Where does your responsibility starts and where it ends? What are you responsible for? Those are very thin lines. Obviously these thin lines are what most of us do not recognize as important. But they ultimately are. There is always a big psychological burden on the people, as they start blaming themselves for the things they aren’t responsible for, and also it goes other way around. Where people blame others for the things they have the power and control of.
Why avoiding emotions of blame and guilt is important?
Emotions have tremendous impact on personal productivity. If you don’t feel right, you don’t get the optimal results. Evading the feel of guilt and shame shouldn’t be done by avoiding the topic, but instead facing it directly the moment we experience it. This way we are not leaving the space for procrastination to leave everything for the very last moment.
You can’t be responsible for everything in your life, but there are things that you can take control of, and ultimately, only thing that you can control is you. What you say, what you do and how you act in according to the circumstances.
Taking responsibility
As a member of global student organization called AIESEC, we had a great deal about so called “Taking responsibility” stage. I like how it’s worded. The new members would start choosing their responsibilities after they’ve passed the initial introduction phase.
Now you may not be familiar with student organizations, but you certainly can correlate to taking responsibility. And once you decide to take responsibility for yourself and the things you’ve decided to do, life starts to get a very different course.
All of the sudden, you take other people out of the responsibility equation and you start getting things done. You don’t get mad and frustrated, as you exert the control over the life. You always have a backup plan, and you learn how to know the difference between important and unimportant.
Once you start valuing your own time…
…you start developing your personal time boundaries. You have easier time saying no to other people, as you’ve learned to say yes to yourself. You’ve learned to say yes, to what’s truly important and take responsibility for it.
Far too many times have I’ve said only yes…
I’ve used to think I was a Supermen. I never had any metrics on how much time it’s needed to get something done. And as I grew older and wiser, I learned a valuable lesson of time. It’s valuable! And the moment I started saying no to things, everything clarified. When you have less things on your plate, you are more likely to follow up on your important tasks, responsibly.
