My friend and colleague, the late Stephen Covey, defined responsibility in his own way: “Look at the word responsibility as two words: response and ability—the ability to choose your response,” wrote Stephen in his best-selling The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. “Highly proactive people recognize and embrace responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”
Everyone likes to talk about freedom of choice. After all, that’s one of the principles on which democratic nations are founded. But we often tend to feel that much of what we must do in life has been forced on us. Is that true? Must you go to work, for example? The ultimate answer is no. You can choose to lie in bed, fake an illness, move in with someone willing to support you, or apply for long-term government assistance. Must you pay taxes? Not really. You can earn too little to qualify, try to fool the government tax office, give up your citizenship, go to prison, or invest in tax deferral programs that last until your death—after which your heirs can pay your taxes. You have to work late tonight? Not exactly. You don’t have to. Many people feel compelled to work late at the office. However, those who understand positive self-determination choose to do that occasionally because they feel they have commitments that require important things to be accomplished. Leaders realize that working forty hours a week is usually enough to make a living—and also understand that their success depends on a good deal more.
We really don’t have to do much of anything. We choose to do the things we do because they’re profitable to us and the best choice among the alternatives. People who feel they must do things usually forfeit many available options and alternatives, losing control of their lives in the bargain. But those who are aware that they have the power of decision—that they exert control over what happens to them—can choose more effective responses to change and to life’s offerings. (Note the word response again.) Incidentally, the second category of people is also generally happier.
Unfortunately we’re living in an age of eroding responsibility. Although most people are willing to fight for the credit when good things happen, fewer and fewer want to accept responsibility for their own actions. The “Why me?” so often heard today should be “Try me!” “Try me, I can handle it.” “Give me the chance and I’ll do the job.” Blaming others—parents, bosses, companies, immigrants, fate, weather, bad luck, the government, or the horoscope—is a mark of a juvenile mind. The mature mind asks what is within me that caused this to happen. “What did I fail to consider? What can I do better next time?” Instead of contemplating what’s ticking inside them, blame-fixers focus on what’s going on around them. It’s always easier to assume the faults lie elsewhere.
Rather than remorse and apology or determination to face the consequences, the common response to lapses and failures is to blame one’s upbringing or other circumstances. Today’s philosophy often seems to be, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame!” In our age of euphemism, the drug addict has become “chemically dependent.” The delinquent is suffering from “a behavioral disorder caused by preexisting conditions.” And ever-greater numbers of murderers plead insanity, convincing ever-greater numbers of juries. But one way or another, our actions cause consequences. “To every action,” as Sir Isaac Newton observed, “there is always opposed an equal reaction.” Good begets good and evil leads to more evil. This is one of the universe’s eternal, fundamental truths: the law of cause and effect.
It means that every cause (action) will create an effect (reaction) approximately equal in intensity. Making good use of our minds, skills, and talents will bring positive rewards in our outer lives. Assuming the personal responsibility to make the best use of our talents and time will result in an enormous gain in happiness, success, and wealth. This is true of everyone.
The truly successful leaders, those who have built financial empires or accomplished great deeds for society, are those who have taken personal responsibility to heart and to soul. By being true to themselves and others, they achieve success, wealth, and inner happiness. In the end, we ourselves—far more than any outsider—are the people with the greatest ability to steal our own time, talents, and accomplishments.
Responsibility psychology is a field of study pioneered by Abraham Maslow and carried on by Carl Rogers, William Glasser, Viktor Frankl, David McClelland, Albert Bandura, Nathaniel Branden, and other prominent scientists. It holds that irresponsibility and the lack of values leads to abnormal behavior, neurosis, and mental deterioration. Treatment for victims of those afflictions focuses on showing them that they are responsible for their present actions and future behavior, although they need not be hung up on the past. This school of psychology is optimistic about human growth and potential. Its practitioners have found that when neurotics are helped to assume personal responsibility, the prognosis for recovery is good. Case after case has demonstrated that responsible self-control leads to sound mental health.
I’m fond of a story from the Old Testament book of Leviticus about a sacred ceremony called “The Escaped Goat.” This story led to a term—scapegoat—we use today when we find someone to blame for our problems. When the people’s troubles became overwhelming in those early days, a healthy male goat was led into the temple. The tribe’s highest priest placed his hand on the animal’s head and solemnly recited the long list of the people’s woes. Then the goat was released—and it ran off, supposedly taking the human troubles and evil spirits with him. That was over four thousand years ago, but the concept of the scapegoat remains in full force today. Blaming someone else or something else for our problems is nearly as old as civilization—and stays consistently young. When Adam ate of the apple, he quickly pointed at Eve. “The woman you’ve put here with me made me do it,” he said.
We, in the industrialized nations, live at a time of incredible abundance. We enjoy material riches and a civic and legal inheritance that people of other countries continue to die for, and we take those riches for granted. But like so many successful societies in history, we may be squandering our resources and past rewards faster than we’re replenishing our investment for future harvesting. That has become obvious to almost everyone but ourselves. It’s dangerous enough to simply rest on one’s laurels. Worse than that, we may actually be engaged in pawning them.
Perhaps the major explanation for success among Asian and other developing nations is their willingness to work very hard for the sake of future rewards. Their tolerance for sacrifice gives them an enormous social and financial force. Asian workers save an estimated 20 percent of their spendable income, more than triple the percentage of American savings. In Asia, this is called discretionary income, signifying recognition of a choice to spend or to save it. In America, we call it disposable income. And we do hasten to dispose of it—in pursuits, moreover, that tend to relieve tension instead of achieving a goal.
We protest for individual liberty and social order in the same breath. We strive for material wealth, hoping that spiritual riches will come with it as a bonus. We plead for more protection from crime but demand less interference in our social habits. We want to cut taxes and build our own empires—at the same time, we want our government to provide more financial security. But we can’t have it both ways. If we want results, we must pay the price. So far we’ve been dealing with the symptoms. The secret is in changing the cause.
The various separate causes of most of our social problems are undermined by one major cause. Throughout my forty years of traveling—of interviewing students, teachers, parents, business and civic leaders, astronauts, former POWs, Olympic champions, factory workers, clergy, and health professionals—one message has come through loud and clear. It is that reading, writing, and arithmetic are critically important but of little use without responsibility, the fourth and missing "R." I believe the greatest single cause of problems among industrialized nations is the irresponsible obsession with immediate sensual gratification.
We want love without commitment. We want benefit packages without productivity requirements. Increasingly, we want children who demand little more from us in the way of leadership than our pets do. This is selfishness and narcissism in action. If it feels good now, just do it, baby. To achieve emotional security, each of us must develop two critical abilities: the ability to live with change and uncertainty, and the ability to delay immediate gratification for the sake of long-range goals.
Here are some action steps to help you gain more personal responsibility in your business and personal life:
Carry this affirmative motto with you: My rewards in life will reflect my service and contribution.
Set your own standards rather than comparing yourself to others. Successful people know they must compete with themselves, not with others. They run their own races.
I have learned to take more personal responsibility for my choices in life by practicing the simple urgings in The Serenity Prayer by Rheinhold Neibuhr: “God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This means that I accept the unchangeable, which is everything that has already happened. That is history and cannot be changed. So I harbor my pleasant memories and gain perspective from the problems in my past. My only control is to change the changeable, which is my response to what has happened and my decisions in this present moment in time. Becoming a change master is to accept with serenity what has happened and courageously taking positive action in the here and now.
There was a very cautious man, who never laughed and never cried.
He never won, he never lost, he played it safe and never tried.
He went to work, earned his bread, he watched TV, and went to bed;
He felt secure, he felt no pain, he took no risk, he made no gain.
And when one day he passed away, his insurance was denied;
For since he never really lived, they claimed he never died!
Losers let it happen. Winners make it happen. Stop stewing and take control by doing.
Question: What do you think about the statement: “Your rewards in life will reflect the quality and amount of service you render”? Or more simply, do you believe “what goes around, comes around”?
Actions: Accept the unchangeable—that which has already happened. Change the changeable, your positive response and action to what is happening. Remove yourself from the unacceptable. Don’t engage in group griping or pity parties. Hang out with doers instead of doomsayers.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist or accept the responsibility for changing them.