A Simple Way to Have a Good Life: Understand Responsibility and Fault

Maybe it's not your fault. It can still be your responsibility.

Quotes

The more we choose to accept responsibility for in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives. Accepting responsibility for our problems is the first step to solving them.

Mark Manson

Never mind your happiness, do your duty.

Will Durant

What’s Going On

I almost missed this one! I have a reminder in my phone that goes off on the 28th of each month to start getting the newsletter ready, but I never considered that February only has 28 days sometimes. I'm lucky to be a little obsessive about things, so I already had everything mapped out.

I've been dealing with allergies and a stomach bug over the last few days. It's funny, but ever since COVID and my thyroid, I feel like I get sick a lot more, it's much more severe, and it lasts a lot longer than it used to. We had 100-mile-per-hour winds here on Sunday, so I'm not sure my allergies ever had a chance, though.

I've been listening to feedback about the general format for my writing each month, and I appreciate everyone who's offered suggestions.

The Simple Ways to Have a Good Life newsletter will go out on the 1st. This will introduce the month's concept in a broad way. It will have an example, a practice, and the journal prompts as usual. If you've been on my mailing list for a while, you know what to expect here.

I wanted to move this over to Substack and make it a paid newsletter to filter out the people who liked reading it but weren't serious about doing something different. With this in mind, I will follow up the month's initial newsletter with posts that take a more bare-knuckle approach to whatever we are talking about.

I was always wary of doing this when I had so many people on my newsletter or on social media. I didn't want to deal with all the emails and messages telling me it was harsh or that I don't understand how things work.

We've become an excuse-oriented culture, and we have developed a tendency to think that our circumstances make us the exception to the rule. I am operating on the assumption that if you have taken the time to invest in this newsletter and you're willing to pay a little bit of money for it each month, then you are serious about addressing the things making your life more difficult. I'm going to take that seriously as well.

This month I have six posts planned. I will make a point to post about something more personal each month since I consistently get feedback that you would like more of that. This will include answering reader questions, sharing different media that has been useful to me, or talking about things in my life that pertain to the topic and what I've learned from them. Writing here on Substack to a much smaller audience has energized me and made me excited about this again. Thank you for being part of that.

Lastly, speaking of our narcissistic, excuse-oriented culture, I've decided to take the rest of the year to look at the foundational traits that allow us to have a good life. We will still touch on the concrete and practical things we can do, but I'd like to talk about the things vital to our growth and evolution as people.

This isn't a popular way to approach things in our current climate. People tend to want quick fixes or fun little practices they can weave into their lives to feel like they are making a change. Social media and our Twitter-length attention spans have made this the norm, and we are seeing the results as we struggle more and more. I'm excited to talk about the foundational things that can make a difference for us, but we have to learn how to get out of our own way before we can do that.

A Simple Way to Have a Good Life

We are going to spend the rest of the year talking about what I would call matters of character, but there's one thing we have to get out of the way before we can do that, so this month's simple way to have a good life is to learn to take responsibility for everything that happens to you.

We are going to talk about this book later in the month, but I've recently been telling people that I am glad that I did not read Mark Manson's Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck until a few months ago because I do not know that I would have started writing about the things I write about since he had already done it.

I spent a lot of time as a therapist trying to help people understand that just because something wasn't their fault, it could still be their problem. Mark Manson sums this up much more eloquently by explaining that something may not be your fault, but it can still be your responsibility.

It is important to understand this here at the very beginning. The primary reason I see people refuse to take responsibility for something is because it is not their fault. For some reason, we confuse the ideas of responsibility and fault. We think that if something is not our fault, then it is also not our responsibility. This is dangerous because it puts us at the mercy of random chance and other people. I wrote a little story about this for Instagram a while back.

An Example

A man was talking to his friend on the phone when his neighbor set his house on fire.⁠

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 "Ahhh..sonuva…my neighbor just set my house on fire."⁠

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 "Holy crap! Go take care of that - call me back whenever you can!"⁠

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 "No, it's OK. I'm not messing with it."⁠

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 "What? Why?"⁠

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 "He started it, not me."⁠

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 "Are you serious? Your house is on fire."⁠

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 "Yeah man, it's so unfair. I have no idea why he did that - I've always tried to be a good neighbor. It doesn't make any sense. People are just so unhealthy. I did get weird narcissist vibes from him, now that I think about it."⁠

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 "He does sound weird, but you really need to go put it out. Your house is literally on fire."⁠

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 "No way, I'm not going to do that. I've spent my life cleaning up other people's messes and I'm not going to do it anymore. I've learned that my need to fix other people's mistakes is a trauma response and I can't keep feeding that. My inner child needs to be able to trust me to have good boundaries."⁠

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 "C'mon, man. You're telling me that your house is literally on fire and you're not going to do anything about it?"⁠

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 "100%. At some point I have to stand in my truth and reclaim my power."⁠

 "Alright man, I don't know what else to tell you. I hope your house doesn't burn down."⁠

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 "It is what it is. I'm tired of busting my ass to fix things that aren't my fault."⁠

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 He burned to death.⁠

It's pretty simple. Just because something is not our fault doesn't mean we won't have to bear the consequences of it. History is littered with people who had to choose between cleaning up other people's messes or suffering from them.

One of the primary things I saw as a therapist that kept people from moving forward was the idea that because someone else did something to the person I was talking to, it was not their responsibility to deal with it. I watched as many people refused to deal with these things, and they got worse and worse. Just because it's not your fault doesn't mean it can't wreck your life.

A Practice

Look at the consequences of not addressing something rather than trying to figure out who's at fault. If my neighbor does not take care of their yard and the weeds start to spread, those weeds will get into my yard if I don't do something about them. If a person in your group for a class project doesn't pull their weight, you will get a bad grade with them regardless of who's at fault. This is how life works.

It's strange to allow ourselves to accept difficult consequences based on some vague principle about fault. Take responsibility without accepting fault and see how much easier this makes your life.

Journal Prompts

Do I know the difference between fault and responsibility?

Do I sometimes not address things because they are not my fault?

What are some things I could start taking responsibility for even if they aren't my fault? How might this make my life easier?

What would my life look like if I took responsibility for everything in it, whether it was my fault or not?

Memento Mori

Life is short. We're all going to die someday. Don't waste your time on this planet trying to figure out whose fault something is. If it's affecting you or impacting your life, take responsibility and deal with it. It will make things easier.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this and everything I write each month. If there's ever anything I can talk about that would be helpful in your life, please do not hesitate to let me know. If you think this might be useful to someone you know, I would appreciate you sharing this link with them. I feel a responsibility to grow this, but I've always found that word-of-mouth referrals are the best way to do that if I want to enjoy the people I work with.

Thanks again.

I appreciate you.

Take care.

James