Responsibility

Responsibility unleashes choice.  Whenever we think, decide, choose, and act we are exercising our personal responsibility. Deciding to accept responsibility for our choices increases the range of choices considered acceptable by others. It allows autonomy to increase without decreasing relatedness.  We always have more responsible and less responsible options to choose from. Here are examples of choices we have:

More Responsible	Less Responsible
Facts, realism, reality, and learning what is. Inquiring, investigating, seeking, and embracing facts and truth. Reason and sanity.	Fantasy. Avoiding reality; embracing fantasy or magical thinking. Denying or escaping reality. Rumors. Rejecting facts. Insanity.
Honesty.	Dishonesty.
Focusing our thoughts and attention. Orderly.	Drifting, rambling, unfocused, flighty, chaotic.
Thinking through alternatives and consequences.	Relying on habit or taking the easy way.
Clear and consistent thinking and expression.	Obscurity, vagueness, hedging, inconsistency, waffling.
Learn from history.	Revise, ignore, or dispute history.
Seeking out expertise.	Dismissing expertise.
Working to understand.	Whatever.
Self-discipline. Impulse control. Behaving true to your values. Saying “yes” to your values and “no” to the rest.	Acting on impulse. Going along with whatever. Situational ethics.
Do what you say.	Do whatever.
Fulfill reciprocal obligations.	Evade reciprocal obligations. Cheat.
Open to new ideas and information. Curious. Wise.	Closed to new ideas. Stubborn and closed minded. Ignorant.
Willing to accept blame for errors.	Infallible, arrogant, dismissive, obstinate.
Consistent, congruent, and reliable.	Inconsistent, chaotic, unreliable.
Rationality, valuing reason, respect for facts, and valid logic. Gathering, validating, and studying evidence. Developing and applying a coherent theory of knowledge.	Fallacies, distortions, assumptions, misinformation, and unrepresentative data.
Considering a variety of points-of-view.	Accepting a one-sided view.
Rigorous, careful, attentive.	Sloppy, careless, distracted.
Adaptation and flexibility. Adjusting beliefs and actions to accommodate newly understood facts.	Rigid and misfit.
Competence.	Manipulation.
Autonomy.	Dependence.
Courage.	Cowardice.
Seeking solutions.	Assigning blame.
Integrity.	Betrayal.
Awareness and wisdom.	Unawareness and ignorance.
Adherence to evidence, values, and choice.	Blind obedience.
Entrepreneurship.	Bureaucracy
Participant.	Bystander.
Entitled to my own opinion.	Entitled to my own facts.
Talking to people.	Talking about people.
Building enduring relationships based on who we are.	Seeking instrumental relationships based on what we do.
I choose to . . . I decided to . . .	I had to . . . I had no choice . . .
Ideas, choices, and actions do matter and do have consequences. Believing that effects and outcomes have causes.	It's all up to fate, destiny, and chance. Attributing results to chance or destiny. There is noting I can do; I am helpless.
Internal Locus of Control	External Locus of Control.