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If you’re really honest with yourself, you don’t want to be more responsible for your life.
Said differently, you don’t want to be take on more ownership for how things are going.
Taking ownership and being responsible is burdensome. It means there’s more that you have to lift.
Like going to the gym, every day and pushing more weight, it’s tiresome. It’s annoying. It’s a burden that you have to confront and take on, even and especially in those moments when all you really want to do is stay in your warm, cozy bed.
The human condition is to veer away from responsibility, because responsibility paints a target on your back. It means you’re the last point of call for something being handled. It means more work. It means you being in more difficult conversations, and it means less avenues to escape to safety.
If not for the results it provided, few people would go to the gym (while you may like the feel of lifting weights, if your body saw no change as a result, you probably would feel less inclined to keep doing it, right?). The side-benefit of going to the gym is that we look fit and healthy, but the real benefit, the benefit that helps you in your life, is that you can do more with your body. You are capable of lifting more work.
This is the same reason to take on more responsibility — it allows you to do more as leader. Being a leader means being responsible for more and more of the way things are going, moment by moment, day by day, in your life.
Taking on more responsibility isn’t necessarily fun. It’s burdensome, tiring and often directly in opposition to the warm coziness of the bed that victimhood represents.
But taking it on allows you more power in your life. It allows you to do more, as leader.
And the only way to grow those muscles are to push yourself beyond your current capacity.
This is true. How do I get over this or accept this? I don’t want to grow because I don’t want to be responsible for people. I’ve often had the realization that life requires effort and yet I refuse to do anything which makes me upset.
Hey Ivonne,
This makes a lot of sense. If you don’t want to be responsible for your experience of life, then it makes sense you would be refusing to do anything. After all, if the belief you’re currently operating from is “I shouldn’t have to be responsible” or “I’m not responsible”, then why would you do anything? It’s not your responsibility, so what would the point of doing anything be?
Since this is the belief you’re currently operating with, I would let go of the idea that you should do anything different. Instead, you may simply empower the belief you have. “I don’t want to be responsible, and I shouldn’t have to”.
And then just notice the consequences of that belief. How is life for you? What’s your experience of life when you’re refusing to be responsible? What is the payoff of this belief? What do you get out of it? (NB: There’s always a payoff — don’t let yourself off the hook by insisting there isn’t one).
From here, you can start to see if you want to keep choosing this belief, or if you want to choose a different one. The current belief will always be more familiar and thus easier to stick with — but, it won’t give you a different experience of life. The practice I’m giving you is basically getting really clear on the impact of the belief you’re currently empowering, so you can choose it consciously and be empowered by your choice, rather than unconsciously, and a victim to the choice.
Love,
Adam
Hey Adam, I’m not Ivonne, but that reply you gave was really helpful. I never thought to just own. I’m used to fighting against myself or trying to fix myself. Thanks for the perspective shift.
I second RB’s comments. Also, I really appreciate the breakdown of how all humans at sometime perceive responsibility as a target on our back. Responsibility often leads to more responsibility. Some of us get stuck there I think due to an underlying fear.
R.B., Nathalie — I’m with you both! The hardest part to creating real transformation in our lives is often the very first step: letting go of the idea that we actually want to transform, and instead, simply sitting exactly where we are, and noticing what we’re getting out of it.
We live in our world that is so fixated on “achieving something different yesterday”, it makes it almost impossible for us to slow down and really get where we are, and what we’re getting from it. Only from a willingness to begin at this point, can we really start to shift. Thank you both for your comments!
I don’t know if I’m off topic but there’s responsibility that people can’t handle due to illness or like getting married and raising kids some just don’t want that responsibility or can’t handle the responsibility and it’s ok
Hey Ruth — thanks for your comment.
You are SO right. Responsibility is never something we should take. It can only be chosen. Anytime someone (including yourself, btw) is advocating that we should be responsible, it’s missing the mark.
What I’m pointing to is the opportunity to choose to be responsible.
Not because we should choose it — but because, on the other side of that choice, our life starts to open up, and we start to get our hands on how powerful we really are.
Love,
Adam
I don’t wanna be responsible ever. It’s just responsibility scares me. I don’t ever want a family or children . They scare me. I don’t even think i can do a job because responsibility man. I do want a job but i don’t want responsibility. Does it make sense to you?
Hey Apurva,
That makes a lot of sense to me. It sounds to me like there’s two distinct things happening for you:
1. You are afraid of responsibility; and
2. Because of #1, you don’t really want responsibility.
My hunch is that, if you could address your fears about responsibility, then you might be more interested in taking on some. After all, many of us desire the benefits of responsibility. When we turn 16 (here in Canada, at least), we want to get a driver’s license. That’s a degree of responsibility for driving safely and being a good citizen behind the wheel. It can be scary too, but we’re clear on the benefits to taking on that responsibility, and so we choose to step into our fear.
You don’t have to step into what is scary for you, until you feel you’re ready. Everything unfolds at the perfect tempo. People might tell you otherwise, but I would suggest simply honouring your fear, and making friends with it. What about family and children is scary for you? If it was perfectly acceptable to be afraid of these things, what wisdom does your fear have for you right now?
Love,
–Adam
Sometimes when we are young, we are given an opportunity to lead others. In this situation, it wasn’t by choice. For example, let’s say a teacher appointed you to lead/teach/mentor at-risk youth kids (middle/high school ages). You take on the responsibility because it is something you should do because someone with authority told you that you would be good at it. However, years pass and one of the at-risk kids died. The individual who took on the responsibility (when they were an adolescent themself) now is an adult and doesn’t want to influence anyone else ever again because they feel like they failed at being a leader/teacher/mentor when given an opportunity to be responsible to help successfully transition another human into adulthood. What advice can you give to help the person who doesn’t want to be responsible/lead others (now hermit mode) because they feel guilty for not being able to save a life?
What a great question ❤️
While the particulars of this person’s situation are especially dramatic (someone died), the reasoning is really common as far as why someone wouldn’t want to take responsibility ever again. In essence, we have a stored memory of a time we took responsibility (or it we were invited into it, or it was imposed upon us), and then something bad happened, and the lesson we learned for ourselves is “Responsibility is bad. Never again.”
I wouldn’t really offer advice to someone like that. Instead, I’d support them, first, by listening and hearing their story. I would listen so deeply that their stance and approach to responsibility made complete sense in my heart. Give them the gift of really feeling “gotten”.
And then from there, if, and only if, they wanted to create something different, I would explore with them the cost of living their life this way. What are the consequences of never again taking responsibility? And, what are they payoffs? What benefits do you get from that?
And if they wanted to go further, we might explore what would be available if they were to create a new relationship to responsibility. What would be available if they set this down?
Only from looking at those things might they be interested in changing things. But that decision always has to be their choice. We can’t influence it, and our (well-meaning) attempts to push someone in a new direction actually just entrench them further in their existing paradigm.
And, having said that, it should be obvious then that if the person doesn’t want to engage in any of this conversation, I would simply understand and love them exactly as they are.
–Adam
Hi there, I just turned 30 and responsibility is currently one of the topics that upsets me the most.
Let me be very straightforward with this: I simply did not asked to be born. Why do I have to be responsible of a life I didn’t ask for? I live with a dog, she is MY responsibility and I have to do things I don’t want to do in order to give her the best possible life because it was my choice to adopt her, that said, it is my duty and my pleasure to go to work everyday to find the means to support her unconditionally.
But my parents never considered this, they never gave me the chance to study or gave me advice and opportunities for my life to be bearable. It’s me who has made terrible choices in life out of unconscious decisions because nobody ever taught me I could do better/differently and I’ve been doing what I can for 12 years.
I’m extremely mad at life. I never find an open door that helps me build a better reality so I get to enjoy my own existence. I am willing to keep trying differently, but I’m exhausted of having to wear a mask to fit in jobs that won’t pay me enough to live on my own or having to lie to myself lowering my expectations to avoid frustration.
I am being responsible towards my own life, I truly do not understand how that is supposed to empower me when it feels more like its draining me. I agree to effort with reward, not just to cover human rights necessities and I’m not a machine made to work 12 hour shifts.
I ain’t having kids until I am 100% sure I’ll be able to support them in every possible way until I die, after all, life on earth is a painful experience, if I’m taking the decision of bringing another life to the world, then I have to guarantee I’ll try my really very best to make their lives less hard.
I am not sure if the whole ”take charge of your own life” isn’t another scam to keep people bowing down to an unfair system or it’s truly the only way to happiness plus I don’t even relate taking on more responsibility to creating more freedom, quite the opposite.
I’d really appreciate if you had some comments on this since I liked your replies to other messages!
Hey Poppy,
Thanks for your question.
There’s a lot to pull apart here, so I’ll do my best.
The most important thing here is that no one can “make” you take responsibility for your experience of life, and there’s no “should” to it.
It’s a perfectly acceptable choice to be at the effect of the world around you, your parents, the way people are, etc.
I’n not saying that ironically, I genuinely mean it.
And both of those choices will have benefits and consequences. The benefits to being at the effect, or victimized by the world around you, is that you don’t have anything you need to do to change things, because there’s nothing you can do. From this position, the way you’re experiencing your life is on other people. It can be kind of nice not to have to take charge of our life — honestly, being responsible can often feel like a burden. The consequence of this choice, is that you end up feeling pretty powerless, and all of the stuff you might want to do in your life is always unavailable because of other people. So, down this path, we kind of end up with a placid experience but a lot of dissatisfaction and a sense of being pretty powerless.
If we choose to take the path of being responsible, then the consequence is that we can’t let ourselves off the hook any more. When someone cuts us off in traffic, we can no longer say “I’m upset and it’s their fault. If they hadn’t cut me off in traffic, I wouldn’t be mad.” Instead we take responsibility for how we feel: “That person cut me off, and now I’m mad. How am I relating to what happened that’s leaving me mad? Is there a different story I could tell myself, that might leave me feeling different?”
That takes work and a commitment. It’s easier not to. But the benefit of doing so is that you take get to take back your power in life. The experience you have in your life, and the results you create, stop being at the effect of how other people show up.
None of this is required. It’s perfectly alright to be mad at life, angry with your parents, and to hang out there.
What I would suggest is checking in with yourself to see if doing that is giving you the kind of experience you want from your life.