The magic of seeing everything as your own fault. (Stop blaming everything else)
Taking responsibility for one's actions is rare in today's society. There’s always someone else to blame for why you screwed up. It’s always just circumstance, other people, the government, never you.
You know that your life sucks, but to feel better about yourself, you blame people, circumstances, or anything you can find to shift the blame to something outside yourself.
It’s a well-known phenomenon in psychology called the external locus of control, where the wrongdoings of the person are to blame on circumstances or other people, while when they look at other people they believe that they messed up because of their character and things they controlled. This is a tendency that every human has.
So why would taking responsibility for your own life be so important? When you can just blame someone else and as a result, you'll feel better about yourself, that’s not bad, right?
Perhaps in the short term, but you need to look at the bigger picture. What are you doing for your own future?
The most important thing taking responsibility gives you, is a sense of control over your life and actions. That you control what you do, so you decide the outcome of events that happen in your life, and you decide your future.
You have the power to control what happens in your life, the only thing you have to do is be conscious of it.
What is responsibility?
Responsibility in this context is the ability to see your actions as your own doing, being able to analyze these actions and adjust when necessary.
Taking responsibility is seen as a very negative thing by a lot of people, that's why you see so few people actually taking full responsibility for everything they do, it’s not comfortable.
It’s not pleasant to blame yourself for every bad thing that is happening in your life, but this is only one side of taking responsibility, the side that frightens everyone and the reason many avoid it.
In school, and other institutions of the system, you always get told that it isn’t your fault, that you’re not in control.
"It’s not your fault that you’re a loser, it's because of circumstances, and the world is just unfair."
This is all nonsense, maybe designed or not, to make you a slave.
By not taking responsibility for everything, and not feeling the need to, you don’t improve yourself. You are a loser because you make countless mistakes all of the time, it’s not because of your circumstances. No, other people are not oppressing you, you’re just a loser.
You are the only person with the power to change that, no one else can.
A feeling of control
What you actually need is a feeling of control over your life, over everything you do. You accomplish this by taking responsibility for all of your actions, because when your actions are your fault, you have the power to make those mistakes, which means you have the power to correct them and learn from them to prevent them from happening ever again.
The only thing you can really control in your life is your mind. You can't control what other people do, you can’t control whether it is going to rain or whether a whirlwind is coming. You can only control what you think and how you respond to situations.
This is a superpower everybody has, but not everybody makes use of it, and it all starts with taking responsibility.
“If you are afraid to learn from your mistakes, you will more than likely keep repeating them.”
The link between responsibility and authority.
Maybe you’ve heard Andrew Tate talk about this, but he talked a few times about the fact that responsibility and authority are linked. He used the example of relationships, where if you would be responsible to protect your woman, you would have some authority over what, and what not to do.
But the link between authority and responsibility also applies perfectly to taking full responsibility for your own actions.
When you are responsible for everything that happens in your life, you have a degree of control, and with this control comes the authority to make decisions. Now you are in charge of your life and your choices. You will feel like you have the authority to make the decisions in your life, that you can do what you want to, and that, at the end of the day, the only person you have to answer to is yourself.
This however does not mean that you don’t listen to anybody else. You have the authority to make the decisions, but these are highly informed and well-thought-of decisions you make based on what looks like the best option at the moment. So listen to other people, but realize that you are the one who has the authority over the choices made in your life. You are the final decision-maker.
Just don’t be arrogant, listen to others, and then make the best move on the chess board. That is the responsible way to act.
The benefits of taking responsibility.
Taking complete responsibility for everything in your life can be viewed in a negative way if you believe you’re only to blame for all the negative things in your life, and all of the positive things were just circumstances or others or luck.
The point I’m trying to make is really taking full responsibility, FOR EVERYTHING.
You don’t just take responsibility for all the bad that happens, neither are you only responsible for all of the good that happens in your life.
You are responsible for everything, for the bad AND the good.
When you lose money on an investment, that is completely your fault.
When you 10X an investment that is a 100% your fault too.
Everything that happens is your fault, which means that you have total control over what happens in your life because the only person you can control is yourself. So this means that every bad thing that happens to you, every mistake you make, is your fault. So also all the good things that happen to you and all of the decisions that turned out to be correct, are all your fault.
I see this as a very positive way of looking at the world, and a mindset that people need nowadays. Adopt this mindset and you’ll see your life improve at a rapid pace.
“Action remains when we run out of excuses.”