Personal Responsibility for Success or Failure
Posted on May 24, 2012 by Tom Vandeberg, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Both your successes and your failures are entirely in your hands.
Before I begin, I have two questions for you: Who is responsible for your successes? Who is responsible for your failures?
Now, the sort of answer that I’m looking for isn’t some deep spiritual or metaphysical statement. Nor is it meant to get you to think about all of the “little people” who’ve helped you along the way, or the “bad people” who’ve held you down. I’m looking for a very simple and basic answer. In fact, there’s only one right answer and it’s the same for both questions: “ME.” The only person who will ever be wholly responsible for your success or failure is you.
Some spiritually or religiously minded folks might argue that God, or Goddess, or the Universe is responsible for their success. This isn’t completely correct. Now, I’m not saying that faith and gratitude aren’t important to your continued success, but at the same time, the Divine doesn’t look down on humanity like a Roman emperor and give some folks a “thumbs-up” and others a “thumbs-down”. Regardless of our degree of faith and gratitude, if we don’t actively seek out success, if we don’t take some positive action, and we just sit back and do nothing while praying to God, Goddess, the Universe, or whoever, then we will accomplish nothing and we will fail. And, is that failure anyone’s fault, but our own? How many successful people of faith would place the blame for another’s failure on Deity?
Likewise, no person, other than our self, is responsible for our successes or failures. How many times have we heard (either from another or from ourselves) such things as, “Well, I’d have gone to college if my parents had encouraged me to do so”, or “If my ex hadn’t held me back, I’d have made my fortune by now!” The truth is, we make the final decisions regarding our actions. We make the decisions about whether to go to school, accept a better job, start a new business, etc.
There is likely someone out there who’s thinking, “Yeah, but what about when someone intentionally does something that’s meant to make you fail? Isn’t it then their fault that you failed?” Absolutely not! They may get in your way and present you with an obstacle, but your success or failure is totally dependent upon how YOU react to that obstacle. Often enough, that obstacle looks so huge to us that we just throw up our hands and say, “OK. I give up!” And we quit! However, if we want to succeed badly enough in any given endeavor, and we keep on striving toward our goals, then we WILL succeed, regardless of the obstacles.
