Whose RESPONSIBILITY is this: Qualities of Success

Many people will confuse ACCOUNTABILITY and RESPONSIBILITY, and with good reason. While they are related, and in certain instances, can be interchangeable, there are differences in application that I’ll be focusing on in this installment of QUALITIES OF SUCCESS.

Many people my age like to blame everything that goes wrong in their lives on their parents, their school, or anything else that is convenient. If they are overweight, it’s because their parents equated love with food. If they are unable to keep a marriage together, it’s because Daddy didn’t hug them enough. If they exhibit deviant behavior, it’s because someone hugged them too much. If they make a bad financial decision, such as getting into a risky mortgage loan, and now they are facing the loss of everything (for more on this, check out one of my favorite blogs HERE, I don’t agree with everything there, but I do read it every day), they blame the government, the mortgage company, society, or whoever. The point here is that THEY do something, but it’s not their fault.

I’m not trying to take anything away from those that have been dealt a truly sucky hand; sometimes that happens, and it takes an insane amount of work to get around it, and sometimes you just can’t do it. I feel sorry for those people. But let’s face facts here. Most people aren’t in that situation. It’s just easier to blame somebody else than it is to take responsibility for our own situation.

Also, don’t let me sound like young people are the only people guilty of this. Older people do it all the time. My kid is a trouble maker, it must be because he needs drugs. My kid sleeps all day, too many drugs. I don’t live in a mansion, must be because there is some conspiracy against me. I can do this all day, but why?

So the answer here? Take responsibility for yourself. You are either at the age now, or will soon be, where you are the master of your own destiny. In the real world, you are held responsible for your actions, especially when they hurt the company you are working for. I know how unfair that sounds, but is just the way it is. Prepare yourself now. No matter what has happened in the past, you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your future, whether at work, or anywhere else in life.

When dealing with saving, you need to be in control of your spending patterns. If there is something you want to spend money on, but don’t have enough, it’s not the company’s fault for being too expensive, it’s not necessarily anybody’s fault. I’m going to give you a phrase that you really need to get in your head.

“It is what it is.”

So next time you want to feel sorry for yourself, and blame someone else because of a minor setback in your life—don’t. Instead, take a little responsibility; see if there was anything you did, or didn’t do but could have, that contributed to the situation, and make whatever changes are needed for the future. It may be hard at first, and you will have to face some things about yourself that you might not like, but once you get in the habit, people will start to see you a little differently.