CHAPTER 4

Self Responsibility

When you feel good about yourself, you have an inner motivation to take care of yourself. Conversely, when you don’t like the person that you are, you will almost always engage in behaviours that are self-destructive. These can manifest themselves as addictive behaviours that are slowly but surely putting you in an early grave. The key to stopping this madness is to start taking responsibility for yourself. When your self esteem is high, you’re going to be far more likely to do that. You’ll be aware of your inner self, you’ll understand what your needs are and you’ll be determined to fill them in healthy ways.

Responsibility means being accountable for what we think, say and do. Self responsibility involves working on our own character rather than blaming others for our situation; it means to choose what we want and just do it.

In order to reach this ideal, the majority of us have to engage in a bit of inner maintenance work. The ability to be able to step back and look in on what is happening in your life, as if you’re hovering above it in a helicopter, is a great way to analyse and identify areas that are in need of rebalancing. A fantastic tool that allows you to do just that is the “Wheel of Life.” The ‘Wheel of Life’ allows you to assess every area of your life and determine which areas are out of balance and it can allow you to uncover the real motivators that drive you. As you can see below, the wheel contains 8 key life areas. The idea is to measure your level of satisfaction in each of these areas. This is a slice of life snapshot of how you feel right now.

The following steps will allow you to make use of the ‘Wheel of Life’ tool to develop your sense of self responsibility and accountability.

The Wheel of Life

1. Print a copy of the wheel (see Appendix A). On a piece of paper, rate your level of satisfaction in each of the 8 areas, from 0 to 10, where 10 means extremely satisfied.
2. Now, for each area draw a red line along the right hand sector line that matches that number (i.e. a 5 would go half way up the line, a 10 all the way).
3. Connect the red lines to form an inner circle. How smooth or bumpy is your wheel? On what parts of the wheel is the tread the most worn?
4. Reflect on what your wheel looks like. If the wheel were the actual wheels on your car, how bumpy would the ride be? Are there any areas that are surprising to you? Do you have any areas where you have scored below 7? Fantastic! These are the areas in which you have the potential to grow the most. Come to the realisation that your life will not be worthwhile if you are achieving a 10 in one area but a 4 in one of the others. You simply need to find the balance that allows the wheel to turn smoothly.
5. Ask yourself the following searching questions:
   Why did I score myself this number in this category?
   What number do I want to be when I reuse the wheel in 3 months time?
   What are the biggest gaps in my level of satisfaction?
   Which area do I want to give primary attention to improving satisfaction in?
6. This is the key step - you need to commit to doing something to address the imbalance in your primary area of attention. Under your wheel write down the specific things that you are going to put into place to realign your wheel’s balance. Now go out and do it.
7. Reassess yourself against the wheel every 3 months.