Responsibility for the Self You Are

How you feel about yourself is your responsibility, not that of others. You are responsible for valuing yourself.  If you are struggling with poor self-worth, you’ve most likely internalized negative feedback that you’ve received from others and let it eat away at your self-esteem. The only one who can change that mood is you. With a little practice, you can turn things around.

Self-Responsibility

Being responsible for yourself requires effort and practice. It’s easy to blame others for your problems; that doesn’t make them go away. Hoping that someone will come along and make everything all right is not the right path, either. You must be responsible for your own well-being. To reach a healthy level of self-esteem, you have to be ready to take charge of your own self to change what is bothering you.

You need to accept who you are and be confident about your decisions and behavior. Think for yourself by actively choosing to deflect negative influences in your life. Don’t blindly accept that negative information. Change it. Only you can do that.

Set Goals

Set goals for yourself and then take action to achieve them:

• Acknowledge that you are solely responsible for the choices in your life and the path you take.
• Accept that you are responsible for what you choose to feel or think.
• Be accountable for your decisions, priorities and actions.
• Recognize that it is not good for you to depend on others to make you feel good about yourself.
• Accept that you cannot blame others for the choices you have made.

As you enter adulthood, realize that it is you who determines how your self-esteem will develop. Self-responsibility will help you achieve satisfaction in your life and help you improve your self-esteem by learning that you are not responsible for others actions, only your own.

Know Your Boundaries

Taking responsibility for yourself means you must also know your limitations. There are times that you are powerless to achieve the results you want. You need to determine which parts of a situation you have control over, act on that part and let go of the rest. Another part of self-responsibility is establishing healthy boundaries with others.

Taking on undeserved burdens from others is an act of irresponsibility toward oneself. In order to improve your self-esteem, you need to establish healthy boundaries with friends, parents and others.

Accepting others’ burdens only contributes to a lack of responsibility for your own well-being. Setting firm boundaries in relationships with others can help preserve self-responsibility and prevent co-dependency.

Develop Self-Responsibility

You are probably more responsible in some areas of your lives and less responsible in others. Although total self-responsibility may be unachievable all the time, you can learn to operate more self-responsibly if you become aware of the negative issues affecting your life and take action to correct them.

In most cases, you will know what you need to do. It’s just a matter of identifying and acting on the situation. If you practice taking responsibility for yourself day by day, you will develop the type of skills that you need to achieve, and maintain, responsibility for the self you are.