Increasing Personal Responsibility

A Case For Tough Self Love

I feel uneasy when I’ve gone without a big challenge in a while. If I never get nervous or stressed, then I fear that I’m not trying anything new.

Everything I do exercises some muscle, and it’s scary to imagine the muscles I’ve developed over years of hard work would weaken and atrophy. I want to stay strong in the face of harsh criticism. I want to be able to push myself to greater insight. I want to be able to have difficult moments with those I love without it fatiguing me. I want to have some level of control over that.

“In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying so get in motion and grow.” — Lou Holtz

I’ve been intensely fascinated with the subject of free will and determinism since my early adulthood. The idea that my actions are predetermined, and in a very real sense — out of control, actually causes me dread. I’m convinced that I have free will, but I’ve come to realize very recently that the reason I am as emotionally invested in having free will as I am is because feeling powerless to change the circumstances in my life makes me depressed.

There have been many times in my life where I felt powerless. I never want to end up there again.

Entering therapy was huge for me, in part because I was becoming increasingly aware of all that there is I could work on, knowing it could be done and that it would increase the quality of my life, if I only work hard at it. It makes putting up with difficult and unpleasant work on myself easier to know that it could offer me greater control over my life.

Increasing my level of personal responsibility continues to be an exciting prospect. Now that I see the difference between avoidance and responsibility, failing seems infinitely preferable to lacking control.

I can’t reasonably take personal responsibility for everything, though. Responsibility, like everything else, needs to be based in reality.

Responsible for Being Responsible

There are plenty of times when someone takes more responsibility for a thing than is warranted or is helpful, such as the child who blames himself for his parents’ divorce, or the perfectionist who flagellates themselves for not producing the greatest writing ever, or the adult child who takes on a surrogate husband role for a mother they don’t even love, or the person who feels guilty for not wanting to be friends with someone who desperately wants to be their friend.

Adults who take on more responsibility than is actually due are ultimately responsible for that. It would be unreasonable to expect a child to have learned complex social skills like this, but it’s important to develop a healthy understanding of your own responsibility. At the very least, a person should be able to figure this stuff out prior to having children so that they can teach their own children and not impose unjust responsibility on them.

You may be accepting more responsibility than you deserve, you may not be accepting enough responsibility, or you may be accurately seeing things as they are, but whatever the case may be, what is certain is that you are responsible for figuring that out. You are responsible for being a responsible competent adult.

Taking on an increase in personal responsibility is not blaming yourself for things that go wrong. In fact, if blaming yourself is self loathing, it’s the exact opposite. It is a comment on your efficacy as a person to be able to succeed in your responsibilities. If a person holds you to a higher standard than they do to others (or even themselves), that is actually a kind of compliment.

And if you did mess up, how is self flagellation going to help anything? It won’t. It will only get in the way of you coming through on whatever you are failing.

The longer adult relationships continue, the more equal culpability is when things go wrong with the relationship. Women who cheat and then blame their husbands for not treating them well enough aren’t entirely wrong, even if they are avoiding responsibility themselves. Obviously, cheating on your significant other is wrong and is not justified by the lack of love in the relationship, but there is no one more responsible for the quality of a relationship than the people in that relationship.

By continuing to stay in relationship with a person as a friend or lover, you are implicitly confirming that they meet a standard called “friendship” and “love”. If you claim to love your significant other but do not treat them in such a way that they feel loved and wanted, then you are responsible for that. And they are responsible for making you feel loved, too.

Responsible for Happiness & Love

Happiness and love aren’t automatic. You can’t just have the right attitude and avoid negativity and let happiness fall in your lap. The health of your relationship to yourself and those close to you takes effort, just like your physical, mental and emotional health do.

You are responsible for your own level of personal happiness. It takes a dedication to principled living. Same with love. It shouldn’t feel like a chore, but rather an investment in a valuable currency to be exchanged for security, spontaneity and joy later on. And it should come as a huge relief that it is this way because what it means is that you have direct control over it.

A lot of dating advice out there strikes me as superstitious. If you do the right things, you will have pleased the Love Gods and they will reward you with a mate. A lot of advice is less of the “here are the basic principles by which we understand love” and more like “X,Y and Z will make her fall in love with you because that’s just the way women’s minds work”.

If you teach a person what to think and not how to think, they will always be dependent on authority figures to point them in the right direction. That is not a position which can offer you much control or certainty. On the flip side, a person who knows how to think can adapt to new situations and creatively meet challenges head on. Knowing how to see the opportunity in conflict is one example.

When I’ve acted like a bad friend or lover in some way, and someone does me the kindness of pointing it out, it can be difficult emotionally at first, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn more about myself and those I’m close to. With new knowledge comes responsibility, but what that really means is I have more control over my life.

Being responsible is just another way of saying I have the power to make the most out of my life.

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” — Henry Ford

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