Written by: Philip Airson, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I have been thinking and coaching a lot around the area of responsibility this month. I think I was inspired by a fantastic coach called Steve Chandler (and his idea of the OWNER VS VICTIM mentality) and many other thinkers I have been listening to and reading.
Basically, no one can make you feel any way you do not want to. You are in control of how you react. Always. If you are sad, angry, or confused it is down to you to own it fully as a choice you are making. Owning your life.
If I was to leave a shoe in the middle of the floor, and 9 people walk past, notice the shoe and don’t care about it, and carry on with their day. However, person number 10 walks past and has had problems at home with their partner leaving things around the floor. In fact, they once tripped over a shoe on the floor and broke a finger when they were younger. Their mind goes back to these events and now they fly into a rage! They scream, they shout and they attack.
Now it had nothing to do with the shoe, 9 other people walked past the same shoe and nothing! So it isn’t about the shoe, but rather that person brought all of their history, views, opinions, and beliefs and they chose to react in this way.
This is what happens every single time we have an interaction or a strong emotion, we approach with our own lens, made from all our old baggage, views, opinions, and beliefs, and from that we decide how we react.
But in that lies the point. We all DECIDE! The great myth is that we are powerless and it’s all fate blah blah blah. No, in each moment we make a choice on how to react.
It was a particularly tough pill for me to swallow, accepting this theory.
I was raised in the Church of England and went to a catholic school, with a catholic mother and Gran so I have been well versed in smothering myself with guilt. So if I were to actually sit down and truly accept responsibility for everything that has happened in my life, the good and more terrifyingly… the bad, then I would surely go to some kind of emotional Guantanamo bay!
Maybe a tad dramatic but still, I had been living under a toxic tar of shame. I hope I am a good man now but in the past, I was someone I am not proud of. I had a list of sins that if written down would need one of those big comedy scrolls that keeps rolling and is super long, except instead of a funny joke it's just loads of horrid things I wish I hadn’t done.
Now I live a far less religious life but let me tell you that guilt doesn't leave easily.
However, I was committed to this. I have been on a journey for years of mastering the self and my relationship with me and I felt in my stomach that this was a key part.
So I took responsibility. I sat and I acknowledged that I, Phil Airson, am responsible for all of my past, current, and future deeds, actions, and responses...
I waited… I don’t know what I expected. I thought I would either burst into flames or some kind of mind police would drag me away at my ‘guilty’ claim.
It didn’t happen, but what did was just as unbelievable.
I felt the shame, this toxic waste that I had been slugging around with me for 15 plus years started to melt away.
By taking true ownership of my actions, responses, and everything, I had powerfully said to the world “this is me, all of it”
When I started showing up to conversations I had a powerful new confidence, I had stopped worrying about what other people thought, because this was me and I accepted that. Whatever their judgments I didn’t care because I knew me, I accepted and owned who I was.
Yeah I own that I have done a lot of stuff I am not proud of but I did it, it happened, I was emotionally immature and making bad choices but no excuses, I did it, I am sorry, I own it.
What matters now is learning from that litany of trash mistakes and living a life trying to be a better man each and every day and hopefully helping others too.
Are you ready to take ownership of your life today? I mean REALLY take responsibility for all the things you have done. All the ways you can react in your day?
If you own it, you can make the choice right now to go into every interaction you have today knowing the outcome is you walking away content, happy, and peaceful OR you can choose to know each one will end in screaming, hurt, and heartache.
Either way, as long as you acknowledge that you CHOSE it to be this way. You can start living a really powerful life.
Cheers!
Phil
Philip Airson, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Phil Airson is a life and success coach, psychotherapist, and human behavioral expert. He has devoted his life to the study of human psychology and created PMA Life coaching with his mission to show over one million people how to develop a loving relationship with themselves. Phil has worked with entrepreneurs from all over the world, helping them not only grow their business but doing so by helping them grow and succeed as individuals. Phil believes that our relationship with our own being affects how we see and interact with everything in the world. From our relationships to our work to what we see in the mirror, it all stems from our perception of who we are and where we fit into society. By examining and working with this, Phil has changed lives and allowed some of the most successful people to connect to joy in their lives. Phil is a man from a wonderful but working-class mining town in the north of England. He has been bullied. He has been fired. He has struggled financially. He has been lonely. He has lost loved ones. He has also coached clients who have lost children, had life-threatening illnesses, been assaulted, been abused, and been through bankruptcy. But Phil has also been a leader, a coach, and an advisor to high-level clients for almost 17 years. He's faced many challenges (in life and business) and has coached many people through life-changing experiences. And Phil has been privy to the secret challenges of top-level clients (Hint: they have the same challenges as the rest of us!) Oh, and Phil's an introvert at heart who is secretly relieved when plans for a night out are canceled!
