Fault vs. Responsibility

Imagine this scenario: you’re consistently a top performer in the job you’ve held for more than 10 years. But the company falls on hard times and decides it needs to lay off one-third of its workforce—including you. You’re shocked, hurt, and are now scrambling to find a new job and pay the bills. This is certainly not your fault—nothing you did caused this to happen. But, it is your responsibility.

I’ve talked about the power of choice in a previous post, and the concepts of fault and responsibility go hand-in-hand with choice. It might not be your fault, but it is up to you to choose to be responsible for it. Take the job layoff example above. You could sit at home and cry about your misfortune, or you could choose to take responsibility and move forward.

When you focus on what—or who—is at fault for something that happens in your life, you put the power in the hands of the external. Someone else is responsible for this thing that happened to me, so it’s up to them to fix it. I can’t do anything about it myself. I hate to break it to you, but you have to stop placing the blame on external factors and take responsibility for your life. It’s your choice, and only you have the power to change it.

Here’s a little excerpt from my upcoming book (feel free to share it on social media)…

If you want to take control of your life, understanding this concept is important. You can’t wait around and hope that someone is going to magically figure out exactly what you want or need and go out of their way to do it for you. That’s just not how life works. You don’t walk into a new hair salon and expect the hairstylist to automatically know the exact haircut you want, do you? Of course not. That would be miraculous. And waiting around for miracles isn’t the way to live. Choose to take responsibility and create the life you want!

The next time something bad happens that’s out of your control, I want you to stop and think. Was this your fault? No. But can look internally and choose to take responsibility for the way you move forward from it? Absolutely.