Taking Responsibility
Last week, I had the privilege of
hanging out with my friend Gene, the attending physician on duty at a local
hospital’s Emergency Department. The responsibility he accepts as an
everyday fact is awesome. In a week, he oversees the physical care of
hundreds of patients and the medical information and skill development of
many residents, medical students, and physician assistants. And that’s only
part of his life. He also has a wife, an armful of friends, and a full-time
avocation of singing with a professional quality chorus. Gene’s life is all
about accepting responsibility on the grandest of scales.
My colleague Debbie DeVoe and I recently
created a workshop about the skills for living authentically. The following
is one of the four Principles of Authenticity from our collaboration.
Full
Responsibility
- Take responsibility for your life and
support others in doing the same.
- Focus on what you can change.
- Be impeccable with your agreements.
- Regularly examine your commitments
and recommit to what you really want.
Let’s look at the unspoken message of
the last statement. Once you examine your commitments, how do you let go of
what you don’t want to recommit to?
These are things we agree to do with or
for others, such as being the treasurer of an organization, hosting a book
club once a quarter, or organizing a softball team each year. Letting go of
(or getting out of) things we’ve committed to can be a hard activity. In the
good old days, when I moved every two years (whether I wanted to or not), I
had an automatic commitment-breaker. I was moving. It was a good way to get
out of what I didn’t want to do anymore. Now though, I’ve lived in Berkeley
for 23 years, I can no longer use the “moving” excuse. Now, if something
isn’t working out, I have to make a choice. Here are some options:
-
Just don’t do it. If you don’t show up,
you don’t have to do what you said you would do! Wow! Wouldn’t that be
incredibly rude and completely against the third rule of responsibility
about being impeccable with your agreements. It’s not a good choice.
-
Make up a lie that sounds good. Well, it
let’s the other person down easier than telling the truth and it sort of
gets you off the hook. But telling a lie is totally out of integrity,
which leads to the only authentic solution—telling the truth.
-
Tell the truth. This seems to be the
hardest choice but it’s the one that will generate respect for your
integrity. If something isn’t working, it just isn’t. Doing it anyway with
gritted teeth or a careless manner doesn’t get the job done as it should
be. SO, bite the bullet and tell the truth.
When you tell the truth, you also get a
chance to be creative. For example, if I have agreed to provide pastries for
a weekly breakfast meeting and I want to stop doing it, I can simply say it
isn’t working for me and ask someone else to do it. Or maybe the real reason
it isn’t working is something more subtle, such as it is encouraging
everyone to indulge in a sweet treat that doesn’t comply with good
nutrition. Another possible reason it isn’t working is that I haven’t
created a schedule that accommodates stopping at the bakery and making it to
the meeting on time. It could be that I need to reprioritize my morning.
When you tell the truth about what isn’t working, you can often learn a lot
about yourself or as well as the process, and possibly devise a new plan
that will benefit everyone involved.
It seems I’ve gone far astray from
talking about Gene’s responsibility at the Emergency Department, but
actually I haven’t. The reason I was there in the first place was because I
am considering volunteering there. This idea came up when I was thinking how
solitary my life is. I coach on the phone, I sit at the computer to write
and develop websites, and I read a great deal. My husband is out many
evenings singing in the very same chorus that Gene sings in which leaves me
with so much solitary time that I’m longing for more human contact.
As I considered my options, I realized
that many of my happy memories come from when I worked in hospitals. I love
being of service, I love being with people who care about others, and I love
feeling like I have a purpose or I’m fulfilling my purpose. I loved being
the oasis of calm in the craziness of the emergency room (that was back in
the olden days when medical technologists drew the blood for lab
tests on ER patients). With all that in mind, I asked Gene about doing
something meaningful in his department.
I am looking at this possible commitment
seriously. I’m really evaluating it before I commit. I know that someone
will take time to tell me about procedures and give me directions. I don’t
want to waste anyone’s time—they have little enough of it in a county
hospital. Last week, what I saw in that hospital was professionals I respect
and who I could assist by being available for routine errands. I saw
patients I could serve in simple ways with smiles, encouragement, and
compassion—to say nothing of creature comforts like delivering extra
blankets and food trays. What’s in it for me is a community I can be part of
which connects me more with myself and with the world. It looks good. I’m
going do it.
Vibrant Life Activity
- List your
present commitments in the areas of home, community, work, friends, and
family.
- Think about
each commitment and discover your feelings about them. Do they bring you
pleasure, are they a chore that you put off, or would you love to have
them disappear?
- Recommit to
those that make you happy.
- Change those
that need to be revamped.
- Eliminate those
that drain your energy.
Yippee!
(c) 2003, Jacqueline Hale |