What is the next skill you want to develop and why?

The next skill I want to develop is True Responsibility.

Particularly in the areas of Time-Management, Self-Reflection/worth, Leadership, going out and taking care of myself.

Now, I like to consider myself pretty responsible in terms of finances, shopping, cleaning and all the other regular adult things one needs to do. This is not the kind of responsibility I am talking about.

I am talking about the responsibility you take for every area of your life.

I believe the ability to take Responsibility for ones own life effectively is something that can be trained, practiced and something severely undervalued.

For the sake of explaining what I exactly mean by this, I will divide this Responsibility into 6 different parts:

Proactivity

Time-Management

Leading A Good Life

Need vs. Want

Self-Worth (derived from oneself not outside sources)

Freedom/Independence

#1 - Proactivity

Taking massive responsibility for your life means that you are accountable for it.

Waiting for others to invite you to things, not planning things on your own, or hoping that something will come up will no longer be an option.

That is not to say you cannot take the opportunities when they come, but you have to make sure that you step out first and do what you need to do to get what you want.

This can be anything from inviting friends and planning events, to taking a step for a better job or a promotion, or even hiring a coach or trainer to proactively make your life better before you need to.

In this way, Responsibility creates a safety net for dark moments and teaches you that you can create an amazing life on your own, if you just go out and get it.

Too many people in this world react.

Everyone waits for things to happen to them, and are then disappointed when life doesn’t hand them a golden ticket.

It’s like waiting for a Rubiks cube to solve itself: It won’t happen.

You want the golden ticket? Craft it yourself.

Find the building blocks to such a ticket and put in as many into place as you can.

You must move the pieces of the your life yourself.

Practice being proactive and taking the first step wherever and whenever you can.

#2 - Time-Management

To create a great life you have to balance it effectively.

This means taking responsibility for your own balance first, and allocating your time accordingly.

How important are each of the areas of your life to you? How much time do you need to spend in each to feel as though you are living a worthwhile life?

What is too much time? Too little time? When do you feel fulfilled?

Effective Time-Management should always lead you to a better life; not a more productive, happier or more fulfilled life necessarily, but one that you value more.

With that in mind, the managing and balancing act becomes a very subjective thing.

You have to determine what each area of your life (friends, relationship, finance, career, calling, fitness, health, time, hobbies, personal development) means to you and go from there.

Spend the most time on the things that matter most to you, and less on the things that do not.

This means a lot of reflecting on what made you feel better afterwards and worse, what you are missing, what you got too much of this week, and what you want to improve upon.

Make sure you allocate a minimum amount of time to everything important, and do not be afraid to cut things out of your life to make room in your schedule for better things.

#3 - Leading A Good Life

The main part of this point is saying “No” and “Yes” in the exact right spots.

You must learn to say “No” when you do not want to do something, especially when that confronts people.

Say “No” to people trying to overstep your boundaries, to the things you really do not want to do, to people you don’t like, and to things that you know will make your life worse.

Stand up for yourself, take responsibility, and say “No” to everything you already know you should.

And while you do that, say “Yes” to everything else.

Say “Yes” to people you know will be good for you, to the things that push you outside your comfort zone, to things you know will make your life better, and to every opportunity you can get your hands on.

Trust in yourself to figure things out, take responsibility, and say “Yes” to all those things that scare you but that you know will be great for you.

#4 - Need vs. Want

A big part of taking massive responsibility is to understand the difference between what you need to lead a good life and what you want to lead a good life.

What you need is only the basics: Food, Water, Shelter, a certain amount of love and Air.

What you want is everything else.

We confuse what we want with what we need, saying we need money, success, relationships, happiness and all these other good, but non-necessary things.

When we understand that these are things that we want to have, but understand that we do not need them to lead a good life, that we already have what we need and that it is always inside of us, then we will approach life a lot more relaxed and free.

You do not need to stress or worry about most things in your life, for they are just bonuses.

They are the things that you want to add to your life, but are not things you must add in order to be happy.

Taking responsibility means understanding that you are what makes or breaks your happiness, not the things you do or have.

It is your attitude, approach to life, and the things you decide to think and do that make that difference.

It is always nice to have the things you want, they make happiness easier for sure, but if you rely on them you put your life in the hands of chance.

#5 - Self-Worth

It is easy to abandon the responsibility of Self-worth and to push that to someone else.

The more other people support you, give you words of affirmation, and live their own life by example, the less responsibility you have to take for where you are going.

All you have to do is follow the masses, lean into where you get the words of affirmation from, and relish in the support.

You do not have to think, consider or reflect, and can simply trust in other people, which also means you get to blame them if things go wrong.

The problem is that this not only makes your self-worth reliant on them, but also makes your happiness reliant on them.

You put your life in their hands so that you do not have to be the one that made a mistake, but that is no different than rolling dice.

No one else knows you as well as you do.

There is no one that knows what you need, want or actually value.

If you want to feel like your life has worth then you must find that cause yourself.

Find out what drives you and take the responsibility to invest yourself into it, but also the responsibility of pointing the finger at yourself should things go wrong.

#6 - Freedom/Independence

The last part of this skill is the ability to be free of oneself.

You take responsibility for who you are, what you feel, think, and do, and by doing so accept who you are completely.

This allows you to truly change.

Rather than changing yourself from where you think you are to where you want to be, you take steps that start at the real you.

You often avoid starting from this point because you do not want to see everything, but when you take full responsibility you own yourself.

This makes you progress faster, further and makes you feel more free as there is less for you to hide.

You accept who you are, fully commit to what you want to do, and take so much responsibility of yourself and your life that you do not need anyone to aid your life.

Too often do people hold themselves back because they want to fit to a certain image.

Not taking responsibility for who they are and everything they are, feel and think, makes their lives less than what it could.

Only when they are accepting of who they are and when they own it will they feel free.