THE MYTH OF TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY

In the domain of personal development, self-actualization, modeling of excellence, creating success in living your visions and values, accepting, acknowledging, and owning your personal responses is fundamental and essential. Even the word responsibility tells the story. After all, the word contains ability at its core and so it speaks about an expression of personal power, that is capability, energy, and vitality. It speaks about the power-to-respond with our essential powers, our powers of mind, emotion, speech, and behavior.

In a way, this is core to Neuro-Semantics. On day one of almost every training, we begin with the power zone wherein we access our four core powers and meta-state them with awareness, ownership, acceptance, and appreciation. If we don’t do that explicitly (as in APG), we do that implicitly and by implication. The result is that this then enables people to build up more complex meta-states (gestalt experiences) such as proactivity, initiative, a sense of being in control of one’s life, self-efficacy, and much more. Part of that “much more” includes the abilities (powers) to learn, relate, receive feedback, flexibly adust, etc.

Given all of that, in the Neuro-Semantic approach we present responsibility as a high level meta- state that creates the foundation for effectiveness and success. But, as I mentioned in the last reflection, there is a sick, toxic, dis-functional, and morbid “belief” abroad that distorts the idea of responsibility as it over-exaggerates it and ends up creating a new subtle way to induce existential guilt.

What is that toxic belief? It is this: “Whatever comes into your life, you created. You attracted it into your life, and so you are responsible for it.”

Now in Neuro-Semantics we talk about all of the hidden assumptions and presuppositions behind things as an FBI frame— a frame by implication. And everything we say and do contains FBIs. In fact, in the Meta-Coach training, we even provide training for Meta-Coaches to learn to listen for FBIs and to address them in their questioning. Why? Because when you do that, you can often get to the heart of mattes and find leverage points for change very quickly.

Given that, what are the FBIs of that toxic belief? Here are some:

1) The world you live in is totally and completely created by you with no influenced from anyone or anything else.

2) You are all-powerful in how you create and attract everything.

3) There are no other influences, variables, factors in the world— just your thoughts!

4) Life is extremely simple and can be explained with a simplicity, namely, there is just one cause for your reality—what you think.

5) There are no contexts that have any influence in your life— no social context, no linguistic contexts, no family, racial, financial, political contexts that play any role in your life.

6) If there’s any pain, distress, failure, problems, etc., you attracted it into your life by your thoughts, therefore the problem is you.

7) If you had a miserable childhood and suffered various things in it, you are guilty of inviting it into your life.

Now did I mention that this belief was sick? It is about as sick as the opposite belief that is equally as extreme and exaggerated: “I am a pawn of life, fate, genes, parents, culture, experiences, etc. I am not responsible for anything and I can do nothing to change things.”

The bottom line is that it is a myth that we are totally responsible or that we bring everything that is in our lives into it. It just ain’t so. We are just not that powerful. There are forces abroad that we have had nothing to do, forces that influence our lives and sometimes that create great problems and/or great opportunities. There are forces that operate as cultural, linguistic, political, and economic frames and realities that existed long before we came along and that will exist long after we’re gone.

I suppose that it would be nice in a way if life was so simple and if such over-simplistic explanations were true. We would not have to think so hard, search so far, or hold so many ambiguities in mind at the same time. But life isn’t so simple. And we do have to embrace multiple explanations at the same time. We have to share responsibilities as there are numerous people and events that create the responses that we have to deal with.

The total responsibility myth also ignores, downplays, or complete dismisses the factor of randomness or chance. It’s said in Ecclesiastes that “time and chance happens to them all,” that bread is not always to men of understanding, nor is the race always to the swiftest, nor is the battle always to the strongest, but time and chance happens to them all.” Of course, as meaning- makers we are so quick and so skilled at giving meaning even to random events. “It’s no mere coincidence, we were meant to meet.” “It’s not luck, I was destined to this.”

The worst thing about the total responsibility myth, of course, is the incurable guilt it induces. After all, you are responsible for everything that comes into your life. No one else has offered anything, influenced anything, created anything. In your world, they are nothing. They have no power. You have all power. This is the non-sense that the myth foster. And knowing that frees us from being seduced into it. Here’s to your healthy responsibility and empowerment!