– SELF-RESPONSIBILITY – so hot right now.

Did you ever get an early morning txt that made you wonder what the f*ck the sender was thinking?

That happened to me this morning.

Saturday, 5.07am my phone buzzed.

To be fair, I was awake and starting my day, and when I heard the buzz I checked the message thinking it may be from a client who was unable to make their morning session.

No.

“Margs are you at the gym now so I can chat to you about PT.”

I didn’t reply straight away.

Right up until that moment it had never occurred to me that someone might think I hang out at the gym at 5am on a Saturday morning just on the off-chance that someone might want to have a chat.

Honestly I was a little annoyed.

Until I got thinking.

How often do we set clearly defined expectations and boundaries to let other people know what is acceptable and what is not?  How well do we communicate those expectations to others?

In this case while my contact details are readily available to people, I have made no mention of when appropriate times to contact me are.  I just expected people to know.

Taking responsibility for yourself means acknowledging that you could do more to change the outcome of a scenario.

If you want things to happen in a specific way then it is up to you to take specific actions to ensure those things happen.

It is too easy to fall into the habit of blaming other people when things happen that aren’t ideal for our goal or our situation.

Is it someone else’s fault if you over indulge in food or alcohol because it was them that encouraged you?  Only if they put the food into your mouth and then held it shut until you swallowed…

Is it someone else’s fault if you miss training sessions because that person took too much of your time up?  Perhaps… if they had you forcibly detained…

My point is this – we can stop shifting blame for situations onto other people and start looking at how changing our own behaviours will bring us a more desirable outcome.

And just so you know I caught up with my Saturday morning txt friend, nice guy, and I certainly don’t judge him for being keen!  And it turned out to be no real effort on my part to simply mention to him when in the day the best time to reach me would be…