In The Success Principles, author Jack Canfield says that we should take 100% responsibility for everything in our lives. We should take responsibility even when it seems outside of our control.

I completely agree with this. Too often in life we find external reasons to point to instead of realizing that we choose the path we are on. We find things to blame. We don't take full responsibility since some aspects may fall outside of our control.

Things we Can’t Control

There are always things we can’t control. But anything less than taking 100% responsibility can become a way to make excuses.

Take the stock investor who blames a loss in his or her investment as a product of bad advice from someone else. Instead of looking at why they made that choice and how they can avoid that mistake in the future, they find a scapegoat.

Take the entrepreneur who failed to bring their product to the masses. They might say customers are too naïve or that the economy caused them to fail.

I know this mindset well. When I was in college, I often found others to blame or reasons why I made a mistake. I never realized what I was doing. For me, it seemed natural when something went wrong to look for fault outside of myself to protect my ego.

Jack Canfield mentions this in his book. He says, “In fact, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life we don’t like.”

How do we Improve?

That is interesting and very true. I’m less concerned with how we were conditioned to point the finger at others. I'm curious about how we can improve this.

In other words, I don’t care if it is because we gave out participation trophies to kids. Or if we grew up in a society that reinforces a sense of entitlement.

It could be that our educational system focuses too much on individual achievement over teamwork. For me it doesn’t matter because the choice to take 100% responsibility has to always start with the individual.

Being a part of a team might help, since most teams have a common goal. In that environment many individuals must do their job to succeed. But even in those scenarios I’ve seen players spend more time blaming their teammates than taking responsibility. And focusing on trophies for the winners doesn’t mean each person takes full responsibility for their life.

So those reasons seem hallow. Rather than explore why, I'd rather look at how we can improve.

So, what do you do if you find yourself in this mindset and want to change? For me it is all about systematic improvement. It is actually quite difficult to change this mindset overnight. We have habitual ways of reacting to situations. Assuming we can read an article and change is naïve.

The reality is that this has to be something that we look to change slowly and consistently over time. We have to change our systems and habits.

Take Ownership

The first step for me was to start to take ownership. It still felt difficult to say that a failure was entirely my fault. There were likely other factors that played into it and only a few that fell within my control. So, the first step was to shift my mindset to one of taking ownership.

Taking ownership of a situation gets away from the blame game and focuses more on what you have to do to fix it. By owning a situation, you can start to see the levels of interaction. You start to see the full system at play, instead of seeing the ways that justify why it wasn’t your fault.

By taking ownership we can create a plan to improve. If we do this over and over again and turn to it whenever we have a misstep, we can start to see things more objectively. We start to see that the bruised ego that accompanies a failure isn’t that bad as long as we correct any underlying issues.

What can we do to Change the Situation?

This completely changes how we handle setbacks. We stop looking for someone to blame and instead focus on what we can do to change the situation.

If we make this subtle shift towards taking ownership, it becomes easier to admit when we make a mistake. Then we can see our responsibility in a failure. Over time we can start to take 100% responsibility for everything in our lives. But to start we have to take ownership of the situation. This will help reveal the various systems elements that all play a part. But it still gives you control to improve.

So, if you are struggling in an area where you have failed, take ownership of the situation. Decide to make the necessary changes to avoid the same failure in the future. Taking ownership makes you a better leader because you now own the situation rather than look to blame someone. It also makes you a better person because you start to improve.