Accountability breeds “Response-ability”

Highly proactive people recognize that we have an ability to choose our responses no matter the situation that we have in life.

During our Team Hangout last Friday, I asked the team to share a quotation from a book/movie that made a significant impact on their personal & professional life. The goal of this activity is to inspire and learn from each other. I delivered this short yet powerful message to our team:

“Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.”

This quote is excerpted from one of the classic books: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.

“I believe that we cannot control everything that has happened in our lives, but rather, we can control how we respond to it. 

One good example of this is Oprah. As some of you may be aware, Oprah was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother. Growing up bearing the tragic story of her childhood, She has a choice to be bitter, to feel like a loser, to act like a victim all her life. But did she? 

Fast forward to today, Oprah is one of the richest self-made women in America, with a net worth of more than $3 billion, and has donated millions of dollars to various charities and organizations.

She didn’t let her past define her, she didn’t let her condition define her behavior.

I firmly believe that life doesn't just "happen." Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by YOU and THE CHOICES YOU MAKE.

This quotation helped me to be resilient and look for ways to improve even in undesirable conditions.

Personally, I am not a fan of “excuses”, though I understand that there may be times when things spiral out of control, still, at the end of it all, we decide how that circumstance shapes our behavior. 

There's this famous quotation that still holds true:

"Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”

We always have a choice to be kind and compassionate to others even if our current situation doesn’t feel like it.”