Personal Responsibility: When You Are The Stone In Your Shoe

Without personal responsibility, there is no progress, achievements or victories. This psychological dimension has a great impact on the social sphere. If we all took a little more responsibility for our behaviors and actions, perhaps we would form another kind of reality; a more advanced, respectful and, above all, human.

In one of his lectures, Viktor Frankl said that Americans should have given the iconic Statue of Liberty another name. According to this famous psychiatrist, it should be called the “Statue of Responsibility”.

This suggestion was based on an idea that can be applied to any circumstance: the freedom is a power inherent in the human being that can only be exercised by responsibility.

Being responsible means taking care of yourself and understanding that every act or action has a consequence. Likewise, as psychotherapist Albert Ellis has pointed out, many people find it easier to avoid certain responsibilities than to face them.

As an example, something psychologists see in therapy sessions is people’s inability to take full responsibility for what happens to them. This is a defense mechanism that makes it easy to blame your partner, your family, your co-workers, or the politicians for your unhappiness. Thus, people project their discomfort onto others, not knowing that often the key to change lies within them.

Personal Responsibility: The Stone You Must Remove From Your Shoe

Sometimes you stumble. Your feet hurt, the shoe hurts, and you feel like there’s something inside it that hurts every time you take a step. However, you don’t stop to find out what’s going on. Instead of sitting down and removing the stone, you blame the path you’re walking on or the “poor shoes” you’re wearing.

Life is sometimes unfair, especially for those who don’t take control of their own lives to try to solve their own problems.

You are responsible for your well-being.

Confucius said that what is inside of us attacks us more than what is outside. In other words, it’s true that your surroundings determine your happiness. It is also true that social and economic factors or a traumatic childhood can condition it. However, the main enemy of your well-being is yourself, not the context or your own past.

Personal responsibility, therefore, is knowing how to commit to creating changes that are beneficial. How to do this? Making bold decisions, taking action, knowing what you need and working on it. First, you need to stop blaming others and take a leading role in the reality you want to create.

It is also important to remember that no one comes into the world with perfect mental health and proof against adversity. You have to learn to get well, which psychological therapy can help with. It offers strategies to generate changes that bring you closer to a balanced life and greater well-being.

Other people do things, but you decide how you feel

Your “stone in your shoe” can take many forms. Sometimes it’s the things that take away your peace and make you moody and even angry. Other times, you carry the pain of a broken relationship or disappointment.

This situation may sound familiar to you. In these cases,  personal responsibility also involves taking control of your own emotions.

You cannot carry this suffering with you all the time like that uncomfortable and painful pebble in your shoe; you need to remove the stone. This means, first of all, accepting and understanding the emotional impact. After that, you need to regulate it, take action and make new decisions.

As a study by the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL) explains, working on emotional responsibility brings you closer to happiness.

Personal responsibility for accepting failures and moving forward

Throughout your life, you won’t just find stones along the way. You’ll also see dead ends and cliffs. It is true that no one prepares you for these unexpected situations. Even when they happen, you have two options.

The first and easiest is to back off, give up, and go back where you came from. However, this is not the right thing to do. After all, personal responsibility also means that you must understand that unforeseen events are a part of life. People make mistakes, and adversity can happen anyway.

So what is the second option? Be responsible, courageous and committed. Initially, you will have to take a step back, yes, but only to gain momentum.

In conclusion, you need to understand that you cannot continue to blame others for your discomfort. You can and deserve to be happy again! However, you need to make decisions and, above all, take responsibility for your own life.