00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living, and this is episode number 117, "Anti-Responsibility." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:23 

Well, hey there, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me. If you are new to the podcast, a great, big, huge welcome to you. Glad to have you here. I've been getting a few more new listeners, and I love that. I hope that the things that you find here will help make your life better and help put you in a place where you see places where you can improve and ways that you can live a more satisfying, fulfilling life. That's what we're after here. 

00:53 

So we're going to just jump right in today. We are talking about anti-responsibility. Now, it is time for some of us, myself included, to really start to tackle responsibility in our life. So when we talk about anti-responsibility, that means the things that we do that keep us from taking responsibility. And then next week we're going to talk about 100% responsibility. So it's kind of a two-parter. But now you may be asking, "why talk about responsibility at all? Because what's the big deal? I'm already responsible for so much, and I don't need anything else on my plate." Noted. I get that. But here's what we're going to discuss between this week and next week so you can kind of get the sense of what's happening here. We're going to talk, what is your responsibility? What is not your responsibility that you may be choosing to be responsible for and that you need to let go of? We're going to talk about what are the signs that we are avoiding responsibility, and these would be our anti responsibility behaviors we're going to talk about today, And then recognizing where we really need to be stepping up our responsibility, seeing our areas that we need to focus on. So there's so much to discuss here. 

02:14 

And let me warn you, it is not for the faint of heart. Okay, these two weeks may make some of you a little angry with me and hopefully it will make most of you think a little more seriously about where you are in your life with regards to responsibility because, my friends, stepping up in this area of your life will create such amazing things for you. But here's something to look for when you find yourself wanting to justify your behaviors, when you start feeling defensive or angry or threatened, when you think that this just doesn't apply to you, that means it is exactly what you need to be looking at more closely in your life. 

02:56 

Okay so let's jump into today's topic of anti-responsibility. So, this is a great list and I got it from a talk from Lynn G. Robbins who delivered it at Brigham Young University on August 22, 2017. The list is his, the examples will be mine, but I fell in love with this list. I thought it was terrific. So, the talk, if you want to check it out, is entitled "Be 100% Responsible." Such a great talk. And you can find it at speeches.byu.edu. So just go to speeches.byu.edu, type in "Be 100% Responsible," and this lovely talk will pop up. It's fabulous. I will be referring to it next week with my 100% responsible discussion next week. 

03:42 

So, let's just establish a baseline first and talk about the importance of responsibility. So, Lynn Robbins defines responsibility as "recognizing ourselves as being the cause for the effects or results of our choices, good or bad." He also says that it is "to always own up to the consequences of poor choices." So, what is being talked about here is taking full accountability for what is happening in our lives. This is really the only way to progress and grow and move forward in life. We have to be able to take any situation we are in and see what we are bringing to the table. Of course, it's super easy to see what other people are bringing, but the trick is to stop looking at what they are bringing and to start seeing what we are putting on the table. And this is where many of us start to get defensive. Your husband commits adultery? We have to look at our responsibility, and this is so darn hard because his faults in this situation seem so huge, but learning to see how we are judging and how we've contributed to a dysfunctional relationship is the key here, right? We have to stand back and see what the circumstance is showing us about ourselves. 

05:07 

This is in no way saying that him committing adultery is okay, because it absolutely is not. But taking full responsibility,  100% responsibility, means that we work to see our part in any and every situation. We stop pointing fingers and being so quick to see everyone else's faults and we learn to be quicker at noticing ours. Being responsible just means that we stop seeing other people as 100% responsible for every situation. This is the only way to cleanse our lives of the darkness that so easily fills our souls. We all have it. We're all human and it's impossible not to have it. But little by little we can start to see the faults that we bring to the table and learn to replace them with pure, Christlike, clean love. 

05:56 

So, anti-responsibility, let's take a look at the list. There are 19 things that Lynn Robbins shares that keep us from taking full responsibility for ourselves. So here we go. 

06:09 

Number one: blaming others. Okay, we live in a culture that teaches us in every possible way to blame other people for everything that goes wrong in our lives. From blaming others that our feelings were hurt and we got offended, to blaming our behaviors on someone else behaving badly first, it is human nature to defect the blame. And we do it more often than we are aware of. So watch yourself. Pay attention. How often do you blame someone or something else for your questionable behavior? 

06:48 

Number two: rationalizing or justifying. This is giving a reason for our bad behavior. "I only yelled at my husband because he yelled at me first." It is so easy to feel completely justified in our behavior when we see someone else as the cause of our behavior. We may feel we need to defend ourselves or keep ourselves from being walked all over. But whenever we see someone else as the cause of our behavior, we know that we're in the wrong, right? Because our behavior always comes from our thoughts. And though boundaries are very important, it's one thing to set a healthy boundary and it's quite another to rationalize or justify our own sketchy behavior. Setting healthy boundaries comes from a place of love. Rationalizing or justifying comes from fear. 

07:37 

Alright, number three: making excuses. It is so easy to make excuses for why we are making the poor choices we make. One of the biggest I see in my life is the statement that "I don't have enough time." Well, of course I don't because I just spent an hour scrolling on Facebook. There are thousands of excuses that we can come up with, but excuses never create results. Put your excuse in the thought line and you will see that it never ends up with success in the result line. I love that David B. Haight said, "a determined man finds a way, the other man finds an excuse." Why are you not progressing and growing and moving forward? The answer to that question very well may be an excuse. Remember the podcast from two weeks ago about questions? If we want to not make excuses, ask better questions. Rather than ask "why," ask instead, "how can I progress and grow and move forward?" This cuts out the excuse. 

08:47 

Number four: minimizing or trivializing sin. This is such a hallmark of our society. Making the sins not so bad is just so easy these days. 10 years ago, dropping an F-bomb was a huge deal. It was considered the worst of the worst words, right? And I would turn off a TV show, turn off a movie, stop listening to whatever, right? Nowadays, I know I tend to just take a breath and remind myself that it's not as big of a deal as it used to be. We do the same thing with sex outside of marriage and with watching sketchy movies. It's become not that big of a deal anymore. It's so easy to minimize or trivialize sin, right? But that's not taking responsibility, especially when we start engaging in those behaviors ourselves. 

09:37 

Okay, number five: hiding. Okay, here we go. Hiding behaviors such as maybe watching porn or keeping those new jeans a secret from our spouse or texting someone of the opposite sex that we find ourselves increasingly intrigued by. If we ever feel we need to hide a behavior, we have got to start looking at it. There are times even when I'm praying that I think that I can hide something from God about something I've said or something I've done. I think that I cannot tell Him and He won't know about it, right? If I feel I need to hide it, that's when I need to bring it out into the open. Hiding my behaviors or my thoughts or my feelings will only create shame. 

10:24 

Number six: covering up. This is very similar to hiding, but we try to make it seem like something else is happening instead. For example, "what, these jeans? Gosh, I don't know when I got them. Quite a while ago." That person we're texting, "it's just all work. It's just work stuff," right? We're trying to cover it up. 

10:47 

Number seven: fleeing from responsibility. This is a place where we stay as far away as possible from taking any responsibility at all. We duck out of the meeting early because we know they will be asking for volunteers to help on Saturday. We avoid the bishop when we know there's a nursery calling open and we think that they've been giving us the eye, right? 

11:09 

Number eight: abandoning responsibility. This is a close cousin to fleeing, but here we have accepted the responsibility and then we walk away from it. It's like signing up to clean the church on Monday night and then just not showing up and leaving other families to cover our absence. It's like walking away from a financial obligation. It's like hoping you'll just get released from your calling if you just stop doing it. It's telling your spouse you'll be there to help and then not showing up on time. 

11:39 

Okay, number nine: denying or lying. Okay, this is just flat out not telling the truth. We may tell our spouse that we didn't realize that they'd already gone out to do yard work and we'd promised to help them when, in actuality, we did know they were out there, we were just pretending, right? It's like pretending to be asleep when your spouse comes in rather than have that difficult discussion that you know you need to have. It's making it seem like we're engrossed in a work project when we're actually wasting time on social media. So yeah, easy to do and easy to justify those behaviors, right? 

12:16 

Okay, can you believe we're only halfway through this list? Is anybody else at this point feeling the sting? I'll give you one guess where I'm getting so many of my examples. Yep, my own life, okay? Not all of them, of course, but I see so many of these behaviors in myself and I'm not loving it. But I will say that I'm intrigued by it because I'm seeing so many opportunities to start cleaning up my life and to start moving forward and progressing, right? 

12:46 

Okay, number 10: rebelling. For me, this often showed up in my marriage as passive aggressive behavior. Just outright doing the opposite, just to make my spouse mad, right? And we will do this with God as well. I can be mad that things aren't going the way I thought they should, so I'm going to show him and rebel against him. We often see this when people get divorced. Being angry that they are in this situation. We might rebel against God and stop going to church or stop living the standards of the gospel in an effort to show our anger or defiance, right? 

13:25 

Okay, number 11: complaining and murmuring. Oftentimes, when we rebel, we will also complain and murmur. Now, I totally believe that there are times when we need to talk about difficult situations and it's very healthy and it's helpful as well. When it comes to complaining is when we are diverting responsibility for those situations to other people, when we are not offering any solutions, but just seeking to talk about all the bad, to talk about behind people's backs, to be respectful of others...this is when we're not taking responsibility. A tough discussion about tough situations is important, but taking responsibility means also offering solutions, not just blaming someone else for all of the problems. 

14:15 

Number 12: finding fault and getting angry. This is so easy to do. Looking for all of the faults of another person, even character flaws or picking apart their decisions is never a productive process. All this does is incite other people as well and lead us farther and farther away from a helpful solution. Nit-picking others and feeding our anger over their perceived fault never has been, and never will be, a constructive course of action. Again, it's doing nothing to take responsibility to create a solution. 

14:52 

Alright, number 13: making demands and entitlements. Okay, making demands can sometimes sound like setting boundaries. But often it's not setting a boundary at all, because it's coming from a place of anger, frustration, or fear, rather than love. And feeling entitled just means that we feel we should be receiving something for nothing. We didn't have to step into any responsibility to receive what we believe we should. Demands and entitlements are all about wanting what we want without paying the price. 

15:27 

Alright, number 14: doubting, losing hope, giving up, and quitting. Alright, this is stepping away from responsibility with an attitude that it's no use, that it can never happen That it doesn't matter what we do. It's just never going to happen. It is defeatist and pessimistic. Thoughts and behavior that hold us back from being all-in, from putting forth our best effort. 

15:53 

Alright, number 15: indulging in self-pity and victim mentality. Alright, more and more of this all the time, right? It can be so easy to feel as if the world is conspiring against us, especially here in 2020 how much self-pity and victim mentality have we been exposed to, right? This is the idea that it's always harder for us than anyone else. Everyone is always taking advantage of us and walking all over us. We always get overlooked for the good we're doing, someone else gets the credit...rather than recognizing our role and learning to look for the lessons, we choose to be the victim of someone else's choices and feel sorry for ourselves. This never leads to solutions, but rather to depression and overwhelm. And this oftentimes comes from looking for our self-worth outside of ourselves rather than inside of ourselves. Alright, okay, let me have one quick word on that as well. More and more every client I work with eventually it all comes down to self-worth issues. I think I've mentioned that before, but so true. 

17:06 

Alright, number 16: being indecisive or being in a spiritual stupor. Okay, so let me ask you this: how long can it take to make a tough decision? Actually, like a split second, but often we will ruminate for days or weeks or months thinking that the ability to make the right decision is beyond us, feeling as though God has abandoned us by not guiding us in all things. But a huge part of our journey here on earth is stepping into our decisions and making the best ones we know how, using the brains that we have been blessed with to weigh our options and move forward. We often avoid responsibility when we allow ourselves to wallow in indecision. The crazy thing is that when we don't make a decision in a timely manner, the decision will often be made for us without our input. But the good news is that then we can indulge in self-pity and being a victim because we didn't get to choose, right? Okay, and here's another piece. Very often there is no right decision. We just get to decide and move on. We just have to make sure that we like our reason for our decision, that's an important key. 

18:24 

Alright, number 17: procrastinating. So this is closely related to indecision. This is putting things off until it creates stress, anxiety, or some kind of an emergency. Delaying taking care of our responsibilities until we have to do things halfway or even give up on our original plans, goals, or dreams. Procrastination robs us of our best lives by stealing our future time. We are not responsible for our future when we put off creating what we need to make our future dreams a reality. 

19:00 

Okay, number 18: allowing fear to rule. Fear is the opposite of love. When we live our lives by fear, we rob ourselves of the amazing love that creates all things good. When we do something for our spouse out of fear that they will not be happy with us if we don't, then we create resentment and anger. When we can learn to do that exact same thing for them out of love, how they respond has absolutely no bearing on how we feel, on the love that we feel. We take full responsibility for our emotions rather than allowing the other person to control how we feel by their response. Doing things out of fear will always put other people in charge of our emotions. Doing things out of love is taking responsibility for our emotions. We call that emotional adulthood. 

19:57 

And last of all: enabling. Enabling is helping other people to avoid taking responsibility for themselves by taking the responsibility for them. And so many of us have stepped into this role of enabling the people in our lives. The people in our lives may not move out of the house because we take responsibility for the finances, for their food, for their inability to find a job. When we help another person, we assist them in their own efforts. When we enable. we take over what needs to be done, and that often robs them of taking responsibility. So, okay my friends, that's all 19. 

20:46 

How many of those could you identify with? I'm almost positive that most of us could identify with almost all of them, if not all of them, at some point in our lives. And that's because it is human nature to want to avoid responsibility. Our primitive brains want to avoid pain, and responsibility is often painful, and our primitive brain wants to conserve energy, and responsibility requires energy. So our natural tendency is to step away from responsibility, but only in stepping into responsibility can we take control of our lives and be empowered to create what we want from our life. Only in embracing the responsibility for every one of our thoughts and feelings and actions can we tap into our potential and grow into the person that we were created to be. Think about water. Water's natural tendency is always to find the path of least resistance, and in  so doing, it is often destructive. 

21:49 

When I look at the water damage that has been done to my home, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, I realize how destructive water can be. I've had to replace flooring, and cabinets, and countertops, all because water was seeking the path of least resistance. When we do the same, when we seek the path of least resistance by not taking responsibility, we create destruction in our own lives. We don't connect with the Spirit of God, we don't tap into our potential. We don't connect with others, with ourselves, or with God. We don't respond to challenges with resilience, but unlike water, responsibility is about taking the path of most resistance. Responsibility means we learn to manage our minds. It means we are aware of the reasons behind our behaviors and we are not afraid to question our motives. Responsibility means we take a good look at ourselves to see where we are really being irresponsible. 

22:57 

Our natural man is irresponsible by nature and if we are to become like Christ we have to learn to see this nature. We will often go to the behaviors on this list as an attempt to avoid guilt or shame or anxiety or stress or embarrassment or any of the negative consequences of our mistakes and sins. But giving into this natural man numbs us to the reality of what we were created to be. It gives us a false sense of security and lulls us into this comfortable place of thinking we have nothing to repent of. The behaviors on this list stop our progression. They destroy our spirits and degrade our desires. When we don't take responsibility, we are literally damned. The behaviors on this list are all things that need to be repented of. And only when we decide to be 100% responsible for our lives, will we begin moving forward and create the amazingness that we were destined to create. Truly choosing to examine our lives and step into greater and greater responsibility will bring us greater joy and fulfillment than we are capable of even imagining. Because becoming aware of these behaviors on this list is a lifetime process. 

24:30 

So many of these behaviors are so ingrained in our primitive brain that we aren't even aware that they are there. And until we start looking, we won't see them. But when we choose to start looking for them, our eyes will be opened up and God will enlighten us to how we can step into our responsibility. When we ask, God will mercifully give. Mercifully because He gives it a piece at a time as we are ready and prepared. He will not drown us with everything all at once, but He will give us just enough to move us forward. 

25:10 

So how do we move forward? How do we step into this place of 100% responsibility? Join me next time for "100% Responsibility," where we will discuss what it looks like to be responsible, even in those situations where it seems none of it was our fault. Because this, my friends, is the way to true joy and fulfillment in life. Stepping into this place where our true power comes from. That's what I've got for you today. Good stuff, right? Such a great list. I love that Lynn Robbins put that list together. I think it's fabulous and I love looking at it and I love growing up. I love getting to a place where I am not so afraid to look at myself and see my faults and I think that's because as I have stepped more into my self-worth, seeing my faults does not make me feel as though I am less-than. Seeing my faults does not make me feel like my worth is not as great, right? My worth is unchangeable, as is yours. Worth is worth, right? We get to do all the good things because of our worth and and the more we recognize and embrace our self-worth, the more we're not afraid to look at the things going on in our lives. 

26:36 

Okay my friends, this is it. Good stuff. If you see a lot of these in yourself and you feel like you need some help managing it, managing your mind around it, learning to see it more clearly, this is what I do as a coach. I help you see your mind. I help you see what's going on in there. I help you identify what you need to be working on to move forward to become the person that you really want to become. I love coaching so much. I love helping people in this process. It's brilliant and it's amazing and it's exhilarating for me. So I do offer a free coaching session consult. You can call and just ask me questions about coaching. You can actually get some coaching. I just love it all, whatever you want to do. You can find me at tanyahale.com. You can book a free 20 minute coaching session or you can go to my Facebook page which is Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching. And there's a "contact me" button there that also connects you directly to my calendar so you can sign up for a free consult. 

27:46 

Okay, if you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe. Please leave me a review. I would love to hear what you have to say. And if you find that this is helping you, share it with those in your life that you feel would love this kind of content as well. It's  going to do it for me my friends. Have an awesome awesome day and I will see you next week. Bye. 

28:10 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend "win Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.