It’s so easy to blame others in life when things aren’t going right, whether it’s in your day-to-day life or in the work environment, there are things that are going to constantly come up, every single day, no matter what. From a small problem; where someone’s maybe not giving you the attention that you deserve, to things blowing up in your face. No matter what the situation is, you always have to be the one to decide how you’re going to handle that situation, how you are going to take responsibility maybe not for what happened, if it may not be your fault, but how you’re going to decide how to deal with it.
The problem is, that it’s so easy to blame others. It’s so easy to blame the boss, your colleague, your friend for what your situation is, but nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. The problem is that you have to deal with that problem, whatever that situation is because no matter how much we might believe, it will not go away on its own.
It does not matter what you think about whether someone else is going deal with it or not. Until you deal with it, it won’t resolve itself. And so, I want to give you a couple examples because as soon as you take responsibility of your situation, the sooner you begin to take control back, and that’s what we all want. We don’t want to feel lost. We don’t want to feel like things are out of our control because when we’re dealing with something that’s in our control, we feel empowered, and that’s what I want you to start to see is that taking responsibility helps you feel like you’re in control, and helps you take your power back, okay?
Because the sooner that you take responsibility for your life and the situation, regardless of who is responsible for it, the sooner you take control back.
I want you to give you three examples of situations that I’ve dealt with, and that I know other people deal with too. The first situation is something that a couple of you might know through my social media. I posted on Instagram, dealing with my jerseys and my Sledge Hockey Experience, where I had my inventory run low. We now include hockey jerseys as part of our team building event, and when I ordered 80 new jerseys to replenish that inventory, when they arrived they weren’t matching colours. They were quite far, like they were completely off. They just wouldn’t work.
I had already promised my client that they were going to receive jerseys included in part of the package, and since I couldn’t deliver these practice quality jerseys, long story short I ended up giving them my game jerseys because I had brand new, like my new great quality game jerseys from previous events.
They were shocked. I was excited in the end especially giving them away because I will know that I want to meet my demand to my client, and they were like, “How could you do that?” I’m like, “Because it’s on me. It’s my problem that my supplier fucked up, but I have to be the one to still deliver on my end of the bargain.” And so, I get excited about how can I take control of the situation, being like I’m going to deal with that, still make them happy, and I will deal with this in a separate issue, okay? That’s example number one.
Number two is; how many times were you in the office? I deal with this in my day-to-day life, but I know in the office environments whether you’re an entrepreneur or in the corporate environment, you know may be you just don’t get an email response. Just bring it down a little bit, a smaller detail, but it’s like you’re trying to finish working on your project, or you have a rush something item to get done today, and you get a response quickly but maybe you’re not getting that response. Maybe someone’s being lazy, or maybe they’re busy. They can’t get back to you.
You have an opportunity there to make a decision on how you’re going to accept responsibility for the situation, and sometimes you just have to decide to, I don’t want to use the term ‘man up’ because it’s not a male decision over a female decision, but it’s like you have to be the one to make the executive decision on okay, this person’s not available. I can delay getting that answer, or I’m just going to make my own executive decision based on the limited information that I have at that time, and decide on how we can move forward because it’s my responsibility to help things keep moving forward on time.
More is lost with indecision than wrong decision, right? So, you might lose more in the process of delaying and waiting for somebody else than if you just make that executive decision, to decide to help keep things moving forward anyhow.
The third example I want to give you is remembering names. This one pops up in my life a lot. As I was going to Pyeongchang, I was scared of going there literally because I feel like I’m so terrible at remembering names. What I did over Christmas time in preparation for March was I invested $600 into Jim Kwik’s online learning program for memory training. And I got to Pyeongchang. I got better at remembering names, but I still screwed up. I had three, I’ll tell you in another video, three monumental screw-ups of getting someone’s name wrong in font of them, but I got better.
My point is is that I decided to take responsibility for my lack of skill remembering names, and what Jim Kwik will tell you is that there’s no such thing as a bad memory. There’s only a lazy memory, and I definitely proved it to myself for like nearly a decade where I thought that I couldn’t remember names. It was just a matter of me paying better attention. How many times are in the office in your day-to-day life going around, and you’re like, “Oh I can’t remember” and you get it wrong, or you say, “Hey, hey, hey bro” or “Hey girl,” I don’t know. You just fill in the gap, but you can get better if you take responsibility for your situation, right?
So, just to recap real quick. What I want you to think about is that it comes down, number one especially to decisions. You have to decide to be the person, sometimes especially the bigger person to take responsibility for what that situation is, and deal with it in your best ability with small quick actions. Remember, more is lost with indecision than wrong decision, and so if you decide to take a quick actionable step of how you’re going to move forward, sometimes it can come through just something as simple as a conversation with someone else bouncing some feedback, or in yourself. “What have I done in the past that didn’t wok, and what can I do today that will generate a better outcome?
Because the sooner that you take responsibility for your life and the situation, regardless of who is responsible for it, the sooner you take control back.
— — — —
Enjoyed this article? Here are three others to help you succeed:
What To Do When Nothing Is Going Right — Kevin Rempel
Life Doesn’t Give You What You Want, Life Gives You What You Need — Kevin Rempel
These Words Saved Me From Suicide — Kevin Rempel
—
Download your FREE copy of my autobiography, Still Standing: When You Have Every Reason to Give Up, Keep Going here.
