Take Responsibility

One of the most revolutionary things that you can do for yourself is to realize that ultimately, you are the only person responsible for where you are at in life. 

It is the culmination of your decisions that have resulted in the place that you are at right now. The realization of this is liberating as it enables you to take control over your situation. You begin to take accountability for your actions and see how each decision you have made has led to where you are at. 

You also begin to see how you can proceed forward from the point that you are at. This doesn’t necessitate you being at a low point.

You may be thinking, “but I wasn’t in control of x or y within my life to this point.” While you may not have been in control of every aspect of your life, you are always in control of how you react and utilize your experiences. This is true regardless of the circumstances that you grew up in. 

Not taking responsibility takes on various forms but usually it manifests in the form of blaming your situation on others or external variables instead of looking inward to see what you could have done differently. 

When you blame others, you strip yourself of the ability to control your situation. You are assigning everything that happens in your life outside of your control. This usually spirals to the point of hopelessness and always deflecting when you are called out either by yourself or by others. 

The inherent danger in doing this is that you allow your life to be dictated by what happens to you. I have never met a successful person that doesn’t take accountability for their actions. Contrary to that, the most successful people I have met are usually those that are quick to accept responsibility and find ways to utilize it to their advantage. 

Yesterday was Valentine’s day and we decided to order food on DoorDash (which is always insanely overpriced with the margins that they bake into every food item). She wanted a Pizookie and I decided that I would get a high-protein meal of a burger and fries as I thought it would be uncomfortable if I made a meal while she ordered out - especially on a holiday. 

This normally would be insignificant but I am in the process of cutting calories so I can lean out before I begin lean-bulking. For those that haven’t done any body building, it’s a big no-no to stray from your caloric deficit as you can unwind your progress pretty quickly if you aren’t careful. 

In this situation, I could blame my wife for wanting to order food - causing me discomfort in having to choose between eating my home cooked meal with her or comfortably having a burger with her and straying from my goal. If I blamed her, it would easily enable me to have that excuse any time she eats something that isn’t in line with my meal plan. 

I chose not to. I recognized the situation and chose to have a fun meal with her while being mindful of what I ate. I actually maintained a larger caloric deficit than normal while sharing this meal with her and I still managed to eat my 250g of protein that day. 

While a seemingly insignificant example, how you feel about small interactions like this and how you subconsciously make decisions in these moments influence how you feel about all situations. If I leaned into assigning responsibility to my wife for my burger consumption, I could easily blame her for any misstep that I make within my calorie cutting progression and this would likely spill into other areas of our life. 

My taking ownership gave me to have the meal, be smart about it, enjoy some quality time with her, stay on track, and easily return to my regularly scheduled meals today. 

The seemingly insignificant decision of assigning responsibility to myself in this moment can lead to profound impacts in numerous areas of my life. It positively impacts my life at home and my relationship with my wife. 

By taking responsibility with this one meal, I set myself up to continue improving my diet and progress towards my bodybuilding goals. This influences me to take more responsibility around the house and I start keeping a cleaner environment. This positively impacts my relationship with my wife, strengthening our relationship and further encouraging me to take responsibility for the dishes (which we both hate doing). The clean sink reminds me of how nice it is to have a clutter free home. I take more responsibility and clean out the garage that I have been thinking about doing for 8 months. With the benefits I am seeing from taking responsibility at home, I begin to take more responsibility at work. This snowballs until you begin to own every aspect of your life and react to each stimulus as an opportunity for you to make a choice. 

What if I didn’t take responsibility for this meal? Well, I blame my wife for tempting me into having such tasty food. I eat my meal and feel shameful that I strayed from my meal plan and start to internally berate myself about how I’m not good enough. How I shouldn’t even go for this bodybuilding goal because I’m never going to be able to stick to it anyway. I never have and I never will. I begin to resent my wife. If it wasn’t for her wanting that stupid Pizookie, I wouldn’t have ever eaten that burger. If I wouldn’t have eaten that burger, I’d be ripped. But instead, I’m getting fat. I’m leaning further into an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle. My office is a mess. I barely show up for work because what’s the point? I’m never going to be the CEO or accomplish what I want to. 

What if the above is how you already think? How you already feel towards yourself or towards your environment? Candidly, you are going to have your work cut out for you. The good news is, with consistent effort, you still can turn your life around! You are still able to take ownership of your situation or even of little behaviors throughout your day that you can manipulate and cast votes for the person that you want to be. 

What the hell am I talking about, “casting votes?” This isn’t an election. Who even wants to vote when their votes don’t matter?

Every single decision you make, you are casting votes. There are numerous different versions of yourself that you can become in your life. There’s a version of you that is a Fortune 500 CEO. A version of you that carves out a divot in your favorite spot on the couch. A version of you that starts a successful company. A version of you that is homeless, struggling to get by. A version of you that is content with your suburban home and a white picket fence with a perfectly normal family. 

It is up to you which of these lives (or others) you are casting votes to attain. Abstaining from voting is a vote and one that has an incredibly high likelihood of you never achieving what you want out of life. 

But Dakota - I have already casted so many votes for the wrong version of myself. I am deep in this hole and there is no way that I will ever make it out of here. 

You are wrong. But you need to stop the momentum of the votes that you have previously casted and this is going to take work. Start with small decisions. Are you overwhelmed by the clutter in your space? What would the Fortune 500 CEO version of you do? Clean up the clutter. Cast a vote to be them by cleaning up the clutter. It can be just a small corner to start but cast that vote. 

You see a dish in your sink? What would the suburban version of you do? They likely have a spotless sink because they take pride in their suburban home. Clean a single dish - or more if you feel like. But cast that vote. 

You’re upset, lonely, miserable, and hate your life. What would the version of you that loves their life being doing? What small vote can you cast to move your life in their direction? 

What does this have to do with responsibility? 

In each of these situations, you are having an internal (or external, it’s your life) dialogue where you are taking account of your life, taking responsibility for where you are at in that moment and making a conscious decision (or vote) towards where you want to be. This shows responsibility through your decisions. 

This is revolutionary because while we often search for life-changing moments or wait for someone else to transform our lives, the truth is that your life changes through the seemingly insignificant decisions you make throughout your day. Each small choice - washing that dish, clearing that clutter, eating that meal mindfully - is a vote for who you want to become. And it all begins with one revolutionary act: taking responsibility for your own life.

The power to change your life isn't in the hands of others or waiting for some future dramatic event - it's in the small decisions you make right now. What vote will you cast today?"