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Responsibility
When I was a teenager, my Dad used to drive me to school every morning. The school was about 3 miles away from where we lived and we had to leave the house by about 8.40am each morning to make sure I got there for 9am.
I say 'we' because I always felt it was my Dad's responsibility to get me to school. I didn't feel it was anything to do with me really; after all I was just the passenger. In fact, I used to wake each morning around 7.45am, which was well in advance of having to get up for school. However instead off getting up and starting to get ready, I would lie in bed and watch my clock, thinking, as the minutes elapsed, 'if Dad doesn't wake me up soon, I'm going to be late for school!' Dad never let me be late for school, but the thought has occurred to me over the years that I was making it HIS responsibility for getting me to school, not just because he had the means of transport, but because I felt it wasn't MY responsibility to do anything in the process of getting there! Having said all of that, I did really enjoy school and never saw it as something I was being forced to do against my will, it was just much easier to make it someone else's responsibility if I didn't do it!
Years have elapsed and I still wonder how much responsibility I take for my daily actions and my life in general. If I am totally honest, I would say that some days I just think the old thought 'well if you don't... then I won't...' In other words I put down my lack of action to something else or worse still someone else!
I wonder how often we do put down our lack of responsibility to the fact that we have allowed ourselves to become "the passenger" in life. In other words, it sometimes seems as though we have no choices because it is always up to someone or something else.
I quite liked the thought that my Dad always appeared responsible for getting me to school, but nowadays I much more enjoy the experience of taking responsibility for my own life. For me that means just leaving behind the excuses for not doing something and just doing it. That does mean that if it all doesn't work out, I have only myself to blame, but maybe that's just all part of growing up!
Here are some of my personal examples of taking responsibility;
- Realising that the only person who could make my business a success was me.
- Discovering that once I believed the above point, then there was no limit to my success!
- Knowing for sure that what I give out to other people, I get back - good and bad.
- Learning that relationships are more meaningful when both parties stop blaming each other/the past/their lack of whatever, and just respect each other and take full responsibility for where it is all going to end up.
- Believing that once I started to stop being "the passenger", I could go anywhere I wanted to in life.
- Accepting that coaching would be a great experience if I trusted you and knew that you would always want to be responsible for whatever happened.
- Trusting the fact that being responsible didn't mean that I couldn't ask for your support.
"I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on."
Oscar Levan
