Self Responsibility — The Most Important Step

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Self Responsibility — The Most Important Step — learning to be self-responsible is the only way to go!

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Many moons ago I pro­posed the following:

• I can only com­mit to an action — to some­thing I will do.
• I com­mit to being in rela­tion­ship with you. Here is what I com­mit to:
• I will be open, hon­est and vul­ner­a­ble in my dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion with you.
• I will tell you, today, who I am and what I am think­ing.
• I will tell you, today, every­thing I have done, and what it meant to me.
• I will lis­ten to you with curios­i­ty and inter­est, today.
• I will accept that you are who you are today, and will inte­grate who you are today with my pic­ture of you from “yes­ter­day.”
• I will make myself ful­ly avail­able and present to and with you, today, and engage in clear and con­cise com­mu­ni­ca­tion with you for not less than 30 min­utes, today.
• I will own all of my thoughts, feel­ings, emo­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions, work­ing to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for each and every one of them. If I slip and go into blam­ing, I will stop myself, apol­o­gise, and return to self-respon­si­bil­i­ty.
• I will active­ly encour­age you to lis­ten to me and to active­ly hold me to the per­for­mance of what I have com­mit­ted to.
• I will com­mit to all of these things, with­out any expec­ta­tion of any­thing from you, as all I can ever com­mit to is to what I can and will do.

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Today’s focus:

• I will make myself ful­ly avail­able and present to and with you, today, and engage in clear and con­cise com­mu­ni­ca­tion with you for not less than 30 min­utes, today.
• I will own all of my thoughts, feel­ings, emo­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions, work­ing to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for each and every one of them. If I slip and go into blam­ing, I will stop myself, apol­o­gise, and return to self-respon­si­bil­i­ty.
• I will active­ly encour­age you to lis­ten to me and to active­ly hold me to the per­for­mance of what I have com­mit­ted to.
• I will com­mit to all of these things, with­out any expec­ta­tion of any­thing from you, as all I can ever com­mit to is to what I can and will do.

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The Most Important Step is being Self-responsible

Over the years, I’ve been struck by the amount of time and effort peo­ple put into try­ing the get oth­ers to “behave,” or “treat them right.” 

Yet, over the years, I’ve nev­er, not once, met some­one who suc­cess­ful­ly changed anoth­er person.

Oh, I’ve met peo­ple who have cajoled, and bartered, and whined, and griped, and com­plained, and got their part­ner to shift some­thing in the moment.

But last­ing change? For­get it.

People are as they appear to be,
and treat each other the way they treat each other. They won’t change just because you want them to.
This seems like such an obvious idea.

One client I worked with was two years into her 5th dys­func­tion­al rela­tion­ship. In each of her rela­tion­ships, she’d cho­sen a part­ner who thought it was his birthright to tell her what to think, how to act, how to dress, and what to do, hor­i­zon­tal­ly and, emphat­i­cal­ly, vertically.

She told me that she was in therapy to figure out why her present man refused to change his ways. Because, she told me, that’s what a “good man” ought to do.

Here was her shtick:

1. find a “macho” guy who turned her on,
2. fight with him, then have make-up sex,
3. after 6 months, get tired of the macho and the fighting.
4. tell him “If you love me, you’ll change, do it my way,” and then be baf­fled when he refuses.
5. Even­tu­al­ly, when he left, return to step #1,

It seemed clear to me: my client (almost like she was using radar) chose men who were into “being in charge.” 

There was a part of her that liked this — she said she “felt safe” when in the pres­ence or a strong, forth­right man.

After a while, though, his macho behav­iour and end­less crit­i­cism wore thin, and she dis­cov­ered she could­n’t stand being told what to do. 

And remem­ber: she did this 5 times!

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Each time, she changed her mind about what she wanted in a man. (She wanted strength and directness, then she didn’t.)

But here’s the weird part: she changed her mind, and then expect­ed that her man should just go along with her request that he stop doing what he’d always done — the very rea­son she was with him in the first place.

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Finding an appropriate partner and maintaining an elegant relationship is difficult. 

Our cul­ture is tells us that how we feel and the way we act is deter­mined by “good” or “bad” exter­nal forces. There­fore, relat­ing gets mixed up into, “Get­ting my part­ner to behave in the right (read “my”) way.”

I call this partner-blaming

As I’ve tried to make obvi­ous in this series of arti­cles, we are what we do, not what we say. Who a per­son is, is wired into them. Each of us, through force of will, can mod­i­fy behav­iour on a moment-by-moment basis. But who we are is wired in. For more on this, read “Change isn’t pos­si­ble…”

One thing this means is that you can’t change anoth­er per­son — you can only choose to behave dif­fer­ent­ly. This means that hook­ing up with some­one with the inten­tion of chang­ing them is stu­pid in the extreme.

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How I choose to relate is total­ly about what I will do, whether in rela­tion­ship or as I engage with the world. So, if things seem to be “slip­ping,” my respon­si­bil­i­ty is to state what I observe, and then state what I will do to get things back on track.

At the end of the day, happiness, like everything else, is an inside job.

The last series of points, men­tioned above, are sim­ple and self-respon­si­ble. Rather than hold my part­ner account­able to my whims and desires, I turn it around and hold myself account­able, and then give my part­ner per­mis­sion to also hold me accountable.

It’s saying: “Here is how I agree to be and act in our relationship. I will slip from time to time. I intend to catch myself when I slip. If I don’t, please remind me.”

This will work ele­gant­ly only if my part­ner has made exact­ly the same agree­ment with me, and sticks to it.

I would argue, though, that in less than ide­al rela­tion­ships, one per­son can choose to be account­able to his or her part­ner, with­out the req­ui­site agree­ment from the part­ner, and that the per­son who choos­es account­abil­i­ty will be much, much bet­ter off than he or she was when all that was hap­pen­ing was blaming.

On the whole, though, I believe that it’s bet­ter to leave a rela­tion­ship that is not equal than to live with the imbal­ance. That’s more a per­son­al pref­er­ence than a hard and fast rule.

So, that’s where I am on this top­ic. I sug­gest that you resolve to live with hon­esty, integri­ty, and com­mit­ment. Do it for your­self — for your spir­i­tu­al and bod­i­ly well-being. Pick a direc­tion, own it, com­mit to it, stick to it.

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