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Technorati Tags: responsibility, performance improvement, peak performance

This is how the story goes. Life is full of ups and downs. As it turns out many of  the downs as well as the ups are due to our own accord. Although we cannot control such influences as the weather, natural disasters, illnesses or many predicaments, or the actions of other people, we can control our reactions to them. Our reactions and the consequences that come about due to them are of our own accord.

This article is about the subject of responsibility, defined as a form of trustworthiness; the trait of being answerable to someone for something or being responsible for one’s conduct. We should be most answerable to is ourselves in the way that we handle situations.

Reactions are often in response to life’s outcomes. Many of life’s outcomes represent the answers to the questions that we ask when a crisis or dramatic situation arises. The quality of our life is defined by the quality of the questions that we ask about any situation. We don’t want a tornado to rip our house apart, but if such a tragedy occurs, we can either wallow in pity or move on and find a new home and realize how lucky we are to have personally survived the devastation.

The first of these type of questions begs for an answer that aspires to be negative. Whenever someone looks for blame, even placing it upon themselves, it doesn’t solve the problem. Rather, emotions like anger, despair, and fear arise.

There are two types of questions that we ask in life. Those that try to place blame on someone or something and those that attempt a solution so that a similar problem doesn’t arise again. Do you ask why, or do you ask why not?

When something happens to me, I have started to ask “Why not me?” That makes me look for ways to prevent something from happening again and looks for the positive in the situation.

When you answer a question with a why not, or an okay, then you start to look for ways to make things better.

Questions that are answered by ways to solve a problem are in response a mechanism of positive thinking and of course asking what could be called the ‘right questions’.

Unfortunately too many people are unable to forgive. That is a choice they make that assigns blame to another person or to even to themself. Possibly in their own way this is how they solve the possibility of not having the same situation arise again. However, because of the blaming they fail to see the true cause of the problem.

When a negative situation arises such as a friend having a negative reaction such as misunderstanding, and a potential “blow-up” possibly the best reaction that you can have is to take five deep breaths and remove yourself emotionally from the situation.

Some people live to blame others or blame situations. The alternative is to say to yourself, “From this day forth I choose to accept responsibility and look for solutions”. That is the positive thing to do. After all, in the words of a friend when asked why he might behave a certain way in reaction to a certain situation, he answered “That’s the way that I roll.”

How do you roll?

Technorati Tags: responsibility, forgiveness, reactions, situations, solutions, blame