Should we take 100% responsibility all the time for things that happen to us?

Life is really random and we cannot escape this reality though many choose to not acknowledge this fact. $hit happens and that is not just a cliché and again is reality. To truly succeed in life you have to own that reality and have control over your ability to navigate the choppy waters of this randomness of those things you truly do not have control over. Once you acknowledge that you cannot control these random events that bring bad into your life and at the same time some really cool moments….you become free to live and accept the true meaning of life in all it’s glory and goriness. Horrible events are teachable moments….how you might ask? These events teach us what we are capable of dealing with.

Just set goals and develop a thick enough skin so you do not shoulder the burdens of spite that are bountiful in life and take time to stop and smell the roses. This is why I love to garden and plant flowers.

In actuality there is very little we can control. We believe that we control things because the catastrophe has not happened. One can drive very defensively and still be involved in a horrific accident; they left the house 4 minutes later because they misplaced their keys, etc. Maybe they had to detour because of roadwork, those seemingly random events placed them on a stretch of road where other event were going to cause vehicle to collide. People think it was them that powered up their phones, laptops, etc. if there were some mechanical or software problem that just occurred, pushing the power button would have done little. Because nothing malfunctioned, we feeble humans believed we controlled something when we can’t even guarantee ourselves our next breath.

I know that we cannot control what happens to us, but should we take 100% responsibility when it happens? Usually a person who does not achieve their goals, usually blame another person or thing for their failure, when they should have really pointed blame at themselves. For example the person who dropped out of college and pointing a finger at someone who made them drop out. Now, people might say it was his/her choice to quit but if they were in the persons shoes would they still say the same thing?

@Eggie Emphatic YES! Taking control over bad things that happens gives you power over your moment of grief and despair. You need to take that control so you can move on and live your life. To not do this leaves you in a messy pity party of grief and helplessness that will keep you from doing what ever it is you really need to do.

Neglecting this reality then becomes excuses to feel sorry for yourself and what has happened. Bad things happen….they are simply random events you have zero control over and you cannot stop them from happening but you do have 100% control over how you deal with them.

We are accountable for our actions and reactions – it’s not about what happens to us, it’s about how we handle it.

I am trying to think of some examples of things that happen to us and how we have no control over them, but if we planned better, we might have come out in a better position. For example, you lose all of your possessions in a tragic fire. Awful, yes. If you saved some money, and/or had insurance, you would not be so badly off. If you went to college and had a good job, you might have been able to save money, or been able to afford insurance. Because you didn’t plan ahead and didn’t go to college and get a decent job, you were stuck in a minimum wage job, so you had zero to spare your whole life.

What if you were born with a disability which made it very hard for you to keep a job? He really doesn’t take those things into account.

Maybe that’s the kind of thing the guy was talking about? It’s simplistic but those speeches often are.

Just to add to @Cruiser‘s great answer…A good exercise is to investigate the concept of blame. Many – if not all of us – have an instinct to assign blame when things are happening differently than we would like. Some people blame others, some blame themselves, and others blame inanimate objects (when you stub your toe, for example).

But what is blame’s utility? If you look close enough, blame often just feeds more destructive emotions and adds to the suffering.

ding ding ding

@hearkat for the win.

@hearkat pretty much has it right. We don’t control nor are we responsible for what goes on, but we are responsible for a healthy reaction to it. If the company I work for went bankrupt because of misdeeds and mistakes in a distant division and they shut us down, I am responsible for getting myself another job, and for doing what I need to do to stay solvent.

And @hominid sums up the futility of dwelling on what has gone wrong and being the victim. A number of circumstances may lead to us being victims of random events, but we don’t have to revel in it, we need to react so as to carry on.

Motivational speakers are more often than not professional snakeoil salesmen, and completely full of sanctimonious shit. They sell platitudes that pass for serious advice, and stupid people buy it. That’s the 100% the key to their success.

If you are capable of objectively evaluating whether a failing is your fault or the fault of some external actor, you should. Say you aren’t hired for a job you are qualified for. Who do you blame? Well, it could be you said something stupid about how much you hate Jews or women or something in your interview. Can your bigotry. But more likely, the interviewer deemed somebody else who was also qualified to be a better candidate. Whose fault is that? Yours? The interviewer’s? The other candidate?

The answer is fault isn’t operative here. You didn’t fail. Just let go of this idea of “fault” and start looking for patterns in how people think and behave. You’ll get a lot more done.

No, not 100 percent responsibility and definitely not all the times.

In the end, it doesn’t matter who is at fault. You just have to pick yourself up and move on.

Even if at times one doesn’t take responsibility and chooses instead to blame the system or someone else, practically, it means nothing. One is still stuck with the outcome. So one can either be the whining victim/loser who stays a loser for the rest of his/her life, or one can stop his/her excuses/bitching and adapt.