“The price of greatness is responsibility” - Winston Churchill
Blaming and Complaining
It’s easy for us to blame others for why things have happened. It’s easy for us to complain about our life for it not being ideal. We all blame or complain from time to time. We’ve caught ourselves at times wanting to blame others for a life in our eyes that may not be perfect. But with work, over the past 20-30 years, we think we’ve got a pretty good handle of taking 100% responsibility and ownership of our lives.
What does taking 100% responsibility and ownership for our lives mean?
What it means to us is that we take ownership of our thoughts, choices, and actions. By doing this we can affect the outcome to any event that either happens to us or around us. Jack Canfield in his book – The Success Principles, illustrates this with an equation – Event + Response = Outcome or E+R=O. What we love about this is its simplicity. To get to any outcome, whether that is a feeling or action, two things need to happen. There is an Event (E.g. someone says or does something to us, something is done to or for us) and then there is our Response. We have the control of what that Response can be. For example, If we’re driving our car and someone pulls suddenly in front of us in a dangerous manner (The Event) we have options on how we Respond to this event (Response). We could be enraged and shout profanities and use numerous hand gestures, we could write his number plate down and call the police, we could take a deep breath and think wow that was stupid or we may think, “they must really be in a rush, I hope they’re ok”. We’re not here to judge what Response you may choose, the point is you have a choice. The choice you take will be your Outcome and that Outcome will be your feelings and actions for you to own.
We always have a choice
(unless you’re in Jail or the Military where choice has been given or taken from you). Even if someone has a gun to your head and they ask you to make a decision to hand over your wallet, you get to choose whether to give them your wallet or have them pull the trigger. We’re not saying that the choices are easy or always have a positive option. Simply, when you take 100% ownership and responsibility for your life you get to always control the outcome. It is the most powerful tool you can have, full control of all thoughts, choices, and actions.
“The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you can change anything in your life” - Hal Elrod
Homework
“Have to”, “Choose to” exercise – We want you to change from saying “I have to” to “I choose to”.
Examples
“I have to pick up the kids from school” say, “I choose to pick up the kids from school”, or “I have to brush my teeth” change to “I choose to brush my teeth”.
Summary
Remember, any outcome to any event is all about how you choose to respond to it. Take 100% ownership and responsibility for your life and great things will happen.
In future blogs
We will discuss positive verse negative thoughts and the effects these thoughts have on us physically and emotionally. But up next, and a great follow on from this blog and the previous blog on Strengths. we will discuss finding your purpose.
Until next time – be your best you. The world needs you at your best!
Bennett Endurance is a high-performance consulting business for athletes of all age and abilities and non-athletes wanting to optimize their performances, health, wellbeing and longevity.
Consulting
With a combined 50 years of racing as professional athletes, 30 years as coaches and 30 years as athlete managers, Bennett Endurance have the knowledge, experience and professionalism for intimate one-to-one, small group consultations and mastermind groups. Helping you thrive and to live your high-performance life. Find out more >
Speaking
Passion and Purpose. Greg Bennett is driven and cares deeply about optimizing and living a high-performance life. His passion will cause others to be inspired to optimize their own lives. Greg visibly enjoys entertaining his audience with incredible stories of finding his passion, aligning that passion with his strengths and taking control of his own life. Be ready to be inspired and entertained. You will leave with the tools and tactics to go live your own high-performance life. Find out more >
Podcast
An interview podcast show hosted by Greg Bennett. Greg interviews the world’s greatest Athletes, Entrepreneur’s and Executives diving deep into each guest’s life. Probing questions into each guests’ passions, strengths, sleep patterns, their teams, nutrition and everything else in between. These interviews are entertaining, inspiring and educational. The lessons learnt will give you the tools and tactics to optimize your life so you can live your High-performance life. Find out more >
Brand Partnerships
Bennett Endurance collaborated with the best brands and products throughout their professional athletic careers. They continue to search for products that will help optimize their lives and recommend these products to their clients. Find out more >