The Stand for Responsibility

“If not for the IRS, I'd have enough money to do the things I want to do.” “I'm so busy handling things for my kids, I don't have any time for myself.” “Work would be much smoother if my boss weren’t so disorganized.” “The traffic keeps making me late.” “As soon as my husband/wife can spend more time with me, our marriage will start working better.”“I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “If only I'd gotten my Ph.D. I would really be successful.” “If my husband would help more around the house, I wouldn't be so tired and stressed all the time.” “If my wife would stop nagging me, I'd be able to relax a little bit.” “If it weren't for a couple of dedicated teachers, I never would have made it through school on my own."“Nobody recognizes my contribution at the office because my co-worker grabs all the credit." “It was just a twist of fate, an accident waiting to happen.”“My parents were never there for me, so now I have a hard time asking people for support.” “If I were married, I would feel so much more complete."

This chapter is about exploring your willingness to be responsible and declaring a new stand about responsibility. Your outlook on responsibility influences how you interpret the facts of reality. You will be looking at responsibility on two separate levels. First, you'll examine your attitudes about responsibility and how they make up the background that determines your generalized worldview. You'll see that your disposition to behave certain ways emerges from that background. Second, you will see how you interpret your own accountability in specific events. Taking a stand for being 100 percent responsible shifts your relationship with yourself and the rest of the world,opening new possibilities for effective behavior.

I will be using the words responsibility and accountability interchangeably. Those words refer to a structure of interpretation by which you declare that you are fully the cause of what happens in your life-including your thoughts, feelings,interpretations, actions,and the resulting events. My assertion is that assuming full responsibility allows you to be the most effective, powerful, and creative in the face of all circumstances.

Two distinct and mutually exclusive structures of interpretation are: the victim interpretation and the responsible interpretation. The characteristics of each permeate both your worldview and your specific behavior. To take a meaningful and potent stand for responsibility you must first understand the distinctions of each domain.

THE VICTIM

Someone or something is always doing things to victims or forcing them to do things against their better judgment or will. They are at the mercy of circumstances, and circumstances are always beyond their control. The victim is the good guy, and “it” or “they” are the bad guys. A lot in the victim's life is out of his or her control, and problems or breakdowns are not their fault. Sometimes they even credit someone or something else with their accomplishments. The victim's interpretation is one by which his or her actions and feelings are determined by outside agents.

To operate as a victim,one need not necessarily have been victimized by anything or anyone specific.Generally, victims perceive the world as an opponent they are up against, or, at best, a headache they have to put up with. Themes of the victim's experience are hope, regret,resignation,and the need to explain.Victims go through life reacting, coping, blaming,and justifying; events and circumstances “have” them.

Telling a story of a specific situation in which you actually have been victimized (i.e.,having your car or house broken into, being raped, being left by a spouse, having someone close to you die, etc.) evokes a consistent range of moods and behaviors. For example, you will tend to feel and act helpless,hurt, bitter,out of control,resentful, righteous, self-pitying,betrayed,abused,cheated, angry. What are the odds that these moods and behaviors are likely to promote effectiveness and breakthrough?

The victim is a conspirator in his or her victimhood, acting covertly to set up conditions that make it seem like outside agents have control over his or her actions and experience. Victims participate in their own victimhood-at some level they are only pretending to be victimized. We all know people who seem to be constantly telling dramatic stories of how they were “done to.” Often, we are not surprised when something bad happens to those people; it is typical of how that person's life works. There are times when life truly serves you a bad deal, but the way a victim responds attracts or magnifies the drama.The victim has a stake in his or her victimhood and constructs the flow of his or her life to perpetuate it.

What is the payoff for being a victim? First, you get justification for not taking action.Since there's nothing you can do about anything anyway, any proactive steps you take would be futile.The victim would rather deal with the consequences of not acting than face the responsibility of taking initiative. This is the person who whines and complains about everything that is preventing him or her from having the good things in life. Not all victims whine, of course. Some are very stoic about it. Some just can't understand why their lives aren't working out. Really hip victims take all kinds of awareness seminars, and then explain to you why their lives aren't working, but don't seem “to be able” to do anything about it. Unlike people who are clear about their commitments and are willing to pay some prices in the short run to manifest their dreams in the long run, victims are often unclear about where they are headed, simply reacting to whatever comes up. Of course, both people will pay prices and reap rewards. One price that responsible people pay is that they must be willing to expend the energy and time to follow through on their ideas, and they risk making mistakes. One of the “rewards" you get when you play the victim is that you can sit back and let life happen to you, saving the time,energy,and emotional risk of taking your own initiative.

A second payoff for being a victim is that you get to maintain your image regardless of the circumstances.Since you didn't have anything to do with what happened, you don't need to worry about not looking good because of it. Victims always have a scapegoat and several layers of excuses that buffer them from the source of any problem. It is dangerous to be around a victim because you run the risk of being the one on whom he or she places the blame for a problem or the responsibility for a solution. For a victim, it is unacceptable and unbearable to make mistakes, whereas in a responsible context, mistakes are understood to be part of the game. The preservation of a victim's selfimage depends on interpreting reality in a way that finds him or her blameless. Thus, the victim's perception of reality is often warped to a degree that hinders his or her capacity to act effectively. Further, victims can't be counted on to make significant contributions toward resolving breakdowns-especially if their mistake is part of the problem-since they are so consumed with looking good in the eyes of themselves and others.

Finally, in being a victim you gain leverage with which to manipulate and control others.You may get others' sympathy,their help, and,best of all, the support you get from them validates that you were victimized. There is a sense of community about victimhood in our culture; we readily accept our own and other people's victim stories.

The culture in general and we as individuals do each other a great disservice when we support each other's victim stories. Compared with a responsible interpretation of life, the victim interpretation inhibits your ability to take initiative and be creative. A key distinction about the responsible structure of interpretation that enables effective action is that you are willing to tell the truth in order to move forward, even if it means admitting to being less than perfect. In a responsible framework, your ego needs are subordinate to the accomplishment of your commitments. Conversely,the victim abdicates responsibility and is willing to sacrifice the final result in an ego-driven effort to look good. The strategy required to look good can sabotage the ultimate success of the victim's projects. There are a million ways in which this is evident in the world. One typical example is when someone makes a mistake in business and discovers it in time to rectify it, but conceals his or her discovery because it would be self-incriminating, and takes the victim stance instead-making it seem that the outcome of the project was out of his or her control. Hence, the cover-up that is intended to protect that individual's reputation damages his or her short-term and long-term results. Had this person been willing to admit the mistake as soon as he or she discovered it, there would have been the opportunity to intervene and solve the problem rather than put all energy into dodging blame. Now, of course this is an obvious distinction in theory, but it isn't that easy to live by. Our relationships are set up to tolerate self-aggrandizement at the expense of the greater good. The price of admitting your mistakes makes the victim role attractive in many ways.The more firmly we as a culture, and as individuals,accommodate the victim context and make people pay for being responsible, the less possibility for effective, committed action.

Victim stories rationalize the present based on a past that was out of their control and thus set up a future that is also beyond their control. Since there was nothing they could do about “it” before, what can they do about it now or in the future? And if there was nothing they could do about “that,” then there probably isn’t much they can really do about anything. Thus,in being victims in the present, individuals set up their future alibis.

Be candid about your tendencies to be a victim and write your responses in your journal.

• On what specific occasions have you actually been victimized?
• On what or whom do you most often place blame when things don't turn out?
• Describe how you behave when you are victimized.
• What do you get out of taking the victim stance?

RESPONSIBILITY

People who operate in a context of responsibility, on the other hand, declare that they are accountable for their interpretations and behavior. Caring mainly about the ultimate success of their projects, they are oriented to action and correction rather than explanation and selfprotection. They don't spend a lot of energy estimating how things got to be the way they are, but rather focus on effective action.They are more concerned with having a project work than with the reasons why it won't.

This is not to imply that victims are not concerned with having their projects work-they are. In fact, being a victim is often precisely how they get their projects to turn out; they manage projects by locating both problems and solutions outside of themselves. In the responsible structure of interpretation, one, instead,looks to oneself as the source of all aspects of the project. The victim sees peoples' roles in terms of credit and blame, the responsible person in terms of what works and what does not work.

When you are responsible, you voice few psychological assessments, focusing instead on what action will further your project or relationship. You are able,willing, and striving to tell the truth about what you did and didn't do. You are not as concerned with looking good as you are with having life work.

Real responsibility is not to be confused with blame, credit, obligation, or duty. Acting from a context of responsibility, you are concerned with the facts inasmuch as they bear on your next actions, not on whether they give you credit or blame. A stand of responsibility does not signify restrictive ties, but freedom to act. When you operate out of a stand of responsibility, you are empowered by being the source of your results, not intimidated or weighed down by it.

Take a story about a time when you were victimized and tell it instead as though you were actually responsible for what happened. Even if you don't believe it yourself, pretend that you were responsible and build a case to support that point of view. Imagine you have to convince someone of your responsibility even if you don't see it that way yourself. Experiment with a responsible interpretation of the same facts which before now you have interpreted from the point of view of a victim.

Do you notice a difference in your experience even when you are just pretending to look at the situation from a responsible point of view? Typical moods and behaviors generated from a responsible context are freedom,choice,control，powerfulness,honesty,peacefulness,ease, relief-all conducive to effective action and possibility.

You may pay prices when you live life responsibly.For one thing, you have to give up all the goodies you got from being a victim: the reasons not to take action; the protection of your image; the leverage with which to manipulate others, get their sympathy,and get them to handle things for you. You risk standing alone, and even take hostility from others who may not be willing to live on the edge, who may prefer the conspiracy, comfort, and pain of victimhood.

People living in the different frameworks of victim and responsibility may agree on the facts of a situation, but their interpretations of the causes, effects, and appropriate responses will be different.How you interpret and participate in events tends to generate evidence supporting your beliefs. Your interpretations have a cyclic relationship with your actions, each reinforcing and regenerating the other.

Are you,in fact, responsible for absolutely everything in your life? Are you responsible for nothing? Or are you responsible in certain situations,but not in others? If the answer to the last question is yes, then how do you discern when you are responsible and when you aren't? If you look at it one way, human beings are ultimate victimsyou didn't have a choice about being born, you aren't responsible for being male or female, Catholic or Jewish, blue eyed or brown eyed, tall or short, American or Chinese. You are completely molded by your history,culture,and language.There are external circumstances that are clearly beyond your control: the weather, natural disasters, other peoples' actions, and so on. You are powerless over all that has gone before you,and powerless over much of the physical universe.

In a court of law you hear two entirely different interpretations of the exact same facts. The legal process is designed to steer our interpretations of the facts toward a conclusion that is valid according to the law. In life, however, there is no system for judging responsibility. Being responsible or being a victim is a question of interpretation,not of fact. Being responsible in your own life takes a willingness to jump in and take a stand about it, without having evidence, formulas or guarantees.

I invite you to explore the possibilities for you in taking a stand for responsibility in your life.

TAKING A STAND FOR RESPONSIBILITY

Why take a stand for responsibility if a victim stand is easier, has a whole bunch of neat under-the-table benefits, and doesn't require you to oppose the already strong cultural drift of victimhood? The answer to that lies in another question: What are you committed to getting accomplished? If your intention is to become more effective, the only place worth looking is at your own responsibility.

While it may be true that you have played the victim in certain situations, hanging on to those stories can set the stage for future events in your life for a long time. Unless you face up to your past responsibly, it will continue to run you.

What can you do about it when you really seem to have been victimized? You don't have control over many aspects of life. But you do have control over your interpretations. You do have control of how events and people influence your attitudes and behaviors. You do have control over your response to the conditions and events in your life.

Responsibility is a stand you take about life-you take life on as a responsible agent and that's how you look at the world. You operate as if you were responsible for everything,including those things over which you may not have control.

When you take absolute responsibility for how things are, you can begin to act more effectively because you require from yourself the resources that the victim can only hope to get from outside him- or herself. The victim's interpretations are unreliable, at best, since they are, by nature, colored by self-serving explanations and justifications. When you are willing to take responsibility for what isn't working as well as what is (not confusing responsibility with blame), you process information and facts differently, without a personal investment in how they reflect on you. You end up with more accurate data. You, therefore, have a solid background from which to take effective action.

Operating responsibly, you participate with other people out of a commitment to intervention and mutual accomplishment. For victims,relationships include avoiding domination,not getting hurt,getting what they think they deserve, getting credit, assigning blame, and other forms of manipulation. From a stand for responsibility, your relationships with other people shift as you become more concerned with contributing to them in a way that makes a substantive difference than with what they can do to or for you. A stand for responsibility is the throttle of effective intervention.

To begin to unfold the distinctions of a stand for responsibility, and to clarify where you stand about it, ask yourself these questions in your next journal entry.

• When you told your victim story as if you were responsible (not to blame) for the turn of events, what was your experience of that event? How was that experience different from when you told the story as a sincere victim?
• What are your interactions with others like when you see yourself as a victim? What possibilities are opened and closed?
• What are your interactions with others like when you see them as victims? What possibilities are opened and closed?
• If you were to take an absolute stand for responsibility, in what situations and relationships might new possibilities open up? What actions would you take that you haven't taken so far?
• If you were to take an absolute stand for responsibility, you might experience some uncomfortableness when you confront the situations and relationships in which you formerly played the victim. Are you willing to be uncomfortable for the sake of standing for responsibility?
• Take a stand for absolute responsibility for one week whether or not you understand it or agree with it. Do you accept this request? If you make this promise, what specific actions will you take immediately to assist you to shift your interpretations and behavior?

How exactly do you take a stand for responsibility? Although there are indicators, there are no rules to follow and no litmus tests to measure your responsibility. You stand for responsibility by declaration. Through experience you can begin to reveal its nature and its value for yourself. It is analogous to being coached in a sport. If your tennis coach tells you to hit the ball in a particular way, you will only get how it works when you begin hitting the ball that way yourself. You know that the goal is to be a more effective tennis player, but must count on your coach to guide you in the process. Similarly, you can listen to theories and stories about responsibility all you want, but you must start taking action even before it makes sense to you-you will only begin to grasp the meaning of it when you actually shift your own practices. As you consistently interpret situations as the responsible agent, you will become increasingly disposed to behaving responsibly and effectively. The stand for responsibility validates and reinforces itself.

THE LANGUAGE OF A STAND FOR RESPONSIBILITY

The language with which you speak about yourself and your life reflects and reinforces your stand about anything; responsibility,choice, concern for others,and so on. Our words, phrases, intonation,and body language are clues to the general context from which we operate. People who consistently say things like “I would have, but...”“I tried to...” “If only...” “If not for...” “I wish...”“I'll try..." and "I hope I can. .." expose a tendency toward the victim attitude. On the other hand, language like“I promise...” “I will ..." and "I didn't...” expose a tendency toward and attitude of responsibility. The power of the spoken word to bring forth reality cannot be understated.

In your process of transformation, a deliberate and rigorous shift in your use of the language and in your practices will assist you to embody the subtle aspects of responsibility and all other shifts you make in this work. When explaining why something turned out the way it did, begin your sentence with "I" rather than with “they,” “he,” “she,” or “it.” Practice publicly acknowledging your role in events, both when you are effective and when you make mistakes. When you encounter breakdowns, ask yourself questions like “What do I need to do to correct this?”“Whose assistance do I need to request to resolve this?”“Who else needs to know this so their projects won’t be jeopardized?"

YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN

A stand for responsibility belongs to you alone. Shared responsibility is an oxymoron-like jumbo shrimp, pretty ugly, and Internal Revenue Service. You can participate with others who also operate in a context of responsibility, but you can't share responsibility in common with others. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this eloquently:“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”