You have already complained once today because something did not go the way you wanted. The boss who got on your nerves, for example. Or the weather that would not play along. The time you do not have. The others who are annoying.
I say it now and then too. And then I notice how a sentence like that lands. It makes the matter light, and that is exactly what makes me suspicious.
Handing over responsibility is comfortable. As long as someone else is to blame, you do not have to move. You are allowed to be annoyed. You are allowed to tell everyone how unfair it all is. And you stay exactly where you are.
Judgement is a human invention
We divide the day into good and bad before it is over. The traffic jam in the morning was bad. Lunch at noon was good.
Yet a judgement says most of all something about the person judging. About the thing itself it says nothing. Two people sit in the same traffic jam. One arrives late for an appointment she wanted to cancel anyway and breathes a sigh of relief. The other misses the call he has been waiting on for weeks. The same traffic jam. And still two different days. Good and bad only came into being inside the car.
This also works backwards. What you call the worst day of your life today may in five years be the day something began. What has changed by then? Not the thing itself. Only your judgement of it.
If you leave the judgement out, something very sober remains. Namely one decision and the consequence that follows from it. That sounds hard. But to me it is the kindest thing I can tell you. The only thing that remains after a decision is always a consequence. The judgement we add is fantasy. About the thing itself it says nothing.
A consequence you can look at. A judgement you can only carry.
The calendar that cannot help it
Picture a Tuesday evening. Someone is sitting at the kitchen table, the laptop still open, the week was too full. And the calendar is to blame. Too much in it, too little air, no wonder you are tired.
Then that someone checks who entered the appointments. They did. Every single one. Over weeks, always with the same small movement: saying yes because saying no feels uncomfortable. The calendar did nothing to them. It shows them what they decided.
That is how it is for most of the people I work with.
For me it looked different. I was always very well organised and achieved everything I set out to do. That is exactly why this question took longer to reach me. When everything runs, nobody checks who entered it. Neither did I.
Where responsibility begins
I am not claiming you brought everything on yourself. People experience things they never chose. Illness. Loss. Violence. Systems older than they are. Whoever tells you that you ordered this is selling you something.
Responsibility starts later. It begins at the point where you ask: what do I do with this now? That point belongs to you. It belongs to you even when everything before it did not.
It is time we stop handing over responsibility and start taking it on ourselves. Then we begin to move into self-efficacy. That is the whole difference between a life that happens to you and a life that you lead.
What you are missing for that is awareness
At some point you notice that something is missing. It is awareness.
Awareness sounds big and spiritual. What I mean is something very small: the one second in which you register what you are doing. You hear your yes while it is coming out of you. You say the sentence about the boss and notice that you are saying it.
Without that second, everything runs automatically. And automatically you end up in the victim role, because it is comfortably furnished and you do not have to do anything there. With that second you have a choice. Not always a big one, but one.
Awareness is the difference between doing something and deciding something. And everything that comes after hangs on that one second.
Self-efficacy is a muscle
The thought that you were involved in your own reality feels like an accusation at first. Turn it around. If you were involved in this, you are also involved in what comes next. That is the cheapest good news of the day.
And it starts small. You say no once where you would normally say yes on autopilot. You write the email that has been sitting in your head for eleven days. You say the sentence to your colleague that you have swallowed until now. Every one of these movements is tiny. Together they change who you trust to sit at the wheel.
The question that shifts everything
Instead of: why is this happening to me?
Rather: what is my part, and what do I do with it?
The first question looks for someone to blame and always finds one. The second question looks for a next step and usually finds one too. Both questions take the same amount of time.
People avoid the second question because they are afraid of the answer. Once you see your part, you can never overlook it again. Then you have to do something. And doing something is more exhausting than being right.
Your guilt is not up for debate here. In almost every situation there is a piece that belongs to you. Usually a small one. And that small piece is the only place where you can move anything at all.
Everything has a cause. There is a chain that led to this moment, and a few links of that chain you hold in your own hands.
What I leave you with
Pick one single thing this week that regularly annoys you. One you have been attributing to someone else for months. And then look for the one percent that belongs to you. Look for it to see where your lever is.
When you have found it, write to me. I read every message myself.