Let others take responsibility

Responsibility is an important value to teach because no one can succeed in life if they are not responsible. ... Without responsibility, they will leave things undone and get in trouble.

Many people believe that by taking responsibility and sorting out the issues on behalf of the people who they care about is their duty if they are in a position to do so and if they are able to sort out everything they can for this person without having to let it impact them or even cause a ripple in that person's life then they will have done right by them.

'Guilty'!!!

Being the eldest of four siblings, this is something that I have done regularly over the years and I still find it hard to back off at times even to this day despite my siblings all being in their forties now!

The need to take responsibility for others comes from a place of caring and wanting to make it easier for others so the motives for this are often sincere (if not a little controlling at times due to being a bossy older sister who is able to sort out their lives quite easily)..

However it is not necessarily the best way forward for anyone involved and more often than not can cause more harm than good to both sides.

Taking responsibility for another person's actions or problems is likely to hinder them in life and take from them their ability to grow and learn in life and prevent them from developing a healthy self esteem and self belief in themselves and their abilities.

You are stunting their growth and depriving them of a valuable life skill!

The fact being that your actions that you perceive as kindness by taking responsibility for their lives in an attempt to shield them from hurt and pain could become their biggest downfall in life and take from them their chances of true pleasure and happiness in life as well as their sense of pride and worth, replacing these with fear and helplessness which means that when you are no longer there to take responsibility for something for them, they are likely to crash and burn, ultimately causes them extreme levels of fear, hurt and pain on a much bigger scale than you would ever want them to face as they were never given the opportunity to learn how to take responsibility for themselves.

The biggest gift that you can ever give a person who you care for is the belief in themselves that they can rely upon themselves to deal with anything that life throws at them and the awareness that life will never throw anything at them that they are not fully equipped to handle by themselves.

You have to be cruel to be kind and not kind to be cruel by teaching them how to take responsibility for themselves!

As for the person who is taking responsibility for others, quite often by doing so, it will also cause a detriment to them and their lives too as they may well suffer unnecessarily from it when in reality they should not have to suffer for another person's problems that they have not caused or be punished because of them! 

On the other hand it is not easy to stand back and watch the people who you care about try and take responsibility for themselves when you see them struggling with it initially but you must accept that they will be better for it in the long run!

No matter how strong a person is or how much ability they have to take the responsibility and resolve it, this is still likely to cause them unnecessary stress and even impact on their mental health when constantly bearing the burden of responsibility for all and as a result they may not be able to focus on other people or areas of their own life that are just as important and therefore they may cause others to suffer who don't deserve to aswell  as they will have sacrificed their needs to take responsibility for another who should be taking responsibility for themselves.

To illustrate this next part I shall try and execute my point with the use of metaphors as I love metaphors as you will know already if you have read any of my other blog posts)!

WARNING! METAPHORS AHEAD!

So by not taking responsibility, this doesn't mean that you have to go to the opposite extreme and stand by and watch them sink... but you should for a while... well only for a bit and of course if you don't see them start to swim in a reasonable time frame then you can throw them a lifeline but this has to be the last resort.

By lifeline, I don't mean that you jump in yourself and lift them out of it or call the coastguard but you throw them a rubber ring and allow them to save themselves if they choose to that is!

You can also prevent them from sinking in the first place by teaching them to swim beforehand, even if this means they  have to swim with the aid of armbands initially but you cant teach them to swim by swimming for them but you can teach them by showing them and swimming with them until they are confident to swim on their own!

Should you require any more information or guidance on how best you can teach others to take responsibility then by all means get in touch and I will be happy to help where I can.