By Emmanuella Edun-Adedeji.
This subject is a tall order in the implementation of man’s primary make-up, yet it is one most people love to shy away from. Passing the buck is as old as time, it was clearly evident in the Biblical garden of Eden. However taking responsibility is a task all must embrace, if personal growth and evaluation are to be attained.
Responsibility is the act of owning your choices and actions, it is accepting the part you played in every decision making or made, positive or negative. I always evaluate every proposal that comes my way and will not accept anything I can’t own the result of.
When the chips are down, how do you react to it, do you look yourself in the mirror and say I screwed up, then look within to find out how the mess can be cleaned(every problem has a solution, Napoleon Hill called it the law of equivalent benefit) or do you look around to find who to dump the error on?
Edmund Gosse said and I quote “never mind who you Praise, but be careful who you blame”. In other words, it means to surround yourself with associations and activities that will always cause you to rejoice.
Nevertheless, no man is void of errors because we’re all flawed beings, however, the net worth of our praise worthy acts should far outweigh that of our errors.
Predators walk alone, Preys walk in groups. Buck passing is a cowardly act, own your acts.
No one else sees with your eyes, or hears with your ears, or walks with your legs, ordinarily, but when you put your decision making in the hands of another, you’ve evacuated your ability to function in the aforementioned capacity.
The power of choice and freewill is given to everyone to individually exercise. Now it is good to have people who can advice you, people who can fine tune your decision if they have the capacity to, but the onus of decision making still rests on you.
The horse and river parable best depicts the scenario. The horse may be helpless about the destination, but that will never deter its determination to enforce its decision.
When people bring their decision making to me, I carefully evaluate/analyse the options in clear words, then I tell whoever to choose between the options. I express my candid view, but tell them they alone have the right to exercise the power of choice.
It is the right of every adult!
This is why I don’t subscribe to the idea of matchmaking, none who ever asked for my service in that regard ever left satiated, they met an instant brick wall!
Bottom line is this, every lesson had an experience preceding it and every experience has a lesson succeeding it.
Make note worthy choices that will leave your mien happy, but always remember that mistakes are sometimes inevitable and when such happens, be bold and clever enough to accept responsibility in order to suck the juice within the experience it has to offer.
Cheerio…