As Stephen Covey says in “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” a large part of your effectiveness is understanding that you are response-able. All of us have circumstances, people and things that can cause some detours.

But all of us have one thing in common. We get to choose our response. That’s where we develop the art of building our response muscles to where we can meet a situation successfully because we are response-able.

But the first step to becoming response-able is to understand that if you think the problem is out there then that is the problem. As long as you are outer directed by situations or other directed by people as your primary means to get through life then you will have a problem being response-able and changing your life for the better.

When you choose to be inner directed you understand that there are problems out there but that you have a choice in how to respond. You have self-awareness. In the middle of how we are thinking or doing things we can change. That puts us at the top of the food chain.

All animals operate by instinct and react to certain cues. Only when they are trained will they react differently. For example, when a zebra sees that a Lion is about to attack it, the zebra doesn’t stop to think about how it is going to handle the situation differently. It doesn’t say to itself, “Wait a minute, maybe I can think of a better response than what I have used before.” It runs. And if it is lucky, with enough of a lead, it runs fast enough to escape.

One of the keys to success and happiness is to realize that you are response-able. That you have direct control over yourself and that with self-awareness you can choose your response. And as you become better at being response-able you increase your ability to take on greater responsibility and to grow into your potential which leads to a growing inner feeling of success, satisfaction and happiness.

Be response-able and take responsibility!