Today’s Drifting Thoughts: Personal Responsibility

Been pondering for a bit, somehow Ron Kaufman‘s analogy on personal responsibility just came back to me suddenly (which gave me a great impact when I first heard it from his seminar tapes shown in the bookstore). Somehow eventually in due to course of time, I have forgotten it, so I think it’s a good idea to put it up here.

I still remembered¹ that he talks about the fact that when in comes to constantly improve oneself in order to provide good service to others, taking personal responsibility to change and going the extra mile is extremely important. However, some would tend to avoid that kind of responsibility when something is wrong, and hence fall through three stages of denial.

The first is “Shame”, which we feel shameful that we had did something wrong and continuously blaming ourselves and damaging our own confidence at the same time. Then there was a second stage when we have our perception twisted and place the blame on others, which brings us to the “Blame” stage.

However, as we think deeper into it, we will “Justify” the error itself: either because later on we found out that nobody can be blamed or we find something external that justify our actions or the mistake itself.

But in the end, was the problem solved and the situation improved? Well… probably you’d be glad that if it didn’t turn worse. And somehow I sort of associate it with the “self sabotage” concept that I have thought out previously… and it seems that I find myself getting into the same cycle quite often. Some of those hard times I find myself giving up and thought that nothing can be done (“Justify”) and there’s many times when I find myself going through the “Shame” and “Blame” phases.

So it comes down to whether I take personal responsibility to resolve and improve the situation… that’s something that I would need to reflect myself a little bit more on. As for going the extra mile, probably that’s something that I didn’t find myself doing much, I would admit… all this while I have been loathing trouble and avoiding anything that seems too troublesome, even if the trouble is something that I would need the most.

Well… there’s more things that needs to be done, I guess.