In this era of self-development coaching and new age spirituality, there are a lot of experts telling people that it is important to take 100% responsibility. This concept of 100% responsibility is very, very popular now. The thing is, it is a problematic philosophy. Let’s unpack why as well as what to do instead.  

Responsibility has several definitions. From the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization, to the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something, to the state or fact of having control over someone, to the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something, to a moral obligation to behave correctly towards or in respect of someone or something. This of course makes it very hard to have a conversation about responsibility. 

What people tend to be concerned with when they teach you that it is critical to take 100% responsibility, is personal power. It is framed as a tool for personal empowerment. But, when this philosophy is treated as a rigid absolute, as a universal and non-negotiable law that applies (and must be followed) in all circumstances (regardless of context, nuance or conflicting evidence) it is out of reality and even dangerous. Let’s look at how:  

1. Treating self-empowerment tools, like radical responsibility, as a rigid absolute can pull us right out of reality. So that you understand what I mean, let’s look at the roughly 17 million people killed in the Nazi holocaust. Does it seem correct to you to go up to them when they are in the horrible situation of sitting there about to be executed and tell them “Look, it’s really important that you realize you are 100% responsible for where you are today and it is really important that you take 100% responsibility. You are here today because of your choices yesterday and you will be where you are tomorrow because of your choices today!” It terrifies people to accept the reality that we can and do effect other people and that other people can and do effect us. Even if you recognize pre-incarnation factors as well as the law of mirroring (often called the law of attraction) there is a reality that many people do not want to accept; you are not the sole operant power. You live in a system of constant co-creation. You are looking to find personal empowerment relative to your part in that cosmic symphony. You are not the literal author of every single thing that occurs. Even when you accept the higher dimensional truth that everything is you, in the time-space reality you occupy, reality is a partnership, not a solo dance. It is a paradox. One truth does not negate the other. There is an intersection between you being the architect of your life experience and the other forces, both physical and nonphysical that are also at work. You do not exist in a vacuum. Your reality is a dance between you and a larger, complex system that you are a part of. Many philosophies, including the philosophy of 100% responsibility (and you create your own reality with it), can offer extreme utility for personal growth. But this doesn’t mean that they are an objectively accurate description of reality. 
   Many non-physical beings who teach humanity do not care for truth in and of itself. They have a specific aim and purpose. And teaching humans to view life through the lens of extreme personal empowerment, such as “you create your own reality” and radical responsibility along with it, shifts a person from being a reactive organism to being a proactive, self-reflecting producer of life experience. It helps them overcome states of powerlessness by re-writing painful narratives into empowering ones. It switches them to an internal locus of control. Causing them to focus all of their energy where they have the most influence, which is their own choices and perceptions. In other words, it very much serves a purpose for people to start thinking this way.             
2. This philosophy of taking 100% responsibility is rooted in the absolute terror of powerlessness. It is a power-hungry philosophy that is in fact a state of avoidance. A major idea behind take 100% responsibility is that whenever you recognize what someone else did to cause a situation you are in (blame them), any time you see yourself as a victim, make someone else responsible or try to hold someone else accountable, you are surrendering your power, abilities, and life to the power of something or someone else outside of you. That you are saying that they have control over you and that you are powerless. So, by taking 100% responsibility, you are taking your power back. This is a very appealing philosophy for people who were hurt by others in the past and who never ever want to feel that powerlessness again. And this philosophy becomes part of their hyper-independence trauma response. A coping mechanism. This terror and trauma is why they hold onto it so rigidly.   
    
3. This philosophy is a slippery slope to self-blame. Many people who adhere to the take 100% responsibility philosophy consistently monitor every life experience for how they caused it. This can easily lead to internalizing everything that happens. And this converts very easily into self-blame, shame, rumination and serious self- criticism. An extreme negative spiral.  
    
4. This philosophy causes anxiety and burnout. Specifically, hyper-responsibility burnout. It encourages you to take everything onto your own shoulders, which no person can actually do. And so, it is a dead end. It leads people to believing they must control everything in order to avoid pain and that it is shameful or a personal failure to rely on others, both of which leads you to burnout. Most people who say that it is important to take 100% responsibility assert that you have to take hold of the fact that where you are today is because of the choices you made before, and where you will be tomorrow is because of the choices you make today. This creates the need for perfectionism regarding choices if one wants to avoid calamity, which increases stress. It can easily lead to you trying to control something that you can’t actually control. And this makes you stay in chronic stress. When you decide you must fix a situation because you are a person who takes 100 percent responsibility in a situation that cannot be fixed by you alone, you will enter the state of fight or flight. Rather than empowering, the take 100% responsibility mentality will be disempowering. Burnout is a horrible experience. The name does not do it justice.
    
5. It is a recipe for disaster in relationships and can very easily blind you and bind you to dysfunctional relationships. Taking 100% responsibility in a relationship will mean you taking responsibility for both your part and the other person’s part of what should be a two-person tango. It will burn you out. It is absolutely unsustainable. You will enable under-responsibility in other people. You will become an irresponsible people magnet. People will gravitate towards taking less and less until everything is on you, but you won’t notice until it is too late. You will struggle with vulnerability in your relationships. The Intimacy and vulnerability necessary to form deep connections with others requires mutual reliance, which the 100% responsibility philosophy tends to prevent.  
   And if you are in a dysfunctional or abusive dynamic, taking 100% responsibility can enable dysfunction as well as abuse. It can even become a tool that the other person uses to abuse you. You make yourself the problem and the one to blame, and so do they. Even when the issue is something they are doing or not doing. For example: It often leads to the “I am the one to blame for and responsible for my partner lying to me” dynamic. It can also very easily lead to boundary erosion, whereby you are only focused on your reaction rather than on setting consequences for another person’s behaviors.  Adhering to this philosophy can easily put you in the scapegoat role in social dynamics. Overall, this philosophy is a one-way ticket to relationship hell.     
    
6. The 100% responsibility philosophy is part of the problem with our world today. In today’s world, reciprocal social bonds are being corroded as the world becomes more and more individualized. Humans are turning from a “we take care of each other” society into an “everyone is responsible for themselves and their own wellbeing” society. The take 100% responsibility attitude shifts the blame and burden of systems failures (things that are not ok and that are not within a person’s individual control) onto the individual. The take 100% responsibility philosophy feeds this world-wide social problem and enables it. It is making this human world a crueler place to be.

Self-empowerment is great. For this reason and many others, responsibility tools are great. In its purest form, what responsibility is, is taking positive ownership over something, such as yourself and your life experience. This is a highly engaged and empowered state of being. But if we are interested in awakening, we need to look at the full picture of reality, not just use the part that makes us feel empowered to negate the part that doesn’t. The full picture of causation does not involve just us. Regardless of whether your soul chose this specific life and even a specific set of negative conditions, it is still true that this life experience is a co-creation. You affect others and others effect you. To not get that is to be profoundly and willfully out of reality. This is why a far, far better and more awakened practice when it comes to responsibility is to see what is yours and what is not yours. And this, can be a long list in any given situation. Doing this will allow you to see your role in the big and often very complex picture of causation. It is also a different and better practice to use in order to “mine” this life experience for how you can take ownership and where and in what ways you do have power in any given situation. It is very black or white thinking to assert that people either take 100% responsibility or they are in victim mentality. You don’t have to go out of reality to ask yourself questions like: 

• What choices did I make that got me here?
• What can I do differently next time?
• What steps do I need to take to move past this?
• What can I learn from this?
• How can I react differently?
• What should I be doing differently? 
• How can I shift to an internal locus of control? 

Don’t let the philosophy of 100% responsibility lead you down a road that takes you into distress and out of reality. Start asking yourself instead: What is mine and what is theirs?