Radical Responsibility

vs OVER-responsibility

In the personal coaching field, you may have heard of the term ‘radical responsibility’.

By using radical responsibility, you take your power back.

You look for ways you can show up differently….

You take responsibility for your actions, thoughts, energy, and words in each aspect of your life that is under your control.

It is common in the world for people to blame the government, the weather, and others for their problems. Radical responsibility gives us freedom to see where you can make a difference.

However, it is so important to highlight the difference between radical responsibility and OVER-responsibility.

Over-responsibility involves taking responsibility for things that have nothing to do with you.

You may feel this by blaming yourself for everything and not feeling like you are enough. The weight of the world is on your shoulders and this energy doesn’t allow you to problem solve or analyse the situation.

In this episode, I will ask you four questions to encourage you to enter your critical thinking awareness and not allow over-responsibility to derail your business.

I would love for you to listen and reflect. Please let me know your insights on radical responsibility and how you recognise the signs of over-responsibility in your business.

See below for a full transcript.

Don’t forget to go to the bottom of this page and let me know in the comments any questions or what you think or just share the love on social. Thanks

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Transcript of Podcast

G'day, and welcome back to superfreaks. I am really happy to be back here with you, and I just want to say that it's been really really nice to get your feedback on the podcast. As you know, these are snippets of conversations that I get to have with my incredible clients all around the world, and without revealing who they are or what we're talking about because I really value their privacy and I value the privacy of our conversations, the conversations that we have are so epic, and they're so smart and so wise these human beings and so inspiring and we get to some incredible insights through what they bring and their goals, and what it is that they want.

Always my intention is to bring you the best of those conversations without having to broach anyone's privacy, I suppose, is giving you an insight into these incredible conversations, so you get the nuggets of gold that you can sort of take away for yourself and apply on your own in your own time.

I really enjoy that you are enjoying these podcasts I know it's not a typical kind of podcast format,where it's long and interviewing other people and such but I really do enjoy sharing these bits with you and hearing what you have to say.

So that being said if you do love this, please feel free to leave me a review, I would be so grateful. Also reach out to me below or on my social media, and let me know that you love the podcast, or even, you know, what you'd like me to focus on. Because usually, what people want me to focus on tends to come up in conversations, I feel like we're all pulling from the same collective fields at the moment, especially people who listen to this podcast.

So, without further ado, let's talk about what we're going to talk about today and that is the conversation about radical responsibility versus OVER-responsibility. So a really common term in the personal development world, is this idea of radical responsibility;

like I take responsibility for every single part of my life, in every single way, at all times, and it's brilliant. It's so beautiful because what it does is radical responsibility, you end up taking all of your power back.

Something feels like it's out of your control, something feels like it's going wrong or something feels like it's going right, and really we use this to look at the ways that we can show up differently to take responsibility for our actions, our thoughts, our energy in that moment.

The way that we spoke, what we said, you know we can take responsibility for all of our parts and see where we can contribute to the results and experiences that we are having. Now radical responsibility is quite a radical idea, because we live in a world where lots of people like to point the finger and blame the government or blame the weather or blame the financial climate. You know, there's so many different things that is very easy for us to look at and point the finger at and blame for why things are not working.

So it's kind of murky because when we talk about radical responsibility, it gives us a lot of freedom to kind of look at. Okay, what is that has less to do with why this is happening, than what I believe it does. So what if it has more to do with me, than it does this thing that I think is controlling me or controlling the situation. It's very empowering to start thinking about that. One, you know, if you've never heard of radical responsibility, just look it up.

One way that I find really fascinating to, I guess highlight where we can be taking more radical responsibility is looking at, is everyone on this Earth getting the same results from this circumstance or this process as me? And if the answer is no, there's probably a reason that we can look at for our own level of personal responsibility that we can take for the result.

Now that being said, I want to talk to you today about personal responsibility versus over-responsibility which I think is really important to highlight and differentiate. Because a lot of the really high powered, high performing, very, very, self-responsible human beings that I coach on a day to day basis, sometimes when the proverbial hits the fan, we can end up getting to a point where we take over-responsibility for something that actually has nothing to do with us. Or less to do with us than we think. Too much of anything can become a little toxic, really, in too much radical responsibility.

It's not really radical responsibility when it turns into over-responsibility, it's like the toxic version of that, what it looks like is, you can be in a certain circumstance, and you feel like everything is always your fault, or something goes wrong, and instead of kind of taking a step back, and analyzing what happened and what we might be able to do differently and then strategizing what you can do next and taking the actions, it's like, oh I must be doing something wrong.

Now that sounds really powerful on the surface because when we do take radical responsibility for our lives and our situations, we do take our power back, we do take back the ability to change something and have a new result.

However, when we take too much responsibility, we end up overcompensating for things that are actually outside of our control, outside of our sphere of like sovereignty and our own level of responsibility, and we can end up feeling like everything is our fault. Instead of looking at where we can take action in a positive light.

So, the key distinction here that I really want to get across is anything I teach, anything you hear in personal development, not just from from me but from anyone. You know, it's never meant to be that to be- to beat yourself up with it, it's always meant to empower you.

So we never, I always say this to my NLP students, like we never use these tools, especially a radical responsibility to beat ourselves up we use them to empower ourselves, and to make change in a positive light, easy kind of with ease, a manner of ease. It's not meant to be, that we beat ourselves up with these ideas. When we get to over-responsibilities when we tend to beat ourselves up with the ideas and it's not really helpful to the situation anymore.

So it's not a healthy kind of situation when you're taking over-responsibility for something. What it looks like is, you know any situation that can occur something could be going on in your business, and instead of really analyzing all of what could be happening, you immediately think that something's wrong with you. Like you're not doing enough, or something like that. It could be that in your relationship, something's happening, and immediately instead of looking at all of the possibilities for why this thing could be going on, we immediately make it out fault, like, I need to change something, maybe I'm not communicating well enough.

It all really does come down to being enough.

We can also tend to feel like the weight of the world is on our shoulders, like they can be things going on in the world, and there's so much going on in the world today. Instead of feeling radical responsibility;

doing what we can, playing our part and staying in an attitude of gratitude and awareness, and compassion, and being awake and like attracting what it is that we want to attract to our lives,

we can start to walk around like, we have the weight of the world on our shoulders, and that vibe is just not going to get us into our problem solving mentality is it? Like that energy of holding on to a problem and wearing it like a backpack and feeling the weight of it and carrying it around like it's also horrible and nothing's gonna work, and everything is my fault and I don't know what, it's like it's so draining, I just don't do that.

So, what I really want you to know is, A, the difference between radical responsibility and over-responsibility and what to do instead. So if you are the type of person who is super empathic, or empathetic, perhaps highly sensitive someone who does take radical responsibility, someone who knows that you have the capability and power to do anything that you want, to create anything you want but you tend to feel like taking radical responsibility for all the things that are happening in your life are starting to feel draining, or when they start to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Really what I want you to know is that it's not about beating yourself up with anything.

So when it starts to feel like you're berating yourself or you're beating yourself up, and I know that some of you need to slow down enough, you will be able to feel what that feels like in your body when you know that you're not just taking responsibility, you're actually beating yourself up with it, then this is the podcast for you. This is the episode that is made for you.

What's happening is that not radical responsibility, that is over-responsibility that stems from an idea that we are not enough

we're not doing enough,
we don't have it in us,
it's no good.

I don't want that for anyone because it's just not true about any of us, it's just not true about any of us.

So I want to say this as well, from a metaphysical perspective, we can take responsibility for things that are seemingly far beyond our control. From a metaphysical perspective, and that is you know looking at what's going on in the world, and

deciding that our energy matters and
how we think about it,
how we speak about it
what we do about it,
how we feel about it,

that all counts, collectively towards what's going to happen towards that, but that's like our half of the equation that's our part of what we can do, and that's what radical responsibility is.

Radical responsibility is not taking the blame for absolutely everything, and beating yourself up with it, in order to feel like you're doing something useful. That doesn't really help anyone. That causes more suffering.

It's not about blaming anyone else ever. It's not about shirking responsibility, it's not about bypassing any responsibility.

It's about really analyzing and scrutinizing, what do I have control over?

In what part of me might I have contributed to this? So I can take responsibility for my learning and my part in that, and that's not about rushing in. It's about really looking at ourselves and seeing what we can do to make a change. But it's not about going 'the world is stuffed,' and I'm just going to beat myself up over everything that's happened in the past, like that's over responsibility, you know what I mean?

So, a great question to ask is like when you start to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders or the weight of your relationship or the weight of your business so the weight of everything is on your shoulders, and it starts to feel really draining and constrictive and awful, it's a sign that you're taking over responsibility. And I'm especially talking to you if you're the type of person who knows exactly what radical responsibility is.

So if you're starting to feel helpless, if you're starting to feel like 'where else can I go with this?' This must be related to something I've done in my past, some kind of like trauma or something. And I want to invite you to take a step back and ask yourself one of these three questions, maybe four questions.

1 - The first one is like, what else could be true in this?

What else could be possible here? I suppose that's another question. So when you're looking at, say, a situation with your business and you think that maybe you're not doing enough to make it all happen. Ask yourself like what else might be possible? Or what else could be true in this moment? Is it really true that I'm not doing enough? Are there other places or other examples where someone is doing exactly the same amount of work or even less than me, and having a different result? So is it really true?

Another question is,

2 - What else could this mean about me?

So sometimes we take over responsibility by making everything our fault. I'm not enough, I'm not doing enough blah blah blah. It's really self berating and asking instead, what else could this mean about me? Maybe it's not about me in the first place, maybe, maybe what else this means is, it has nothing to do with me right now. And your ability to take responsibility is to have empathy for the people that you're working with are not making their stuff about you for a hot minute - like maybe has nothing to do with you. Though you're over responsibility self, wants you to take full responsibility as it has everything to do with you.

That's a really interesting question to ask. Another follow on question is like,

3 - What else could this mean for other people?

So what could this mean about my team? What else could be true about my team? What else could be true about the people that I am purchasing from? What else could be true about my clients? What else could be true about my partner? What else could be true in this moment? Other than it's all my fault. What else is possible that could be happening?

4 - What else is possible here?

Is really what the question is.

So those are the four questions that I like to ask. To have a critical thinking awareness, not take over responsibility for a situation, stay connected to my intentions, stay connected to what it is that I want, but it's also something I bring to my clients when I noticed that they are taking over responsibility and feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders. When they're growing a business when they're growing a family, when they are growing a relationship, growing a career.

Right, it's about recognizing what is ours to take responsibility of and what is not.

And from a metaphysical perspective, what is ours to take responsibility of and what is something that I'm not helping, by taking responsibility for, like, what can I do instead. So I really hope this helps you today. I want to invite you if you are someone who is empathic and sensitive and you really, you know you're feeling this, please do let me know if this has struck a chord with you. I really hope that you will ask yourself these questions like