Ep #23: Embracing Radical Responsibility
episode summary
When things don't go your way, how do you respond? Today we're rolling up our sleeves to tackle an ambitious concept - radical responsibility. Discover how to own what's truly within your control and let go of what isn't. In doing so, you'll be well on your way to being the boss of your own life.
Are you ready to take radical responsibility and create a calmer, happier life? Let's get started!
Featured on the Show
Podcast Ep #02: Control What You Can
Podcast Ep #20: Mind the Gap: Setting Realistic Expectations
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
If you are sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed, I can help. I coach clients 1 on 1 on how to create a more calm, relaxing, intentional life. The first step is to set up a complimentary discovery session right here.
If you'd like to receive my weekly uplifting emails and be notified of new podcast episodes, subscribe here.
Want to learn more about me or my work? Head to my website at www.michellegauthier.com
Thank you for listening. If you love the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review. 💗
CHAPTERS:
0:33 - What is Radical Responsibility?
2:26 - In Your Control vs. Out of Your Control
6:59 - Blaming and Complaining
12:44 - Radical Responsibility at Work
listen to the episode:
-
Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hello friends, today we are going to get started talking about radical responsibility. If you haven't heard that term before, I will tell you that taking radical responsibility in your life is an important component for creating that less stressful, less overwhelming life that I believe you're searching for if you're listening to this podcast. What it is is essentially taking 100% responsibility for all of the outcomes in your life. So not complaining or blaming or being a victim to any of them, but instead owning the part that belongs to you and making choices and thinking from that place. So today I'm going to talk to you all about that in detail. We're going to go into what exactly is radical responsibility, how is not being radically responsible making my life harder right now, more frustrating, and what steps can I take to change that? So this will be an interesting topic and we're going to cover it in detail. I'll give you some examples, some questions to think about, etc. Like I always do, I want to start off this week by reading you part of the review. I got a very nice review from Rhonda. She gives in-depth examples about how the podcast has been helpful to her, but I think my favorite part of the whole thing is at the end, where she says, "I look forward to the podcast each week to hear her bring wisdom and calming voice and approach to others and continue to reinforce all that she's taught me in my life. The podcast and her work is such a gift, thank you". So thank you, rhonda, for that review. Just a reminder for anyone who listens and enjoys the podcast and hasn't yet done a review, it would be wonderful if you would do so. We are currently hanging out in the top 3% and I want to keep it that way. We're gaining new listeners every week and that is because we are getting rated highly and people are seeing the show where we want to bring all the overwhelmed working moms with us into this journey of being calm and having a calm, better life. Okay, let's get back to radical responsibility. I'm going to start with an example of what radical responsibility would look like, but before I do, I just want to go back and review what's in your control and what's out of your control, because that's an essential part of radical responsibility is really taking full responsibility for what's in your control and then letting go of the rest. I did a whole episode on this. In fact it's episode 2. So if you want to learn more about what's in your control and what's out of your control, I give you some quick tips on how you can just write those down if you're in a situation, you can check out episode 2 if you haven't already. But it boils down to this what's in your control are your own thoughts and your own actions. So sometimes we'll have a thought that pops into our head. Maybe it's a thought like you're doing a terrible job today. I don't mean that you caused that thought, but I mean you're in control of that thought in terms of you can choose to believe that thought. You can choose to think a new thought instead. I just wanted to make that small designation because a lot of times I mean all day long I have thoughts that pop into my head that I don't want to have, and then I don't want to believe those are out of our control. That's just how our brain works. But what we are in control of is the thoughts that we choose to think and the thoughts we choose to believe and the actions that we take from there. What's out of your control is everything else literally everything and everyone else your boss, your husband, the weather, the market, the traffic all of that is beyond your control and in my opinion, it's not worth even one moment of your life to worry about or talk about any of those things. If you've ever spent an evening with your spouse complaining about work and what so-and-so does all the time and what he should be doing instead, you'll know that it does nothing to solve the problem, but it sure does waste a lot of your time. And, I think, you know, in my example, when I was really doing that a lot, first of all, my husband at the time was like please get a new job, so you'll stop talking about this. It just carried the frustration all the way into my evening too. So even though I wasn't working anymore, I was still focused on it and worrying about it. So here's how this what's in your control and out of your control plays into the concept of radical responsibility, which is our topic for the day. If you embrace the concept of radical responsibility in your life, you are accepting the idea that every result in your life is created by you, with your own thoughts and actions. Sometimes it's conscious and sometimes it's unconscious, but living with radical responsibility means you take the time to figure out exactly what you are doing to create the results in your life, even the results that you have that you don't want. So let's just say that your boss always assigns the cool projects to your co-worker and you always get the tough projects that no one else wants and you hate this. So looking at this in the traditional way, like the non-radical responsibility way, would say that your boss is a jerk and that he never liked you as much as he likes her, your co worker. But taking radical responsibility for this situation would say that you are creating the result of getting those tough projects, intentionally or unintentionally, I think usually it's unintentionally, with your own thoughts and your own actions. This is the part where you might want to stop listening to this podcast, because you're like, "what, you mean? I am creating even the bad things in my life. But yes, if you embrace the concept of radical responsibility, which I highly recommend, you have to own the fact that you are indeed the boss of your life. It can be frustrating and it might be like, oh great, so this is my fault too, but it is such a good thing because you don't need your boss to change, which is great, because your boss probably won't change and you couldn't make him or her if you tried. And since them changing is completely out of your control, but changing yourself *isn't* out of your control, you're in luck! You have everything you need to improve your life right now. So if it's actually true that your boss assigns the cool projects to your co-worker, you can take the action of talking to your boss about it. If your boss doesn't change, you can take the action of finding a new job. So instead of blaming and feeling frustrated all the time, you will switch into the mode where you take action on solving the problem and the way that you react to the problem. I had to use this talk that I'm giving you right now on myself just a couple weeks ago. It was a week before back to school, I had a busy work week, but manageable within the hours that I work. I had seven appointments for my kids. You know the whole back to school dentist, doctor, orthodontist situation that I feel like we all kind of have to do, and that was doable within a week too. But the combination of the full work schedule and pretty much full-time appointment schedule was just way too much. So let me explain how that week went, using blaming and complaining instead of taking radical responsibility. And I'm not saying you might not have heard me say this, because I was real annoyed during that week. So this is how I would have explained the week from the blaming and complaining perspective: I'm so annoyed, I'm having the busiest week. I'm so annoyed that the school makes us get a physical every year. I don't have time for that. Who has time for that? And the summer was so busy that I had to schedule all of our appointments at the very end. And, of course, I have no help. My kid's dad lives out of town. So, once again, it's all always up to me. Even the people who help me, like my parents or my handsome man friend, are out of town. I don't know why they're off living their own lives. I'm exhausted and I don't have time to work out, which makes me even more exhausted and crabby. And also it's so hot; I don't want to go anywhere. It's like a million degrees outside and I don't know why I live here or why it's so hot. It's late into the summer and it should be starting to cool off by now. I just reread that paragraph that I wrote myself and now I feel kind of overwhelmed just even looking at it that way. Okay, so if I move into radical responsibility, I need to remove from that story that I just told you each part where I am complaining or blaming. So if I take up blaming the school for having to have physicals and blaming our busy summer and blaming their dad for living out of town and blaming my parents for being gone and blaming the schedule for me not being able to work out at all, the story is down to just bare bones facts, which are I scheduled 12 client appointments and seven appointments for my kids in the same week. Period. Like that's the end of the story. That's the the real truth, just the bare bones truth of it. So if I think of myself as the creator of that week instead of the victim of that week, I'm empowered to understand what happened and figure out how to avoid this again. So the goal in saying that I've created this, "Okay, I created this week, that's why I'm having this week" isn't to beat myself up and say I'm the worst or I'm such an idiot or why did I do that. Instead, we're gonna investigate this with a couple of questions. So first just ask yourself how did you feel in that situation? So when I was in that situation of the crazy week, I felt overwhelmed and angry and resentful, like I was mad at someone, everyone, and the weather; it was so hot. Then ask, how did I create or perpetuate this situation? So I created this situation by scheduling too much in not enough time. Now, this is my favorite part. I learned this on like a work leadership website and I think this is such a great concept to think about. Pretend that you've been hired to teach a class on how to create a week where you feel overwhelmed, angry, and resentful. What would you tell your students to do? So if you guys were my students and I was telling you how to create a week where you feel overwhelmed, angry, and resentful, here's what I would tell you to do. Step one: schedule way more than you can actually do in a day. Step two: blame other people for not being available to help, but never actually ask them for help. Ensure that you cannot fit in a workout or get good sleep and be crabby to everyone around you. If you do those four steps, you will definitely create a week where you feel overwhelmed, angry, and resentful. Okay, so creating that pretend outline for the pretend class is just sort of a funny way to make light of what you have done, what responsibility that you had in creating the situation that you didn't want. The great thing is, if you just do the opposite of that, you also have the solution. So now that I have the perfect prescription for creating a terrible week, to create a good week, I know that I can schedule only what I can realistically do in a day, ask for help, or just manage my schedule, so I don't help, help, I have the choice there, and then make sure I have time for healthy eating and getting sleep and working out, which is essential to my success in every day. All of those things are 100% in my control, even if I chose not to do them. So if I scheduled more than what I can realistically do in a day, just owning that I did that is still living from radical responsibility. I sent out an email about this week that I had last week and in the email what I said is I can do like I did all those things in a week. I can do all those things in a week, but I'm not willing to do that anymore because I'm not willing to feel overwhelmed and stressed and resentful all the time. So I could do it, but I don't want to feel that way. So instead I'm going to do something different and then I'm going to feel a different way. At the beginning of the podcast, we were talking about an example of where your co-workers getting all the cool assignments and you're getting all the really tough ones. So let's tell that story from the complain and blame perspective. If you were telling that story, you might say my co-worker gets every cool project, like every time. My boss just likes her better. I don't get that because she actually doesn't even do a good job. Every time we get new assignments, I just brace myself because I know I'll get the bad one or the hard one. I can't talk to my boss about it because he'll get defensive and I just keep hoping, if I work hard, that he'll change. So let's try these two questions that we used in the example I just gave you from my week. Let's try those two questions on this situation. So how did this situation make me feel? As question number one Made me feel annoyed and resentful and angry, how did I create or perpetuate this situation? All right, the answer to this one could be something like although I complain a lot, I've never talked to my boss about it, so it just keeps happening and I just keep getting mad about it. Now let's get ready to teach that pretend class of how to feel annoyed, angry and resentful at work because you don't get the assignments you want. Step number one is expect that if you do a good job, you'll get the projects you want, but never actually ask for the projects you want or get clarification on the process of how they get assigned. Just hope it happens, but get mad if it doesn't. Spend a lot of time paying attention to the work your coworker does instead of focusing on your own work. Make sure to have a stressful day at work and don't make time for lunch so that you're hangry when you get home and then spend the whole evening with your family retelling the story and complaining. Okay, so now that we have the outline for our class on how to feel annoyed and resentful at work, you know you just need to do the opposite. So, number one drop my expectations for what my boss will or won't do. Got a podcast on dropping expectations. Go listen to that one too. Ask him when we're both calm about how he assigns the projects, ask for the projects you want and then plan to eat lunch, maybe even take a walk at work, so by the time I get home, I can just be present with my family and not feel frustrated about work. Okay, so what if the boss doesn't make any changes? Then you can continue to take radical responsibility. You can tell him you're unhappy, you can start looking for more fulfilling jobs, you can start your own business, you can try to love the projects that you do get. You have so many options when you take radical responsibility, instead of waiting for your boss, or really anyone on earth, to do something different. This concept of radical responsibility in control, out of control, expectations all of those things are really keys to creating a good life for yourself, and it's gonna be a big topic in my new group coaching program called The Good Life. It's a 12 week program and we will cover what we're talking about today and all the other things that I have referred to, everything you need to create the good life, the kind of life where you don't feel overwhelmed but you do feel present and calm. The kind of life where you have time and mental energy to enjoy your family and even enjoy your job. So in this group coaching you will learn the concepts, like you do here, but you'll also get coached on specific situations in your life so that you can apply the tools and actually change them, and you'll be in an awesome supportive environment with other women who are trying to do the same thing. So registration opens on September 24th. It's just a couple of weeks. I'm limiting the group size, so the earlier you sign up, the better. For now, just go to my homepage michellegauthier. com - link will be in the show notes, as always - and sign up for my emails so that you're in the know. I'm also gonna do some early bird pricing. So as soon as it comes up, there'll be early bird pricing and you can sign up ASAP. Okay, for today, as you're going about your day, just try to ask yourself what would this situation look like if I took radical responsibility. Remember that is no complaining, no blaming, fully asking how have I created this situation that I am in and what do I want to do next to not be in this situation anymore? You got this. See you next week. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Women podcast. If you wanna learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthiercom. See you next week.
Loving the podcast?
Follow me on Spotify and subscribe via Apple Podcasts!
And don’t forget to leave me a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
