Reactivity & Responsibility

“Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom….Taking responsibility is not accepting blame…It simply means consciously responding to the situation. Once you accept the responsibility, you will invariably start exploring ways to address the situation. You will look for solutions… your ability to craft your life situations will keep enhancing itself.

If you look at your life closely, you will find that you have done the most idiotic and life-negative things when you were angry…it is singularly unpleasant-for you and for those at the receiving end. It is also counterproductive and therefore inefficient.

Stress is entirely self-created and self-inflicted. Once you take charge of your inner life, there is no such thing as stress. You only mess up your situations by getting angry. Once you see that clearly, you’ve taken the first step toward change… in a state of anger, you are literally poisoning your system. When you are angry, your chemistry is altered, and your system turns toxic. The choice is always before you: to respond consciously to the present; or to react compulsively to it…. Responsibility is born in awareness, in consciousness. Reactivity is born in unawareness, unconsciousness. The first is freedom, the second is enslavement…Being responsible is taking ownership of your life.

Responsibility is not reaction but is not action either. Responsibility and action belong to different dimensions. The ability to respond gives you the freedom to act. It also gives you the freedom not to act. It puts you in the driver’s seat of your life… Responsibility is not compulsive action. It offers you the choice of action. Action has to be judiciously performed. 

If responsibility is “response-ability,” the capacity to be responsive to situations can be limitless.