Taking 100% Responsibility

Take 100% Responsibility: How to respond to rocks being thrown at you  

Hi, let me introduce you to Dr. Ken Gibson and his daughter Tanya Mitchell. They are the founders of YESS – which stands for “Your Epic Success System”. They created this video – to help you or someone you love – be happier and more successful - by understanding and implementing the most important Life Skills. At the end of this video, in a few minutes, you will be offered some free tools that will help you determine the underlying cause of your teen’s struggle, options you have to eliminate them, and an eBook to help encourage your teen to take action – to do something about them -or if there are no major struggles – to help make their life so much better. These will do that and more – you’ll love them!

One quick comment before we start with the topic of this video.

YESS is devoted to helping teens and young adults become more productive and happier. Prior to YESS, Ken & Tanya founded LearningRx and BrainRx – brain training companies located in 43 countries and in 23 languages – that achieve unmatched results in learning skills. Recently, they took some of that technology and started YESS – because – it is obvious to them – that people struggled not just because of poor learning skills – but many – because of poor LIFE SKILLS – This video is about one of those life skills.  

There are many factors that contribute to your life-long success. How you manage your time, your self-talk, your perseverance over trials and failures, and so on – all of those are factors. However, while all of these are important, there’s one key that I consider most important. In fact, your ability to follow this key affects your ability in all the other factors. What is it? 

The number one key to life-long success that precedes everything is that you have to take 100% full personal responsibility for your life. You must take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life. You have to take hold of the fact that where you are today is because of the choices you made before, and where you will be tomorrow is because of the choices you make today. 

Too often we give up the power of self-responsibility 

The principle of 100% responsibility sounds simple and basic; however, it’s not always easy, and many, many people live their lives in mediocrity and in not reaching their full potential because they don’t take responsibility. It’s often easier to pass that responsibility to someone or something else. So how do we pass on that responsibility? What traps us keeps us from taking responsibility? 

The three biggies are complaining, excuses, and blaming. 

Complaining

Sometimes, instead of doing what we need to do about a circumstance, we complain about it. Have you noticed that? 

I like what Jack Canfield says about complaining in his book The Success Principles. He says that we only complain about things that we know something better exists, that something could be different, that we could do something about.

He says:

“So, you have this image of something better and you know you would prefer it, but you are unwilling to take the risks required to create it.”

Something is happening in our life that we can do, but instead of taking steps to fix it or deal with it, we complain. Why?

Because it involves risk. It takes risks to fix or achieve what we want. We risk ridicule, failure, and so on. So instead, we complain about it to try to make ourselves feel better.

You see it all the time on Facebook and Twitter. I sometimes just avoid it because I don’t want that kind of negativity in my life. Complaining may make you feel good (temporarily), but it doesn’t solve anything. You stay exactly where you are at. 

If you want to change that, you have to stop complaining, take the risk, and do what you need to do to fix what you are complaining about. 

Making Excuses 

It also can be easy to make excuses when we see ourselves not where we want to be or to explain our actions. People, especially teens make a lot of excuses “If someone else didn’t…” or “If my parents…” 

Other excuses may include:

The situation was too tough. The weather wasn’t right. We are just having a bad break. We just weren’t born “privileged” or “lucky” like others. Excuses are deadly to success. 

Here’s a hard truth:

Often excuses are just reasons people give to make themselves feel better for not being where they want to be. It makes you feel a lot better making an excuse for your current status than fessing up to the fact that it was your choices that led you there.

And another sad fact is that when you start telling those lies, at first you may know it’s a lie. But, over time, you start believing the lie as truth. And that’s sad and dangerous.

Now you might say, that people are born with “privilege” and some people do have “lucky breaks”. Fact: People will always be born in different situations with different levels and ease of immediate opportunity. Some people will always have to work harder.

That’s life. You can use that as an excuse for staying in mediocrity, or you get over it and do the extra work to get to where you want to go.

Example: 

Jim Stovall, the author of Ultimate Productivity, went blind when he was in his 20s. Now if there ever is an excuse or something to blame, that would be it, right?

Nope. He goes through one book a day with an accelerated tape player. He started a TV station for the blind. He’s written multiple books, one of which became a movie. He didn’t blame. He took personal responsibility and changed where he was. 

What excuses are you making right now? What lies are you believing that you’ve told yourself over and over? It’s time to face the facts and takes responsibility. If you want to be successful in life, you’ve got to commit: No Excuses! Ever.

Blaming

Many people lay blame for where they are at in life. They blame everyone and everything for the situations they are in and the state of life they are in except for the one person they should look at – themselves. 

For one, when you cast blame, you are surrendering your power, abilities, and life to the power of something or someone else. You are saying that they have control over you and that you are powerless. 

And here’s another danger of blame: When we cast blame, when we always look outside of ourselves for the state we are in or the circumstances we caused, we don’t learn or grow.

And because we blamed instead of learning, what happens? We stay in the same spot, in the same conditions, except maybe a little bit more miserable because we consider ourselves victims of our circumstances and those around us. 

Look to yourself. Instead of looking externally for where you are at, your conditions, your circumstances, and your attitudes look inward. Look toward yourself. Stop blaming others and take responsibility for where you are at, how you act, and the choices you made.

How to respond to rocks being thrown at you?

You can’t control every event and situation, but you can control your response. 

In his book, Jack Canfield gives this formula that he received from Dr. Robert Resnick:

O = E + R

Outcome = Event + Response

The outcome of anything that happens in your life is equal to the event itself and your response to it. You see, it’s not the event that controls you. It’s your response to the event. You can’t always change the event, but you can change your response. You can change how you react and the choices you make.

You can change your actions, your thoughts, and your mentality. You can choose to learn and grow. What’s great about this truth is that, if you don’t like where you are at, all you need to do is change your response!

It’s all your choice. You can’t always change the events, or what happens to you. But you can always choose how you react to those events. You can take personal responsibility for yourself.

Here is Tanya again. YESS promised - 3 helps for you – they are in the link below – in the description - and they are free.

First: An assessment for both parent and student to take - evaluating the student’s life skills – so that you know which skills are weak – and likely the underlying cause of any struggle.

Second: An eBook Ken wrote to encourage his grandson Finn – who was struggling. He made Finn the main character in the book, and he is introduced to a world-famous coach and others - who share with Finn their stories and – the 7 major life principles - that when learned, understood, and applied – gave them enormous success and happiness.

Third: A 4-part short video challenge – that pinpoints the 2 major causes, and another 14 sub-causes of a lack of happiness and success for teens – actually all people. Also, 12 key points and tools that will help you understand WHY there is a struggle - and a blueprint of OPTIONS that you can take to eliminate those struggles.

So -click on the link in the description below to get all these free bits of help.

Thank you for watching this video, I hope you found it helpful. Don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. We also appreciate your feedback so don’t hesitate to express your thoughts and opinions in the comments section. We will be back with another amazing video soon. We wish you a happy and successful life.