Nowhere But Up

“Responsibility is defined as the state or fact of being responsible” (Responsibility). There are many different kinds of responsibility as well. Moral, collective, corporate, media, and social are just to name a few. However, in particular, this paper is about personal responsibility. To me, personal responsibility means that you have a self-duty to yourself to exhibit responsibility. You have to be responsible for yourself, your actions, your life, and the choices that are made within it. Personal responsibility is an intensely personal decision that can only be made by self. Personal responsibility must be accepted, it cannot be forced on anyone. You must realize that by accepting personal responsibility you are in control of the direction you’re your life takes, whether good or bad. “One step in accepting personal responsibility is tearing down the mask of defense or rationale for why others are responsible for who you are, what has happened to you and what you are bound to become” (Accepting Personal Responsibility). Personal responsibility has had a major effect on my life. As a child, I was raised to believe that nothing in life was free and that humility and self-responsibility were my biggest allies. Growing up, personal responsibility played the biggest role in my education. In middle school I struggled with math and I had to take it upon myself to get a tutor so that I could excel in that course. Had I not taken on the personal responsibility for myself to want to get better I would have failed my course. As well, personal responsibility played a role in my athletic career while in high school. I was the captain of the volleyball team and I had to utilize my self-responsibility so that I may be a good example for my teammates. If my teammates witness me not being responsible for myself then I could not expect them to be responsible as well. Being on a team, if the team is on one accord then the team can move as an effective unit. However, if no one of the team is personally responsible for themselves, this could be very detrimental for the team and the goals of the team. Personal responsibility has a direct correlation with college success. Grant it that college has a lot of group activities and group situations that present themselves, but individuality play a major role. In college being an individual can be the deciding factor between standing out in the crowd and fading into the background. When you are personally responsible for yourself, you control the amount of success that you achieve while in college. Once you decide to take on the responsibility of yourself you can no longer blame anyone else for your lack of success. This is where self-determination plays a large role. During this journey called life you must have some form of self-determination. Self-determination is when you do not need to be motivated by anyone or anything else in order to do what you need to do to succeed. This determination comes from within; it cannot be forced upon you. Just as stated before, you must accept personal responsibility and just like personal responsibility you must accept self-determination. When you utilize self-determination and personal responsibility, you can achieve anything you want. For example, while in college, if you choose to accept personal responsibility you choose to take on all responsibility for any work that is not completed or any mistakes that you do make. Also if you choose to accept self-determination, you choose to not let yourself make those mistakes and to complete all your work; simply because you have chosen to be determined within yourself. You can use practice techniques in order to exhibit personal responsibility during your education. One way is to be motivated. Motivation has a direct correlation with self-determination. Motivation has a strange way of getting you to do things that you normally would not do if motivation was not involved. Motivation can be used to spark self-determination. For example, I was motivated this past year to go back to school and make it a priority for myself to graduate. This motivation came from the death of my father. It is sad to me that it took me losing my father in order to want to get my life together but it was a motivation that I desperately needed. Before the death of my father my motivation for school was lost. I had completed 2 years of college but I did not want to complete the last two years of college. At that point in my life I had gotten complacent and school was just not interesting to me. My initiative, self-determination, and personal responsibility were non-existent. I did not want to go to school and I thought that I could get by in life with only my high school degree. The days leading up to my father’s death, I made a promise to him that I would complete college and after his death I knew that this was a promise that I could not break. Another way is to possess initiative. Initiative will be what keeps you going once your self-determination has started. Initiative is like the gas that goes in the tank of self-determination that keeps the engine of motivation running in your car of personal responsibility. No one will understand the reason or source of your motivation except you. Everyone will have different personal reasons for their motivation and self-determination. Personal responsibility has different components that allow it to thrive which, as stated above, are self-determination, initiative, and motivation just to name a few. Life has a very strange way of giving you motivation. However, in the end, it is not the type of motivation you receive; it is about what you will do when you receive your motivation. Personal responsibility is only what you make of it. Personal responsibility has completely different effects on every person that accepts it. It is the part of actually accepting it and utilizing it in order to make you more successful. Personal responsibility will not impose itself upon you, as stated before you must accept it. So from this day forth live life worth wild, do not work for personal responsibility, let personal responsibility work for you.

Reference Page

Responsibility. (2012). Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/responsibility

Accepting personal responsibility. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.livestrong.com/article/14698-accepting-personal-responsibility/