Start Taking Responsibility for Your Life

As a coach, I get a lot of people who say they want a better life. They dream bigger and claim they are finally ready to make the decisions and take the actions that turn those dreams into reality. My time is limited, so I have to be careful how I spend it. I cannot help everyone one-on-one, no matter how much I would like to. To decide where to invest my energy, I sort people into two groups: those who take responsibility for their lives and those who do not.

Years of coaching have taught me that people who refuse to own their lives rarely create meaningful change. A coach can be a powerful ally, but the client is the one who must implement the agreed-upon shifts. I have learned to spot clear signals that show whether someone is ready to take responsibility. It is worth a few honest minutes to examine your own patterns and decide which side you are on.

One important note before we go further: this is not only for entrepreneurs. Anyone who wants stronger personal performance should apply these ideas. They are not limited to business.

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1- Drop the excuses

Excuses cause failure.
— D. Soitout

Stop blaming your partner, your parents, your finances, your education, your culture, or the dog for your misfortune. Blame locks you in victim mode and robs you of the chance to change your situation.

When you stop pointing fingers and accept full responsibility, you move from victim to victor. You can finally see the situation clearly and choose what to do next.

Ask yourself: “What is my part in this?”

Excuses for failure, excuses about the choices you have made, excuses about what you feel you have not achieved and what you still lack: this is the fuel for dysfunctional thinking and, eventually, for the actions and habits you do not want.

Making excuses instead of owning 100% of your actions, thoughts, and goals is the hallmark of people who never quite succeed in their professional AND personal lives.

Part of the power of taking responsibility is that it quiets the negative, useless voice in your head. When you spend your mental energy on success and on reaching your goals instead of manufacturing excuses, you free up the emotional space that used to be filled with negativity.

That negative voice loves to loop endless tapes of dissatisfaction and rehearse disappointing outcomes over and over. The next time you catch yourself crafting an excuse (for a late project, a missed goal, or work you chose to take on), gently remind yourself: no excuses.

Interrupt the endless loop playing in your mind and stop replaying the excuse-filled conversation. Use that mental time to plan your next successful move. Positive thinking becomes a useful habit. Excuses cause failure.

2- Stop complaining

Few things annoy me more than people who live in permanent complaint mode. Complaining is just another form of blame and victimhood, as if you have no other option. It also reveals that your attention is locked on the negative: what is going wrong, what is happening to you, everything that is not going according to plan. Inside every setback there is a gift and a larger picture.

Ask yourself: “What is the gift here? What can I learn from this?”

Read also: Give This Up to Succeed

3- Do not take anything personally

This is a big one. Assuming everything is about you. Treating any disagreement as a personal attack. Remember: you have no control over how other people respond. You only control how you respond.

Refuse to take anything personally. Most of the time it is not about you; it is about the issue at hand. Instead of making assumptions, ask questions. This is a powerful, liberating practice full of surprising results.

Ask yourself: “Is this about me, or is it about the issue?”

4- Use the power of intention

You have the power to choose. In fact, you are making choices all the time: tea or coffee, red dress or black dress, hair up or hair down, yoga or a run. Even deciding not to decide is still a decision.

Become intentional about making choices with a clear vision in mind. A vision for your life, your business, your relationship, your health, your wealth, and so on. Living intentionally (making deliberate decisions that move you toward the manifestation of your vision) is how you consciously take responsibility for your life.

Ask yourself: “Does saying yes to this move me closer to my goal?”

5- Look for the good in people

There is a saying that we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.

Build a new habit of looking for the intention behind people’s actions. Very often, once we understand where someone is coming from, judgment drops away.

An excellent practice is to remove the labels we pin on people like name tags around their necks, labels that somehow give us permission to treat them poorly. This often happens most with the people closest to us.

Ask yourself: “If I only see this person as a human being, how will I respond differently?”

Another effective practice is to listen in order to understand rather than to reply. That means asking questions so you truly grasp what the other person means, instead of waiting for your turn to interrupt and share your opinion.

This lets you take responsibility for creating enlightened conversations and satisfying relationships on purpose. The person you are speaking with will feel your attention, appreciate it, trust you more, and support you in return.

6- Be honest with yourself

To take responsibility for your life, you have to drop every excuse. You know those old stories you treat as unchangeable facts of life so you never even try the shifts you actually want, for example:

• I am too old
• I am too young
• I am too busy
• I cannot afford it
• Those things do not happen to people like me

There are many more examples, but you get the point. Cut the excuses. Cut the nonsense. Take responsibility for your life and make the changes you truly want to make.

7- Know that you always have options

Of all the silly stories we tell ourselves, perhaps the silliest is “I had no choice.” When we do something we regret or know we should not have done, we pull out this convenient excuse. We believe it frees us from all responsibility for the results of our decisions.

No matter the situation, there is always a choice. It may be an unpleasant decision and it may feel as if there is no realistic alternative, but yes: you still have to decide. The most effective people own their decisions and are willing to stand by them, even when it costs them popularity.