Saturday 3 October 2015

Personal responsibility - it's all about our choices

My mantra has been "personal responsibility" for a while now, and I find myself trying to explain it on a regular basis. It comes hand in hand with the idea that we all have choices.

First of all, let me get one thing out of the way: when I say we all have choices, I don't mean that we have ALL the choices. We don't all have the choice to become neurosurgeons, or opera divas. We still differ in abilities, place where we're born, family background etc.

And, contrary to what "the Secret" has been telling you, it is not about choosing to be rich or famous.

But every situation in which we find ourselves has choices. And every choice we make, has a price. Let me give some concrete examples.
  • You have suffered abuse in your childhood. You can choose to see yourself as a victim, who has no luck in life and is meant to always suffer: the price tag is probably further abuse unfortunately. Or you can choose to seek help, build up your confidence again until you realise you are a survivor, stronger for the ordeal you have been through; the price tag is confronting your past instead of avoiding it.
  • Your parents are very unwell. You cannot change that. But you can choose to stop rushing and instead to take the two hours that seem necessary to do anything with them, you can choose to look after them to the best of your abilities, you can choose to be thankful for the time you still have together instead of lamenting what you have lost.
  • Your husband - or your wife - mistreats you, on a regular basis. You could choose to stay and endure, which comes with the price tag of your self-esteem, and your personal safety, being eroded. Or you could choose to seek help, calling up a domestic violence help-line, speaking to lawyers, your friends, family, a counsellor until you feel strong enough to leave the abuse situation. Price tag: possibly financial, definitely an upheaval. 
  • Let's be a bit more extreme. Through no fault of your own, you're condemned to 30 years in prison. What choices do you have left? Well, you can either consider your life is over, or work bloody hard to make sure that when you're released, you will change the system that saw you imprisoned. Impossible? Think Nelson Mandela...
But without considering life-threatening situations, we can use our personal responsibility in day-to-day situations.
Don't like meat and three veg every night? Choose to learn how to cook. Price tag? Not much really.
Hate your body? Choose to start exercising. Price tag? Temporary physical discomfort.
Don't like the way your kids talk to you? Choose to draw firmer boundaries. Price tag? It's easier to give in, so expect an uncomfortable transition.

Can you see a pattern here? You cannot choose to change others, but you can choose to change yourself or the way you handle others or see things. And personal responsibility means to stop using others as an excuse for your unhappiness or unhealthiness or insecurity or whatever it is that you think is holding you back.

I'd like to finish this post with a few words about Victor Frankl, an Austrian doctor who spent years in concentration camps in Germany during WWII, where successively his mother, his father, his wife and his brother were murdered. I honestly cannot imagine a bleaker situation than his.
Yet he strove successfully to find meaning, that even though the Nazis could take everything from him, they could not take away his choice of how to think about his situation.
He survived, having made a difference to many of his fellow inmates, and continued after the war to work as a doctor and psychiatrist. He remarried, and had a child.

Every time I think of him, I am reminded that my own choices are manifold.