accepting that you have worth as a person or human being and that you do not allow  anyone to diminish your worth as a person;
  • maintaining relationships with people who sincerely value, appreciate, and care about you as a person and who sincerely want what is best for you;
  • being willing to consider and assert your needs and expectations within relationships;
  • taking the initiative in your relationships to ask for what you want or need instead of assuming something should or will occur without your request;
  • being open to learning throughout your lifetime;
  • taking advantage of opportunities to expand or improve yourself;
  • keeping a positive perspective as you face life challenges;
  • showing kindness or compassion to yourself, as you face life challenges, that you might readily extend to others;
  • creating within your schedule time for yourself;
  • remembering to avoid situations that are not suited for your well-being;
  • remembering to emotionally protect your sense of self within relationships and not to lose yourself within relationships;
  • remembering to avoid abusive relationships or people who undermine your positive feelings about yourself;
  • remembering to avoid the abuse of mind-altering substances;
  • being willing to be honest with yourself or face the truth about yourself;
  • accepting that there are some things in life that only you can do for yourself;
  • accepting that you are the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of your life, which involves developing effective skills to deal with different life challenges, etc.

 

Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

Go to the Key Categories section on the upper right to learn more about different areas of accepting responsibility for oneself.

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Accepting Your Choices and Consequences: Shaping Your Life by Choices

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Dr. Gloria Edmunds

Accepting responsibility for oneself includes an understanding of how your choices have consequences and recognizing your responsibility for choices. Choices play a key role in shaping or defining your life.

In a moment, an unwise choice can completely derail your best-developed goals and plans or an unwise choice can completely change your life.

Acting responsibly involves making wise choices that can lead to positive outcomes, and thus avoiding poor choices that can result in negative consequences. A person needs to take responsibility for choices and to understand what contributes to wise choices, as well as poor choices.

Wise choices can result from a level of self-knowledge and understanding, particularly related to your goals, values and beliefs. Knowing your values helps you make choices consistent with things that are important.  Knowing your goals increases the likelihood of making wiser choices leading to achieving these goals.

Awareness of available options in different situations can improve your chances of wise choices.  Often, available options in situations are not perceived or acknowledged.

Being receptive to useful input, information, or data from others can help a person perceive options that might not be apparent, which places a person in a better position to select the best option.

A willingness to avoid poor choices can motivate a person towards wiser choices. However, this reason requires an understanding of what actions contribute to poor choices.

Actions leading to poor choices arise when a person acts before thinking about what one is doing, thus forgetting to consider what is important or disregarding how the action can hinder one from achieving goals.

Poor choices also can occur when a person fails to consider different options in a situation, avoids seeking useful information from people, denies possible negative consequences of one’s actions, or violates the rights of others

A poor choice can happen when a person allows people to influence one in the wrong way, feels pressure to go along with the group, or avoids saying, “No!” when appropriate.

Accepting responsibility further involves a willingness to admit to poor choices and to take responsibility for one’s actions.

Thus, acting responsibly after a poor choice requires a person to be honest or truthful with oneself.  Being honest with self will involve accepting ownership of the poor choice by dealing with its consequences, understanding what contributed to the poor choice, seeing how the choice led to difficulties, and avoiding a repeat of this choice in the future.

If a person is not willing to admit mistakes, then they are prone to repeat poor choices in the future.  Also, if a person does not take ownership for poor choices, they tend to exhibit self-deception by assigning these poor choices to reasons outside of one’s control.

Something  to Consider

Sometimes, a person may be reluctant to seek information or input from others when contemplating a decision or choices.  An effective Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a business or company will gather information or data before rendering a decision.  A person, who is the CEO of his or her life, also needs to collect information when pondering a decision or choices.  The process of collection information is not a sign of weakness nor does it mean the CEO must follow any suggestions or recommendations of others. However, the gathering of information does reflect a commitment of the CEO of a business or the CEO of one’s life to increase the probability of making a wise choice. Therefore, as the CEO of your life, your responsibility is to evaluate information and make your choice after considering what may be the best course of action for you.

Intense feelings or emotions can increase your vulnerability for poor choices. These feelings or emotions might include anger, disappointment, physical attractions, pleasure,  frustration, rejection, humiliation, etc.  In the presence of strong feelings, desires, or emotions, you might need to pause for a moment, proceed with caution, or avoid reacting hastily.

The use of mind-altering substances like alcohol and drugs also can increase your vulnerability for poor choices.

Stubbornness or close-mindedness can also increase your vulnerability for poor choices since these views generally reflect an unwillingness to consider different perspectives or options.

There are times when people respond impulsively in a situation without thinking about possible consequences.  In this situation, accepting responsibility involves admitting your impulsive choice regardless of your awareness at the time of your choice.  Your lack of full awareness of your choice does not relinquish your responsibility. By accepting responsibility for your impulsive choice and related consequences, you are empowering yourself to be in a position to consider a different choice to a similar situation in the future.

Frequently, people who love a person will protect the person from the consequences of poor choices.  Repeated actions to protect or buffer a person from the consequences of poor choices hinder the person’s capacity to learn from these poor choices.  In essence, people who love a person and who repeatedly buffer this person from the consequences of poor choices are reinforcing poor choices and hampering the person’s capacity to accept responsibility for the poor choices and negative consequences in the future.

It is important to remember that no human being is perfect.  Therefore, during the process of developing, evolving or living, we will make mistakes or poor choices.   However, we differ in how we choose to deal or cope with these mistakes or poor choices. Frequently, the actions taken after the mistake can be equally important as the actual mistake.

Sometimes, your poor choice or mistake results in pain for someone.  Addressing your poor choice will involve both the acknowledgment of your poor choice and the pain to someone due to this choice. You might have an opportunity to admit your poor choice and the pain caused directly to the person who experienced this pain.  If this opportunity occurs, you need to accept that despite your level of remorse for your action(s), the person may or may not be ready to forgive you at that time.   You cannot control when a person will be ready to forgive you, but you can hope that the person will forgive you in time.

Sometimes, a major part of dealing with a mistake or poor choice is forgiving yourself. This self-forgiveness for your mistake may take time and may be necessary for you to move forward. If you have a tendency to willingly forgive others rather than forgive yourself, you need to learn to offer yourself the same level of kindness or compassion that you freely offer others.

Youth, Options, and Choices

Youth need training to understand that in different situations, they might be confronted with options. At times, the youth might not perceive that there are options.  In these situations, the youth need training in identifying the options or available choices in the different situations. The scenario below reflects a youth who identified his options in a situation and made a choice based on these options.

  • Jeffery and his best friend, Terrell, are juniors in high school.  They go out one evening to a movie. After leaving the movie they encounter some friends in a car who invite them to join them.  The friends in the car, who are all underage, are drinking and smoking marijuana.  Jeffery will not get into the car.  He knows this can potentially lead to some type of trouble. Terrell decides to get into the car. Jeffery is upset with his best friend’s action and decides to go home because he does not want to place himself in a compromising situation.   Excerpt from “Accepting Responsibility for Oneself”

Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

Go to the Key Categories section on the upper right to learn more about different areas of accepting responsibility for oneself.

 

 

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Admitting and Owning Your Problems: Being Honest with Yourself

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Dr. Gloria Edmunds

Accepting responsibility for oneself involves owning your problems. Being honest with oneself or facing the truth about oneself is essential to owning problems.

Owning your problems means going beyond admitting the problems, to accepting your part in resolving the problems. At times, a person will acknowledge problems, but fail to participate in its solution. Frankly speaking, owning your problems requires taking steps to resolve a problem after admitting it.

Frequently, problems are not resolved because they were never perceived as such.  This can happen when others perceive the problem, but the person does not.

When a person fails to own the problem, there is the tendency towards self-deception such as denying the problem exists, blaming people or circumstances for the problem or making excuses for the problem.

Problems can vary from one person to the next.  Sometimes, a problem might be a minor problem for one person but might be an overwhelming problem for another person. Hence, it is impossible to identify all problems.  Yet, they can include having no sense of direction; ignoring mistakes; denying poor choices; having unrealistic expectations of others; being uncomfortable with self; and experiencing difficulty coping with feelings, or managing emotions.

For some people, problems may include failing to do what is necessary for success in a particular situation; blaming others instead of accepting their own role in difficulties; being fearful of new experiences; avoiding or denying the pain related to a difficulty or traumatic situation; making poor choices in relationships; living beyond their means; and neglecting health needs.

Owning your problem  can involve accepting that you cannot change the past despite your disappointments, frustrations, regrets or anger about it, but you can learn from the past and make needed changes in the present and the future. A woman (Amanda Goggins) uses a saying that illustrates this idea, “Now that I know better, I do better.”

At times, a problem can go beyond difficulty, crisis or trouble to encompass areas that a person desires improvement such as educational, personal, career, financial, physical, spiritual development, etc. In this situation, owning a problem  requires admitting one’s aspiration and taking the necessary actions to make this goal a reality.  In other words, a person has to own his or her dream by taking the necessary steps for the dream to be realized.

Something to Consider

Frequently, admitting that you have a problem might be your greatest hurdle in overcoming your problem.

Being honest with oneself or facing the truth about oneself can be a life-long challenge, particularly since we have the capacity to deceive ourselves at different times and in different situations. Facing the truth about oneself is a process and frequently requires peeling away many levels of self-deception or defenses and the courage to endure the challenges of this process.

When struggling with an issue, you might need to truly own the issue in order to begin to “let go” and to move forward.  Owning the issue can involve accepting that the issue is actually yours to deal with and not situate outside of you. At times, an issue/problem might have different parts and each part might need to be owned and dealt with separately in order to progress. Occasionally, when you are struggling with an issue and you are not quite at peace, there might be additional parts of the issue that needs to be owned and addressed.

Occasionally, family or friends with good intentions will unintentionally encourage a person not to own or take responsibility for his/her problems. This situation occurs when family or friends accept and support the person’s denial or excuses for problems.  If this happens, resolution of the problem might involve helping the family or friends to own their problem, which involves taking responsibility for their role in supporting and maintaining the problem of the person they love.

We do not control or determine the circumstances of our birth, such as our parents, our family of origin, our family social-economic status, our sex, or our racial or cultural background. However, you might have to address treatment from others such as abuse, prejudices, or discrimination related to these circumstances. Undesirably treatment from people based on uncontrollable circumstances of your birth reveals pertinent information about the attitudes, beliefs or character of the people providing this mistreatment. If you are a recipient of undesirable treatment based on uncontrollable circumstances of your birth, this can become a problem for you if you unintentionally adopt, embrace, or internalize any damaging views of yourself from them.  Therefore, problem ownership can involve identifying and addressing any negative impact of this treatment on your perception of yourself and on your current adjustment and accomplishments.

In some difficult situations, owning your problem can involve identifying, isolating and addressing only those areas that you can directly influence and control.

At times people will seek to take advantage of you and they  might be successful.  You might become quite upset with these people for their behavior.   In certain circumstances, you need to acknowledge that you are allowing these people to take advantage of you.  If you can accept that you are allowing a person to take advantage of you, than you also are in a position of choosing not to allow this person to treat you in this way.  Therefore, if you change your perspective of this situation, you are empowering yourself with choices or options.

Youth, Owning Problems, and Development

At times, a young person or student might need to be encouraged to own problems by being honest with oneself. In these situations, owning one’s problem can facilitate development.  Below is a scenario that reflects how owning a problem enhanced development.

  • A freshman in college, Janice, comes to the university with a high grade point average but fails to develop good study skills and habits.  While in high school, she did well with little effort in her classes.  After her first semester in college she had a very low grade point average.  She talks with her faculty adviser who asks the reasons for her low grades. Janice replies she does not really know how to study and prepare for tests, or how to manage time to meet the demands of her classes.  Her adviser refers her to the learning assistance center on campus. Janice thinks the learning assistance center exists for students who are not very smart.  The adviser informs her many students, like her, come to the university without adequate study skills or habits.  Although these students are able to obtain decent grades in high school, the demands of college courses illuminate their limitations.   The center can help her to get on the “right track.” Janice goes to the center and employs their strategies.  Her grades drastically improve during subsequent semesters.                                                                                Excerpt from “Accepting Responsibility for Oneself”

Dr. Gloria J. Edmunds

Go to the Key Categories section on the upper right to learn more about different areas of accepting responsibility for oneself.

 

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