Why Taking Radical Responsibility for Your Life Is the Key To Personal Freedom – Ep #018

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Welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you’re so much more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. And now your host, she’s a holistic nutrition and lifestyle coach, chef author, and Yogi, Christine Okezie.

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Hi, and welcome to Soul Science Nutrition. I’m Christine Okezie. Thanks so much for tuning in today, and just want to take a moment to thank everyone for your support, ratings and reviews. I really appreciate you tuning into the messages here on the podcast. And if you haven’t already please hit that subscribe button. So you don’t miss the weekly episodes that come out every Thursday. So once again, just expressing my gratitude and thank you so much for all your support. So on today’s special show called Radical Responsibility. I’m here to share with you some of the insights that have come to me in my years of coaching, when it comes to helping people realize positive lasting lifestyle change, you see one of the things that occurred to me, I like to do with clients is have them write down all the reasons they believe they’re struggling with weight loss or a health condition, unwanted physical symptom or certain habits.

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The list contains things like: “It’s my genes.” “There’s no time to cook.” “It’s my metabolism” “It’s too hard to eat healthy.” “There’s just not enough hours in the day.” “My doctors didn’t figure it out.” “The medications just didn’t work”. So sure enough, when I asked them to look over their list, they confront in no uncertain terms, what we call our weight or our health story. Listen, we all have one. We all have a story or a personal narrative.

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When it comes to our less than desirable circumstances, our personal narrative is the one thing that can make or break us when it comes to having the health and the happiness we desire because it reveals our basic orientation to life. More specifically, it reveals where we view our “locus of control”. Our locus of control is a psychological concept that describes the degree to which you think your life circumstances are within your control. If you have an internal locus of control, when it comes to dealing with life’s challenges, your see yourself as having power over your circumstances, that it’s essentially up to you to succeed.

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But if you have an external locus of control, you believe that you’re simply at the mercy of outside forces, circumstance, or fate, determine your success more than our own efforts. Now, of course, there’s actually a spectrum for locus of control. And most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Nonetheless, locus of control has a major impact on our health because it shapes how we respond to the events in our lives and impacts our motivation to take positive action. Now, with an external locus of control, we are conditioned to give our power away when it comes to our food, health and weight struggles, we blame our jobs that you ration our family, our childhood, our genes, our age, or appetite society.

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In fact, we see our very own bodies as something beyond our control. Naturally, this hopeless or powerless orientation sucks. The motivation to set goals, take action, because after all down deep, you really don’t believe that you can change your situation with your own effort. We get more easily discouraged with an external locus of control and more at risk for self sabotaging habits and emotionally, while there’s a lot of stress, a lot more guilt, self-deprecation lower self esteem and resentment.

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Now in contrast with an internal locus of control, we believe we can change our circumstances. If we dig deep and respond positively and constructively to life’s challenges, we have a strong sense of self efficacy. We have more confidence in the face of challenges, more motivation to set goals, work towards them and achieve what we want with an internal locus of control. Emotionally. There’s a lot more resilience and self determination.

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Now, ultimately an internal locus of control is about personal responsibility. We are oriented to explore how we’ve caused, or at least contributed to a situation. You realize that you don’t have complete control over your life, but you do understand that you do have absolute control over how you respond with an internal locus of control. You realize you are 100% responsible for what you make of your circumstances.

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You take responsibility for your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, actions, and reactions. See what I’ve learned is that when it comes to real sustainable lifestyle change, you have to feel, you have to believe that you have power to influence your health. Feeling helpless is just a nonstarter, which is why I coach my clients to take Radical Responsibility. Radical Responsibility is the key to stepping back into the driver’s seat of your health and your life radical responsibility means taking 100% responsibility for your situation and circumstances and recognizing that your power lies in the ability to consciously direct your energy, where you actually have influence, which is within ourselves and our choices by taking radical responsibility, you commit to taking 100% responsibility for your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

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You internalize your locus of control. You believe that you have the ultimate control in your life because you accept ownership of your actions. You see radical responsibility is the key to self empowerment. It embodies that all important question. What can I do about this? It opens the door to self reflection and self inquiry because it’s based on the premise. Well, you got yourself into this.

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You can get yourself out. I love this concept of radical responsibility because it springs from a personal growth mindset rather than beating yourself up you take the situation as learning experience. We are responsible for our actions in ways that lead to positive change for the future. See, we let the experience of our setbacks or misdeeds lead to personal growth rather than using it to be self critical.

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This approach is what breaks us out of the prison of that diet mindset. We tap into an inner resolve and we hold ourselves 100% accountable. Now, not more than 100%, because then we become the victim and not less than 100%, because then we shift into blaming, see embracing self-responsibility in this manner is the gateway to personal freedom. It’s freeing yourself from feeling like a victim, freeing yourself by letting go of the blaming and the criticizing, the complaining and the giving up and tapping into an authentic source of inner energy, taking radical responsibility promotes self-awareness.

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We shift out of judging and blaming into a relaxed curiosity and ask questions. Like, how is this situation offering me an opportunity to learn something very important about myself? Hmm. From the past, this reminds me of….or the lifelong pattern that I’m noticing is……, or what do I get by keeping this situation going? You see, by shifting into a nonjudgmental self observation mode, we come from that wiser, more intelligent part of our nature.

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It’s another way we step out of that fight flight freeze. That’s going on in the body when we’re moving towards our goals, or when we’re dealing with the challenges of life. We get out of those survival instincts that fear-driven defending instinct, which is what drives the blame and the criticism and the reactivity. So when we accept personal responsibility, self responsibility, it’s about becoming more mindful of our habitual emotional patterns and behaviors.

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You see, when we take radical responsibility for our lives, for our situations and circumstances, when things happen, we don’t come from this fear of loss. This fear of being judged, this fear of rejection or failure. When you take radical responsibility, you have an inner confidence. You have a belief in yourself. So you’re less swayed about what other people think you don’t waste energy relying on outside validation, social comparison, and all that goes with that.

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You have a sense of ownership when it comes to your emotional world. And you’re actually interested in learning how to manage that in constructive ways. Now radical responsibility is not about self blame. It’s actually recognizing that the challenges, difficult situations are opportunities for self reflection, learning and personal growth. You see central to the work of taking radical responsibility is self compassion. In fact, self-compassion is what allows us to take on more responsibility for our actions.

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You see, when you step back and you understand the host of factors and conditions that lead us to act as we do. And that biggest factor is quite simply that we’re all fallible human beings doing the best that we can. You see, it’s important to understand that you can stay accountable without judgemental language. So we want to watch herself talk. We want to avoid thoughts and statements that say, Oh, I’m so stupid. I can’t believe I did that again. Ah, I’m always messing up. See, you can take responsibility, resolve to rectify the situation and forgive yourself.

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Radical responsibility means you don’t get stuck in the toxic effects of guilt and shame. So instead of I really screwed up this week, it becomes, I’m feeling disappointed that I wasn’t able to make more healthy choices for myself this week. What can I do to ensure this is a more of a priority? The next time you see the gold is the transformative power of radical responsibility, because what takes place as result of this process of self awareness and self reflection is a genuine curiosity.

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A curiosity about what led up to the situation, the setback, and what happens is the habitual patterns can actually be interrupted and create space and opportunity for new behaviors. You see, by adopting this level of personal responsibility, we actually enhance our capacity for self regulation, self management. There is no willpower here. There is no push or should or motivation out of fear or guilt.

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This is completely internally activated. Taking radical responsibility now is also equally important for us to do when it comes to the positive outcomes, the wins in our life. In fact, it’s really important. We have to own these just as much. We have to stand in our personal power by embracing our wins, giving ourselves credit, rather than attributing these things to random luck. I did that.

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That’s a really powerful phrase. “I did that.” It’s something worth practicing saying to ourselves for both quote, unquote positive and negative outcomes. “I did that.” I created that by doing this, you cultivate a stronger, healthier relationship with yourself. You start to build self trust by being radically honest with yourself. And trust me, that’s a game changer when it comes to our food and body issues, by being willing to recognize and challenge our self sabotaging or self destructive thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors, we build trust radical responsibility helps you keep the promises that you make to yourself instead of denying or minimizing your power of choice.

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It elevates it and embodies it radical responsibility. Make sure that the negative mind isn’t running the show. So it stops the habit of catastrophizing and interrupts that habit of expecting failure or disappointment, radical responsibility stops the rumination and the overexertion of trying to control everything around us so that we can feel safe.

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Radical responsibility is the experience of believing in your innate worth and value. Radical responsibility elevates our consciousness and connects us to our instincts, our intuition and inner guidance, because radical simply means understanding things at the root level, grasping things in their most fundamental sense, seeing life, our life and the life around us in the most authentic, real way, because life is quite neutral.

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Stress in and of itself is actually neutral. The effect that it has on you, you will determine whether it is a net gain or a net loss. Indeed. The choice is up to you. There’s just no doubt that this combination of self awareness, self efficacy and self-regulation that comes from knowing you are in control of yourself and the situation can make your power to change enormous.

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So here’s the invitation. My friends. Let’s take a moment now and pause. Let your eyes close. Let’s take a few conscious breaths. Just allow yourself to come right into this present moment and complete this sentence. I can demonstrate 100% responsibility for my health and what I want to create for my health by ____________________.

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Your true change starts when you take responsibility for your entire life, not just aspects of it. When you begin to focus on your part in creating your life experiences and move away from blaming others or external factors to a loving and curious heart centered place of action, you realize you are not a victim. You are a powerful co-creator in your life.

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So thanks for listening today. I hope this was helpful. Take care and bye for now.