How to Achieve More Self Responsibility

A period of doubt has entered my mind this week with regard to the value of these posts. For I find that good ideas for change are usually not sufficiently strong enough to catalyze the will and one falls back or simply continues along in the line of least resistance.

Procrastination and social anxiety both respond best to self responsibility which I want to clarify here. In notes on this topic collected over the past many years, several points are worth passing on.

Self responsibility means:

l. Choosing to think for your self.

2. It is recognizing that only our own understanding can guide us.

3. When you choose to avoid intellectual independence or avoid doing what the mind says to do, this is a policy of self abdication.

4. To think and look at the world through your own eyes is basic to self responsibility.

5. Self responsibility applies when behavior is a function of decisions not conditions. This is close to saying that you shouldn’t blame others, or conditions for your plight; take responsibility for creating it your self.

6. Self responsibility means you are able to subordinate action to values.

7. Finally, the self responsible person is able to perform actions not to please others but for personal satisfaction.

For the reluctant or easily timidified, these blandishments in favor of self responsibility may seem scary, impractical or just blame unrealizable.  Perhaps they are for some. However, the gargantuan lust for self improvement evidenced by the large library of self help manuals would seem to argue at least for continued attention to the possibilities of change and redemption. 

In consideration of how to achieve more self responsibility and thereby be more willing to follow the voice within, however that is identified,  several therapeutic approaches have been tried.

Humanistic psychology believes that the person contains within him or her potentialities for healthy and creative growth. The failure to realize these potentialities is due to the constricting and distorting influences of parental training and education. These harmful effects can be overcome, though, if the individual is willing to accept the responsibility for his own life. Carl Rogers (1976)  argued that “If this responsibility is accepted, we shall soon see the emergence of a new person highly aware, self directing, an explorer of inner, perhaps more than outer, space, scornful of the conformity of institutions and the dogma of authority.”

This statement appears hopelessly idealistic for without supervision, a person is perfectly free to do nothing.  See below for an example of how lack of an audience weakens implementation of even the firmest resolves.

The simplest therapeutic approach is exhortative: “You are responsible for what happens to you in your life. Your behavior is, as you yourself know, doing you in. It is not in your best interests. This is not what you want for yourself. So, change!!”

This approach stems from the philosophical or moral belief that if one truly knows the good (what is, in the deepest sense, in one's best interest) one will act accordingly. "Man, insofar as he acts willfully, acts according to some imagined good'' Aquinas.

In my experience, the struggle for more self responsibility is helped by two factors: a catalyst that pushes you in the direction you know you need and want to go. This catalyst could be an event, like a health crisis, or a condition like obesity or an activity like a growing addiction that leads to severe social upset. The point is that catalysts serve to shock or jump start change and hence activate self responsibility.

The other factor is social support or acting before an audience. I recently completed a health challenge called the Oregon Health Challenge and was awed by the impact of an audience to my efforts to do work outs and change my diet.  The main dynamic was the rationale that came up every time I was tempted to throw in the towel, indulge my appetite for sweets or baked goods or otherwise stray off the straight and narrow: “No, I can’ do that, I’m doing this be a role model for others and the world is watching.”

With strong and deep desires combined with the social surround so you can’t hide out, self responsibility is more likely to be stronger and more long lasting.