Taking Responsibility Of Your Life

Graham Landi, Counselling, Hypnotherapy and NLP in Maidstone April 29, 2013

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Recently I was in a local cafe meeting a friend for coffee. Whilst I was waiting for my cappuccino a lady behind me ordered and started to look longingly at the cabinet of hot pastries. “I’ll take one of these croissants too”, she said to the barista. “Which one would you like? The ham and cheese or cheese and tomato”. The lady said “Oh, I don’t really know…you choose for me”.

The lady in the cafe might just like surprises, but the episode struck a chord with me because it seemed such a pertinent illustration of the trouble that underpins many of the issues people bring to me, specifically the refusal to accept responsibility for their own decisions and ultimately their own lives.

One of the things that may render us helpless is the belief that something or someone else is responsible for our suffering. The externalising of trauma is both emotionally convenient and debilitating, perhaps illustrated aptly by addictive behaviour which, although self defeating, is seen by those struggling against it as a reality impossible to overturn. Taking this position frees us from needing to make changes but at the same time condemns us to continued misery and self destruction.

So what is it that stops us from taking responsibility for ourselves? It is the fact that the pain of staying where we are needs to be greater than the perceived pain of moving somewhere else. Until that is the case we have a tendency to live with the familiar pain we have come to know, but rather than accept it as a decision we make consciously and deliberately, we blame some external force to assuage us of the responsibility. “I can’t relax without cigarettes”, “I’m not strong enough to stop drinking”, “I’ll always suffer with depression because my mother was depressed all of her life”. This might come as a shock, but the emotions we experience are owned by us, created by us. If we choose an alternative route we can follow it. The downside is that we have to make the choice and take responsibility; the upside is that it is all in our hands.

I have often written in these pages of a close friend of mine who is a recovering alcoholic. He continues to thrive and prosper which is a joy to behold and share. He has a friend, whom I have met, that is struggling with a long term drug habit. Eventually it will kill him, a fact of which he is painfully aware, and he has grown tired of the slavery which addiction inflicts. He is about to try and stop using. What might be different this time that he can pull himself away from self destruction towards a life that can be so much more fulfilling and rewarding? Aside from the belief that he can achieve what he wants to achieve he needs to take responsibility for his own life and its importance. When we don’t take responsibility for ourselves we devastate our own self esteem, we diminish our own power and we allow life to happen to us. It’s very difficult to change something when we don’t feel that we have control over it. I don’t know him well at all, but I know enough to see that he is a gentle, vulnerable, generous man. He is a committed father and friend and son, and he’s been stuck in a defeating and damaging circle for years, without any memory of what life was like before drugs and without much confidence in his ability to change. But the same fact is true of him as is of any other trying to make positive change. The word “can’t” does not describe reality; it describes a reluctance to take responsibility and an understandable nervousness and anxiety for the future. When our view of how we want the world to look differs from the way the world is we only have two choices. We either change the world or change our view of it. Sometimes both are possible but it’s always possible to change one of them.

Allowing someone or something else to take responsibility for us does not absolve us from the consequences when things go wrong. We might believe that telling ourselves we were powerless helps but in fact it makes everything a whole lot worse. Aside from the mess itself we feel depleted and small, less likely to pull away to a different place. It also becomes harder to ask for help and support because we convince ourselves we are unworthy, hopeless and deserving of our pain. We fear trying because failure seems like too big a bag to carry.

Maybe there is something you want to change, something that is getting in your way and stalling life, even if it’s in a small and seemingly insignificant way. If there is, ask yourself a question. Have you taken the action that might change it, and if not why? If it’s because you’re waiting for someone else to do it, to save you, you may have a long wait, because other people have their own responsibilities to wrestle with.

The sun is out again, so whatever you do this week make sure you do something enjoyable, and when you do, make sure you notice it. That was you taking responsibility for happiness and making it happen.