Why You Shouldn’t Take Radical Responsibility for Your Life
One of the wildest ideas we offer to conscious leaders is the choice to take radical responsibility for their lives. This means stepping out of victimhood and into creator consciousness.
We describe this choice in several ways. We talk about deciding to take 100% responsibility for what happens in your life. You can take more than 100% responsibility, which is playing the hero (rescuing and offering temporary relief). You can take less than 100% responsibility, which is playing the villain (blaming) or victim (complaining that you’re “at the effect of life”). Or, you can take 100% responsibility. By taking 100% responsibility, you choose to see yourself as the creator of your experience—not other people or circumstances.
We often describe life as a game, and you get to choose how you want to play it. Taking responsibility is one way to play. If you choose to play this way, you should know there are two levels of the game.
Level 1 of the radical responsibility game involves recognizing that you are responsible for how you react to life’s circumstances. If you get fired from your job, you are responsible for how you respond to being fired. If your partner yells at you, you get to choose your reaction. If it’s raining, you decide if that’s good, bad, or nothing at all. At this level of the game, no one and nothing makes you how you are. You make yourself how you are.
Level 2 of the responsibility game is much more radical. Here, you get curious about how you’re creating the circumstances of your life. If you get fired, you ask, “How did I create this situation?” If your partner yells at you, you ask, “How am I showing up in this relationship such that I’m getting yelled at?” You choose to claim responsibility for not only your response but also for your agency in creating life the way it is.
Another way to put it: Your life is your movie. You’re the writer, director, lead actor, and central casting agency for your life. What happens is your creation—or at least, you’re open and curious to see how you’re creating it.
Taking radical responsibility is radical. Whenever I talk about the choice to take 100% responsibility, people raise objections. I’d like to address a few I’ve heard repeatedly over the years.
Common Objections to Taking Radical Responsibility
1. Are you saying I’m responsible for everything in my life? That sounds ridiculous. Am I responsible for getting sick, my husband’s bad mood, the weather, and the sales department missing their numbers when I don’t even work in sales?
The answer is, “It depends.” It depends on how much responsibility you want to take. Remember, it’s a game, and you get to play the game however you like.
Here are a few thoughts as you consider how you want to play.
Byron Katie makes the distinction between God’s business, other people’s business, and your business. This is a good place to begin. Place the above list in the category you think it belongs in. Is getting sick, your husband’s bad mood, the weather, or the sales department’s performance God’s business, others’ business, or your business?
You can begin the journey toward taking 100% responsibility by taking responsibility for everything in your life that is your business. This means stopping the blame game. This is Level 1 responsibility.
If you want to play Level 2—radical responsibility—you can take your responsibility for other people’s business. Your husband’s mood is his business, and the sales department’s performance is their business. But if you want to play a bigger game, you can ask, “How am I co-creating my husband’s mood or the sales department’s performance?” “What am I doing, not doing, saying, not saying, believing, or not believing that’s contributing to this result?”
Taking radical responsibility isn’t about blaming yourself for what’s wrong in the world—whether it’s your world, others’ worlds, or God’s world. It’s about getting curious about how you’re showing up such that the world looks this way, getting all your learnings, and changing how you’re being so the world has the possibility of looking different, at least to you.
From this consciousness, taking radical responsibility is simply a choice to get as many learnings as possible and to be as self aware as you’re capable of being. It’s living life as a great learning laboratory. That’s why the answer to the original question is “it depends.” It depends on how much learning and self-awareness you want. It depends on how much agency and empowerment you want. Again, it’s not about taking blame. It’s about taking responsibility.
You can take as much responsibility as you want for:
- The current political environment in your country
- The weather
- War in the world
- Starvation
- Sex trafficking
The journey to taking responsibility begins with Level 1: take responsibility for your business and your responses. Then, as you experience the value of stepping into creator and claiming agency, start to play with taking responsibility for your whole movie—your life and what’s happening in your world. How much responsibility you take depends on the game you want to play.
2. What if I take responsibility and no one else does? Won’t I end up with all the blame and burden?
Recently, someone asked me, “If I take responsibility for having a sexless marriage and my partner doesn't, how's that going to work out?” Another client asked, “If I alone take responsibility for the lack of trust on my team at work, how will that change anything?” Often, people say, “I’ll take responsibility if they will.”
Again, taking responsibility isn’t about taking the blame. Taking responsibility is about choosing agency, empowerment, learning, self-awareness, and creating the movie you want your life to be.
At one level, my answer to “What if no one else takes responsibility?” is (respectfully and lovingly), “Who cares?” Everyone else gets to play their game however they want. Why make your learning and empowerment dependent on whether they choose to experience agency in their life? You don’t need anyone else to live differently for you to experience the transformation of personal ownership.
Of course, it’s fun—really fun—if others in your world are playing the same game. If they take responsibility for how they and you are co-creating the outcome, the learnings can be powerful. But you don’t need them to do so to get free from being at the effect of others and the world. You don’t need them to leave their jail cell for you to leave yours.
3. It takes so much energy to take responsibility. I don’t have enough time to always be claiming responsibility for everything. It’s just easier to be at the effect of life. Taking responsibility feels like swimming against the current.
Expending energy is a key issue for most of us. It seems true that energy, more than time or money, is the most important resource to manage. If this is true, I want to invest my energy in a way that creates the greatest return.
I’ve learned that it takes far more energy to resist reality than to cooperate with life as it unfolds. I’d even suggest that most exhaustion comes from resisting what is,and wanting life to be different than it is. At the center of victimhood (taking more or less than 100% responsibility) is the desire for life to be different. I want to feel different than I do. I want my kids to be different. I want my boss, the weather, the government, my grass, the barking dog, my body, and my finances to all be different. And that takes energy.
In my experience, it takes less energy to let life be as it is. From this place of non-resistance, I can choose radical responsibility and ask, “What can I learn from life being just the way it is?” I stop fighting life and start learning from it. This takes less energy, or at least requires a different kind of energy, and the return on investment is far greater than trying to control reality.
4. I don’t have the power; they do.
A version of this comes up often when we present to teams in organizations.
“You’re suggesting I have agency and power when they have all the power. They decide the budget, direction, resourcing, hiring, firing, and culture.”
Taking radical responsibility actually has nothing to do with roles and decision rights. I don’t need to be a manager or CEO to take responsibility. I don’t need decision rights to choose to see how I am co-creating what is occurring and to get all my learnings.
In fact, real power rests with those who take responsibility and become the resolution for what they most want to see in the world. I’ve seen it many times: when someone starts claiming responsibility while ending blame and criticism, they’re perceived as a true leader with great influence. This doesn’t always mean they’re liked or promoted, but they’re seen as leaders regardless of their role or decision rights.
History shows us that real power and position don’t always correlate. This is one of the great messages of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Jesus, Viktor Frankl, and others. They all chose to see power as something they had when they took responsibility. They refused to see themselves as victims of others’ apparent power.
5. I give up. I’ve tried everything I know to change the situation. I’m resigned. It doesn’t matter or do any good.
Two things about this experience. First, trying to change the situation is different from taking responsibility for the situation as it is. If you’re doing the latter to achieve the former, you’re using radical responsibility as a tool to get what you really want.
Sometimes, circumstances will change when you take back agency. In fact, I’d say they often do. Your movie will be different. But I don’t take responsibility solely to change my life’s results. I take responsibility to learn, grow, and ultimately wake up to reality and to the reality of what I truly am.
Second, exhaustion, resignation, and cynicism are often indications of confusing taking responsibility with heroing the world. Heroes see a problem, take more than 100% responsibility, and over-function to make the world and others as they want them to be. This way of being is a sure path to exhaustion and cynicism. Burnout is the inevitable result of trying to rescue the world from reality.
Radical responsibility isn’t about blame but about challenging yourself to play life's game from a completely different perspective. This approach is about discovering new ways to engage with everything life throws your way. It’s challenging, yes, but it's also a thrilling and rewarding way to live. We like to say, "You don't get to take the ride until you buy the ticket." So, are you willing to buy the ticket and see where this game can take you?
Further Resources
- To begin practicing 100% responsibility, join a Taste of Conscious Leadership (for organizational leaders) or Intro to Conscious Leadership event. See upcoming dates here.
- Watch What are You Unconsciously Committed to? Learn more about the power of owning your current results before making a change.
- Listen to “Commitment 1 Meditation – Responsibility” (also available on Insight Timer)
