Taking Extreme Personal Responsibility

13th June 2020

Do you how a male octopus mate with a female octopus? Female octopus is notoriously ferocious when it comes to mating. It is not uncommon for her to devour the male octopus during copulation or even before. If you thought the fairer sex is scary in the human species, think again!

There are three ways a male octopus can mate.

Method 1: He mates carelessly and gets eaten as a result.

Method 2: He can change his colour and shape to look like a female and tricks her to get close. He then sneakily mates with her before swimming away for safety. Sometimes, he gets eaten anyway.

Method 3: He literally amputates his penis, throws it at her from a distance and swims away to safety. This is the most common method used due to its higher success rate of not being eaten!

The male octopus takes extreme responsibility for his actions and consequences. He accepts the result of his actions of either being eaten or becoming an amputee.

In life, do you take extreme responsibility for your actions? Are you someone who chooses who you become? Or are you simply what happened to you? It is easy to blame circumstances, events, experiences, environment and fundamentally, anyone or anything else but you. You have heard people say, “I have a tough childhood”, “I have a medical condition”, “I did not have a good education”, “My partner does not support my dreams”, “I am too busy”, “I have been disappointed too many times”, “My boss is holding me back”, I am too old”, “I am too young”, I have no money” and many more.

I would suggest that you do not give the power of your feelings to anyone else. First of all, no one else really wants it. Can you imagine if someone else’s feelings are dependent on your actions? It would be too much responsibility to bear!! And also, why would you have something as important as your feelings to be affected by external factors apart from yourself?

Perhaps you have a great unprocessed pain or sorrow in your life. Maybe you are still reeling from the anger, disbelief, indignance and even hatred for someone or an experience you had. You are not able to move on. You feel like you are being owed something. You want payback. You want justice. You want things to be ‘fair’. You cannot believe that someone would get away with what they did to you. You cannot comprehend how something that devastating could have happened to you. You are stuck and in limbo.

The first step to moving on to fulfil the rest of your destiny (yes, you are uniquely magical and have an amazing destiny to fulfil. You are truly brilliant) is by Taking Extreme Personal Responsibility. Accept and acknowledge that everything that has happened to you in your life is completely, totally and absolutely your choice. It is not being delusional or ‘being positive’. It is not saying that no one else is at fault (though assigning blame never helped anyone. Lame people blame people!). It is simply taking the first step to self-discovery, reflection and understanding.

It is truly powerful when you start to do that. If you can do that, you will find yourself so much further ahead compared to many who fail to do so. It is simply saying to yourself, “I am in charge of my life. I am in charge of my thoughts. I may not have been able to control what happened but I certainly can decide how I feel about it and how I am allowing it to affect me. I will embrace and learn from my past to improve my future. I will not live in my past, mistaking it for my future. I understand that in life, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Everything and everyone in my life whether they brought happiness or caused grief are lessons that Nature has provided me to grow as a person. I am grateful for my entire past, my successes and my failings for they made me the unique special person I am today. I am truly a remarkable person!”

Once you have Taken Extreme Personal Responsibility for yourself, you will then begin to realize that all you needed to move on is found in your heart, mind and soul. Instead of trying to change someone else or a situation, you can start by changing your thoughts, your subsequent actions and ultimately, your life. In short, you had the answers already. You only needed to take the Power back and that starts by Taking Extreme Personal Responsibility. Don’t give that Power away, no one else wants it!

‘Be the Change you wish to see in the world.’- Gandhi

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