Taking Personal Responsibility for the Reality We Create with Our Work

I used to think of responsibility almost as a dirty word, a dull and limiting blend of obligation, constraint, and displeasure.

Ironically, one can often hear it associated with another concept, through phrasing like “adults have responsibilities”, “responsibility is what being an adult is all about”, or the famous “you have to take responsibility, like an adult.”

Part of my journey up to this point has been to try to empower myself by sorting through inherited notions and beliefs: discarding those not serving my goals of fulfillment and genuine enjoyment, and redefining others, in order to avail myself with a mindset fit for my aspirations.

Responsibility is one such notion. Experience has led me to shift my perspective of it, from a place of abstract obligation and guilt, to one of actionable choice and empowerment.

So I definitely see value in what responsibility means to me now. And that’s what I aim to share through this article, with the hope others may find it empowering as well.

From responsibility to empowerment

For me, responsibility isn’t about obligation anymore. In my eyes, though it’s easier said than applied, there is no obligation to which we do not concede to begin with.

So, when we mention responsibility in the content we share at Oryzon Studio, we’re not talking about the hollow kind invoked by some institutions or individuals, in attempts to obligate others to do their bidding, and work to further their agendas, by guilt-tripping them.

Instead, we see responsibility as really being about two things:

• The personal accountability for what we do, i.e., not shying away from the consequences of our actions, whether positive or not, and easy or not. Specifically, making sure that our actions and their consequences are in alignment with ourselves, that is, our values and what we expect out of life.

• Our personal ability to act, through opportunities for empowerment that can only be seized by ourselves. The resulting empowerment can be for ourselves as well as others, but whether we seize these opportunities or not is down to us personally.

From this perspective, responsibility’s much more about choosing to seize opportunities and see them through, than it is about being guilted into a false sense of obligation.

That’s why I like to qualify it as personal responsibility.

It’s about the choice to empower ourselves and each other by doing what no one else can do for us: stepping into our power and owning the consequences.

A choice only we can make from the unique, i.e., personal, position that is ours.

And it’s a choice we don’t just make once, but nigh on continuously, and into progressively more aspects of our work and life as we go.

This means no one can force us to take responsibility—though some may try to con us into following their obligatory and restrictive approach to it. Only we can choose to take responsibility for ourselves.

This is precisely how personal responsibility leads us to empowerment—one choice at a time.

Taking personal responsibility through entrepreneurship

This approach to personal responsibility brings us to consider its connections with freedom and sovereignty.

We, at Oryzon Studio, look at it this way:

We each have the freedom to take on the responsibility of exploring/stepping into our sovereignty.

In other words, we are free—that’s the freedom part—to explore opportunities—that’s the personal responsibility part—to empower ourselves—that’s the sovereignty part.

Just like responsibility, these concepts can be applied to every aspect of our lives, including our health, our relationships, and our work.

When it comes to work, with these concepts and connections in mind, it subsequently becomes very interesting to reconsider how we look at entrepreneurship.

Indeed, for us, entrepreneurship is precisely about exercising our freedom to take on our personal responsibility to step further into our sovereignty—within the context of the implementation of an enterprise, i.e., something meant to be shared.

How we assume personal responsibility through entrepreneurship can take various forms, such as:

• Manifesting a vision we have: arguably the primary motivator for any entrepreneurial effort.

• Better understanding all that we have to offer as heart-led professionals, to better empower ourselves and the initiatives we work on: we’ve written on this, right here.

• Seeing value in what we do and have access to, and enjoying our success: we’ve written about this in the following article.

In all of these instances, we’re free to apply the dual aspect of personal responsibility: the accountability for what we do, via the alignment of our actions with our values and ourselves, and the seizing of opportunities that only we can seize.

As entrepreneurs, the opportunities to shape the reality we participate in and take personal responsibility are therefore numerous.

And it’s not about taking all of it at once. Any step towards taking more personal responsibility is a step further into our sovereignty and towards more empowerment.

Personal responsibility in collaborative settings

We’ve discussed some manifestations of personal responsibility in the context of entrepreneurship, but what about when working in collaborative settings?

Whether as an entrepreneur working with clients, or as part of a team in a company:

Where does personal responsibility start and stop in the context of an initiative whose output is the sum of the work from multiple people?

Am I only responsible for the work I do? Or for the entirety of the product and user experience put out by the initiative I’m part of?

In the context of collaborative work, there is often an entanglement of intentions and work from multiple people.

The very work each of us do individually is tied to our work settings, which can be tied to the initiative at large—and therefore not only dependent on us.

Still, some choices are made, and some work is being done, so there is personal responsibility to be taken, for sure.

Indeed, the way we see it, in such collaborative settings:

1. There is personal responsibility in the work we do, contingent to our work settings.

2. This means there is some personal responsibility in the final product / output of the initiative, but not necessarily for all of it.

3. But, while we may not have full responsibility for the entire output of the initiative or our work settings, we absolutely hold the responsibility for the choice of staying with the initiative, and allowing it to endure.

We mentioned that responsibility is about choices we make continuously.

Well, by staying with an initiative, we are continuously reasserting our endorsement of how we interact with it, what it does, and what it aims to do, as we pursue our work to have it endure.

So, in collaborative settings too, we’re free to apply the dual aspect of personal responsibility: the accountability for what we do, via the alignment of our actions with our values and ourselves, and the seizing of opportunities that only we can seize.

As such, much like entrepreneurship, being part of a collaborative initiative provides us with many opportunities to take personal responsibility for the reality we participate in creating.

In a nutshell

Interactions with one another shape our daily lives, interwoven into pretty much everything we do.

But as long as there is room for personal choice, there can be personal responsibility.

Outside any obligation, it’s a personal responsibility that we are free to take, in order to explore our sovereignty, and our role in shaping the reality we participate in.

We may take it for our work in collaborative settings, and for entrepreneurship as well—one choice at a time.

As we’re progressively able to take on more of our personal responsibility, in alignment with our values and aspirations, we empower ourselves and each other, in more aspects of our work, and our lives.