3 Simple Steps to Take Responsibility for Time and Life

We are all doing what we believe it takes to be successful, to be our best, to make a difference, and to fulfil our responsibilities.

Note: This article is taken from the writer Steven Griffith, who talks about things that help us take responsibility for our actions.

However, we easily lose our enthusiasm, desire, and motivation to keep improving when life throws problems, curveballs, and roadblocks in our path. It’s frustrating when progress stalls or stops, but everyone experiences this; no one is immune.

Here, we must beware to avoid slipping into the "excuses trap." This is a dangerous mental cycle that many people unintentionally and often subconsciously turn on in their minds. It is a thinking loop that constantly repeats excuses, justifies our mistakes, and blames the economy, family, timing, or anything else. Once it’s on, say goodbye to your hopes and dreams because the list never ends.

This mental trap most dangerously says, "I'm not in control of myself and my destiny" and "It's not my responsibility." How do we break free from this cycle? We must address the excuses head-on.

There are many possible excuses to avoid taking responsibility for our actions. Still, it's interesting to note that the most common excuse for not achieving, possessing, or owning what you desire in life is "I don't have enough time."

This is the top excuse in the "excuses trap," which led me five years ago to commit to solving this problem while researching my book, The Time Cleanse: A Proven System to Eliminate Wasted Time, Realize Your Full Potential, and Reinvest in What Matters Most.

My clients frequently would use the same excuse, "I don't have enough time!" This justified why they didn't go to the gym, grow their businesses, see their friends and family, and so on.

We must reconcile with the time excuse to break free from the excuses trap permanently. To be responsible for your attention and energy, you must take steps to help you take responsibility for your time.

3 simple steps to take responsibility for time and life

1. See Time as Your Ally, Not Your Enemy

“When you change the way you look at things, what you look at changes.” —Wayne Dyer

The rule is simple: it becomes easy to blame time and avoid taking responsibility if you view time as "your enemy." However, when you see time as a friend and ally standing by your side to help you achieve your goals, you can finally take full responsibility for your actions.

You need to reconsider your relationship with time positively. First, you must deprogram yourself from how society has taught you to view time. How many times have you heard phrases like:

• “Where will I find the time?”
• “I never have enough time.”
• “Where did the time go?”
• “When I get the time.”
• “If time allows.”

But who actually “allows” you to do things? It’s not time—it’s you!

Realize that you are the one who makes decisions—not time. We all have the same amount of time. Whether you use your time to advance toward your objectives or to become sidetracked by unhelpful activities is entirely up to you.

Time is an incredibly valuable resource, perhaps the most precious thing you have in life. Imagine your total time on earth as a billion dollars - it's all yours, and you can do anything you want with it, buy anything you desire in life. However, it can also be stolen from you. Therefore, you must choose where to spend it, direct it, and ensure it is spent on what matters to you because no one else will. Everyone else will simply try to take it from you.

Your time is yours, your responsibility, a part of you, and you are not separate from it. It is a natural gift to your life, an extremely valuable resource that is always there to support you in becoming the greatest version of yourself. Feel grateful for your time, value it, and ensure to use it optimally.

When you stop fighting time and take responsibility for it, you regain your energy and vitality, and opportunities naturally come your way. Also, time turns into your ally and friend, supporting you in everything you do.

Decide once and for all that time to support you and enable you to perform to the best of your abilities. We all have the same amount of time, but how you use it is entirely up to you!

2. Eliminate Time Excuse

Here's how to master time management: Stop using time as an excuse to avoid pursuing your goals in life. Try telling yourself, “I’m fully responsible for my time. I own it, I control it, and it comes from within me.”

You need to adopt a "time excuse diet" going forward. Just as you would follow a diet to regain your fitness by eliminating toxic foods and preventing progress, you must do the same to regain your time. You need to eliminate toxic thoughts preventing your success and personal responsibility if you want to reduce the amount of time you lose to distractions.

Start choosing what you want to do with your time. Remind yourself daily that it is your time, and you can use it however you see fit. What we choose to accept or reject and what we decide to do determines when and where we use our time. We unknowingly act as victims when we believe that time is an external factor controlling us.

Working with thousands of people, I have seen every version of a time excuse offered as the number one reason people aren’t finding the success, happiness, and achievement they desire. This widely spread misconception is the real reason people are struggling or stuck.

Time is never to blame; it’s your choices and priorities with time. When something is our top priority, we can always find or create the time for it. When you're sick, you suddenly have plenty of time to visit the doctor and receive treatment.

It all comes down to choose. Therefore, eliminate the excuse that you don't have enough time and choose to be responsible for your time.

3. Practice Self-Compassion Daily

Taking responsibility for your actions requires you to take this final step, even though it may not seem logical. So, take some time to be grateful for yourself.

It can be extremely stressful to take responsibility for all your time, how you spend it, and all of your accomplishments and failures. You won't always succeed perfectly in every task, so if you constantly tell yourself negative things like "I'm not doing a good enough job," you will lose motivation, and excuses will take over.

Positive reinforcement is essential for reprogramming your mind to become motivated and solution-focused instead of full of excuses.

Here's a mind trick we deceive ourselves with: If you believe and know that you will often fail when "trying to achieve something", then you'll eventually be more likely to procrastinate and come up with excuses, which will keep you from moving forward, or you won't even try to achieve anything.

However, if we want to succeed and take full responsibility for our actions, we must be willing to take risks and accept failure. This is the only way to push ourselves to new heights and the next level of growth so that we can rise by our will when we fall.

According to research, being kind and compassionate to ourselves sets healthy expectations for us and helps us perform better. Self-compassion improves our well-being and courage to take chances. Being kind to ourselves helps us become more responsible for our good and bad actions.

Self-compassion is the optimal way to take on self-responsibility. It means helping yourself face hardships, obstacles, and challenges to move forward. Just wanting to take responsibility for your actions is enough reason to be compassionate towards yourself.

Once we show self-compassion and take more care of our mental and emotional needs, we can be in a positive state that encourages us to re-engage, learn from hardships, integrate new lessons, adjust our strategies and tactics, take full responsibility for our actions, and return to achieving our goals with a higher level of confidence, flexibility, strength, and success tools.

In Conclusion

We develop a highly toxic mix of mental traps keeping us from reaching our goals and dreams when we fall into the "excuse trap" with the belief that "we don't have enough time," which our 24/7 connected devices and lifestyles unintentionally push into us.

Excuses justify people's failures and ask them to give up. Also, a lack of self-compassion tells them they can’t do it. Given enough time and setbacks, they may start to believe it. They may even want to believe it because it allows them to avoid confrontation and enables them to accept their failure. But that's not you. You must take responsibility for your actions and determine your destiny.

You have decided to be responsible for your life, eliminate all excuses (especially the time excuse), and practice self-compassion in a way that empowers you to make decisions and take accountability for your actions. By following these three simple steps, you can reprogram your mind to feel fully strong instead of helpless.