It’s Your Baby, So Take Responsibility!

The art of learning to own up to your choices and becoming more in your life.

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Sigmund Freud

While there may be a large portion of people on this planet that have never heard of Sigmund Freud or this quote, the facts remain the same about it being true. People are afraid to take responsibility for their actions, and quite frankly, we are way past due for a change.

I cannot remember the last time that I went through my day and didn’t hear some of the following, not exact but close, phrases. “ I was late because I forgot to plug my phone in.” or “ Well you never told me to do such and such..” or yet another classic, “ Its not my fault they were the ones who…..” I could go on but honestly I think we all get the point. These are phrases that are literally draining our society of the sad remainder of life sustaining respect that we once had.

Not only that but these phrases have now somehow morphed into a string of irresponsible actions that have also begun to tweak out language into a slew of derogatory phrases that include such things as “ Baby momma/daddy”, with the hidden meaning that in-lies a major societal problem.

All of these things are have one thing in common. Responsibility. Now this is a hard lesson for some people to understand and own up to, which is the exact reason I wanted to write about it. How did we get away from owing up to our mistakes and seriously looking at failures as a good thing? How did we get so far away from showing our true selves that we have to lie about who we really are?

My personal perspective is that we have just become lazy. Lax in discipline, lax in challenging our kids, lax in many various parts of our lives. This idea that we can just have whatever we want, whenever we want and as soon as we want it, has literally bred slothfulness. The fact is it is 100x easier to accuse someone else for you problems than to stand up and do the right thing.

Yet there is safety in complacency, safety in doing the bare minimum, and that is just where we have landed ourselves. We trade time for money, and freedom for complacency, then sit around and complain about it as if that is going to make it better. Even though it was your decision to have a child in a weak and frail relationship, and now all you do is fight because you weren’t prepared at all to have a child, so somehow it’s the other persons fault.. Have you considered looking inward? Have you ever thought of just owning the fact that maybe its okay to be wrong? That it is okay to own up that you have made a mistake and that you only have yourself to blame? Or is that just too much to handle? I guess if that is what you aspire for in life then go for it, it just isn’t for me.

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Work Week has said something to this effect, instead of asking what can be done, how about proposing a solution to the problem, and that is what I aim to do. The problem has been stated over and over again, we are not taking responsibility for our actions and creating an environment to breed laziness and stupidity, so I want to propose we do something about it. I propose we challenge the norm, we make waves in the calm lake of mediocrity, and we get up and take responsibility for our actions whatever they are.

I can promise you this, it will be uncomfortable, it will be extremely hard, and hardly anyone who actually accepts this challenge will succeed, but I can also promise if you dedicate yourself just a little more everyday, push yourself one step further everyday, there will be undoubtedly and without reservation a massive amount of change we desperately need in today's world. Learning how to do this really has become an art, a long lost one at that. We have got to stop coddling and accepting mediocrity out of our rising generation.

It’s the art of becoming better, the art of refining yourself as an individual, and the art of giving us a hope for a future with doers and visionaries. Its time to quite being lazy, its time to take responsibility and own up to your mistakes and learn to embrace them.