(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It takes 1 minute to read.)

Anna again

Hello, Christopher.

Honestly saying today is a hard day, as today is when the war started in Ukraine one year ago. But hopefully, all will be good, and there won’t be any escalation today from the Russian side.

I hope you are doing well. I’m very grateful to you for answering my letter. That means a lot to me; I greatly appreciate your work and the personal story you’ve shared with me. It’s inspiring to see how The Responsibility Process becomes a lifestyle and can strongly influence mental health.

You understood correctly; I want to try using The Responsibility Process for coaching. I have an idea to create a supportive coaching group in the format of online meetings. And the first point that you mentioned made me think a lot this morning, as I need to practice it myself and integrate it into my everyday life. I’ve read all resources from your website and the email subscription, and thank you for sharing the link about “Stop the Freakout ”. I’ll watch those videos.

About the poster in Ukrainian – that’s so great! Thanks for doing it. And I would love to get in touch with those two ladies; possibly, we can do something together for Ukrainians.

Thank you once more very much for all your advice and support.

Have a great day!

Best wishes,

Anna Yaremenko

Me (Christopher) again

Thank you, Anna, for your prompt reply.

I hope today was not too much of a struggle for you.

About your idea of coaching groups, I will share a couple of principles, and one practice, for running Mastery Groups:

1. All participants agree to 100% Responsibility in the meeting.

That means that Denial, Lay Blame, Justify, Shame, Obligation, and Quit will invite attention and questions (with compassion, of course) from the host.

2. No advice or solutions are allowed.

People stop thinking for themselves (and owning it) once they receive advice or solutions. Instead, you work with the keys of Intention (What do you want?), Awareness (What is your attention on?), and Confront (Are you willing to face this? / May I poke you?). So, you can teach something (a new truth) to build Awareness, or you can ask questions or make statements that focus Intention and help the person Confront.

3. The invitation to work in a Mastery Group is some form of the question, “Who has something that’s not quite right in your world?”

Another version of the question is, “Whose mind keeps chewing on some issue or problem that you wish you could be done chewing on so you can free up that mental space?”

These should give you some things to think about.

Comments

While Anna mentioned “coaching group” I responded about “Mastery Groups.”

A Mastery Group, part of Responsibility Mastery (also available in Responsibility Mentoring) is the most powerful tool I know for experiencing rapid consciousness growth while developing your Responsibility practice.

The Mastery Group dives into real-life situations that participants are wrestling with in their lives, and applies Responsibility tools to solve each problem.

What makes it so powerful is the clarity of the “master” who hosts the group. The master listens to you intently and then helps you apply Responsibility-thinking to get yourself above the line, thus obliterating the problem and generating newfound freedom, choice, and power in your life.

When you participate in a Mastery Group, you experience personal breakthrough after breakthrough.

There’s nothing like it.

(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It takes 1 minute to read.)

First, we hear from Anna.

Anna writes

Hello, the Responsibility Team.

My name is Anna Yaremenko, and I’m addressing this email to Christopher Avery.

I am Ukrainian and have worked as a life coach for several years. Unfortunately, due to the war in Ukraine, I have many requests from my clients, like feeling lost in life and career, losing hope, blaming others, being overwhelmed by hate around, and too much pressure and obligation because life has become so unpredictable.

I’ve learnt on your website all the available materials + emails subscription, which gave me many great ideas on using The Responsibility Process with my clients and in my life. But I want to ask you if it’s possible to share if there might be a special approach to implementing The Responsibility Process in such an uncertain stressful time as a war.

If you have had such an experience or can give me some direction, I would be very grateful.

Me (Christopher)

This request touched my heart, and I was compelled to reply. Here’s what I wrote:

I have two primary ideas to share with you.

1. You can teach and coach Responsibility only to the extent that you integrate it into your own life.

That suggests developing your own Responsibility practice now.

The more you practice Responsibility, the better you can teach and coach it. (And, to accelerate your practice, teach and coach Responsibility. It’s a virtuous cycle.)

You will grow!

It is the most foundational coaching tool that I know. The more you practice Responsibility, the more you can spot how your client’s programming (conditioning) keeps them stuck, and you can better know how to help them get unstuck.

Read a little more about this in Guidance for Teaching Responsibility.

2. People can get to the mental state of Responsibility around any problem (no matter how big).

And people get stuck below the line around even tiny problems. The Responsibility Process is the same whether problems are minuscule or gigantic.

Notice that I said “can” not “do.” The mental state of Responsibility is always available to every human around any problem. Some choose it, and many don’t.

My task as a Responsibility teacher is to hold that possibility for every student, making them more likely to choose it.

I’m inspired by people who have lost their limbs (or sight or hearing) and who completely accept it. They say, “this is an inconvenience, not a problem.”

And yes, not all people who lose limbs or senses reach that mental state. They remain bitter victims of a cruel life.

Anna, you asked about what experiences I might have had.

I’ve never lived where a war raged around me. I don’t know what it is like. Therefore, I cannot claim to know how to take 100% Responsibility for one’s life during such upheaval.

However, if I were in such a position, I know that the mental state of Responsibility would be available to me. In that state, I could either completely accept the situation or choose how to use my unique inspiration and gifts to do something about it. (I think your president is an inspiring example of this.)

While I have never been at war, I have faced severe obstacles from a position of Responsibility. One was the pandemic.

The pandemic and shutdown was the number one Justify worldwide during 2020 and 2021. I admit to freaking out for almost 24 hours when I realized that my business and life would be turned upside down.

Then I realized that the world needed our message more than ever, and I got to work serving up value. See the six “Stop the Freakout” episodes near the bottom of our resources page. (You’ll get the idea from the first one.)

I have also dealt with a serious health challenge for seven years now (it kept me in bed this morning until Noon — again). I wrote about how I choose to be bigger than this problem.

And I have provided Responsibility mentoring to many people in devastating situations, helping them break through to newfound freedom, choice, and power.

Comments

There’s a keen observation to make: It’s the size of the fear or anxiety about the situation that makes it hard to confront. That’s why Confront (that is, the ability to face) is one of the three keys to Responsibility.

Another observation is that people’s stories of Lay Blame, Justify, Shame, and Obligation are compelling. So without sufficient training and practice, coaches accept the story. They sympathize rather than help the client face and find new truth that frees them.

For more on practicing the three keys to Responsibility, see our email course Launching Your Responsibility-Thanking Practice.

Ukrainian translation!

We were going to announce the 29th language in our translation project — Ukrainian — in this edition, AND THEN I heard from Anna.

Synchronicity.

Now, how can we — the worldwide Responsibility Community — support Ukrainians?

To your freedom, choice, and power.
Christopher Avery and The Responsibility Company team

(This post began as a LinkedIn post. It takes 1 minute to read.)

Coping is big business too.

There are tens of thousands of titles on coping, such as “How to Cope with a Bad Boss.”

There are far fewer titles about how to replace coping with growing.

Growing what?

Awareness, higher consciousness. This results in being free, powerful, and at choice.

People who engage in a Responsibility practice find that they don’t need to cope. They prefer to be free, powerful, and at choice.

Here’s something that you can do today.

Catch yourself with thoughts, actions, and words related to coping, behavior that says

“There’s nothing I can do.”
“I just have to put up with it.”
“This is just the way it is.”

Catch yourself doing this, and then ask yourself, “For how long do I want this to be true?”

Decide that you would much rather face reality and own your life.

When you do that, your mind automatically moves you toward the ability to respond, to grow in awareness and freedom.

To your freedom, choice, and power.
Christopher Avery and The Responsibility Company team

(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It takes 3 minutes to read.)

In my Responsibility practice, awareness means that every time something in my universe isn’t quite right (and thus I’m confused, upset, frustrated, annoyed, or angry), there is an opportunity for a new awareness.

A new truth.

A greater consciousness.

So, here’s one to try on:

There’s nothing wrong with you.

What if you are operating perfectly – according to your conditioning and programming?

Here’s the point.

Most smart people learned early in childhood to be self-critical – to catch themselves in a mistake faster than their parents, siblings, or teachers could say, “what’s wrong with you?”

They learned to say, “what’s wrong with me!?” while making various gestures.

“What’s wrong with me!?” maps to Shame in The Responsibility Process.

In Shame, I’m the problem. I Lay Blame on myself for what’s not right.

Then a lifetime of self-beating and self-loathing begins.

Many Responsibility students discover – through practice – that Shame is their “favorite” place to get stuck in The Responsibility Process.

What to do about it?

Consider that you are made perfectly, and you are also operating normally.

Even though things happen that aren’t quite right.

Consider that there is nothing wrong with you. You just have your attention on “what’s wrong with me?!” instead of “Hmmm, what do I want about this situation that I can take ownership of and do something about?”

Only then can you pay attention to another new awareness – a higher truth.

You are always doing the best you know how (in each moment, given your consciousness and the context).

Try that on.

You may be thinking: I’m not sure I ALWAYS do my best.

No. That’s not what the principle says.

In hindsight, you see dozens of things that you “should” have done differently. But that hindsight was not available to you in the moment when you made the mistake or rolled your eyes or said something ugly.

So, how do you put that hindsight to work?

You could open a “Catch Sooner Game” around any habitual programming or conditioning you want to change.

I describe Catch Sooner in The Responsibility Process (book). However, I apply it with students over and over in Responsibility Immersion so it becomes a new awareness and habit.

As people advance in their Responsibility practice, they learn to stop blaming themselves because they are much more aware of their programming and their power to change it.

So you can skip past Shame on The Responsibility Process.

Then, a really cool awareness dawns on you.

If nothing’s wrong with you, there’s nothing wrong with anyone!

Everyone is always doing their best in that moment (given their consciousness and context).

When you develop that awareness, you start erasing Lay Blame from The Responsibility Process in your mind.

Then, your attention is no longer on what’s wrong with people – either yourself or others.

And you are much more powerful to respond to situations and systems with less judgment and greater awareness.

To your freedom, choice, and power.
Christopher Avery and The Responsibility Company team

(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It takes 1 minute to read.)

When you really truly get that you have infinite choices available to you all day, every day

And that each one can create an entirely new path

Then you can sense the beginning of true freedom.

You can start to take charge of your life.

Like many, you may have been conditioned to believe that you have no choice, that you HAVE TO do this, or that you HAVE TO do that.

That your life path is paved for you, and you can’t alter it.

(Not true)

Or possibly – like so many do – you worry about “right” choices and “wrong” ones.

(Worrying is a choice)

I love these two lines from the Sufi poet Rumi, who said,

“Out beyond right and wrong is a field.

I’ll meet you there.”

That means you can let go of right/wrong, good/bad, should/shouldn’t, and choose what frees you.

The Responsibility Process teaches that Responsibility is a mental state — the mind’s coordinates for experiencing freedom, choice, and power.

It is a creative, calming, intentional, inspired, and authentic state of mind.

When you think you have no choice, that’s a good indication that you’re coping and feeling powerless.

Here’s something you can do today.

Catch yourself saying, “I have no choice.” And then tell yourself,

“I must be coping.

“Let me change that.

“Let me ascend to the mental state of Responsibility where I naturally experience freedom, choice, and power.”

I can help.

To your freedom, choice, and power.
Christopher Avery and The Responsibility Company team

(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It is 1000 words and takes 5 minutes to read.)

About this guide

This guide supports teachers, coaches, and others who want to teach The Responsibility Process.

We know – and are grateful – that many coaches, teachers, and workshop leaders include some form of introduction and instruction around our unique understanding of Responsibility (see what we mean by capital “R” Responsibility). Our goal with this guide is to help you serve your audience.

Most of our audience learns about The Responsibility Process from a teacher or coach. So if we support you in teaching Responsibility, you expand its reach. And that’s central to our mission.

This guide contains four sections:

• Using the intellectual property
• Teaching guidelines
• Direct your clients and students to Responsibility resources
• How can we support you?

Let’s start with what is and isn’t fair use.

Using the intellectual property

Coaches frequently ask us to clarify what intellectual property they can use and what they can’t. We’ll clarify that here.

We presume that you have a basic understanding of how to reference material that someone else created. And that you know how to do so by providing citations and links.

We categorize our intellectual property into three buckets, starting with Content under a Creative Commons license.

Content under a Creative Commons license

A Creative Commons license covers The Responsibility Process posters. It is stated on the back of each translation at the bottom of the second page and reads:

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons International Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ for what this license covers).

Available in 29 languages, you may distribute this poster in hard copy or digital format in its entirety only and without changes or adaptations. We encourage you to distribute it far and wide.

Additionally, all of the Responsibility.com content and our broadcast emails are also covered by a Creative Commons license.

Most content posted elsewhere online (such as on Slideshare, Youtube, LinkedIn, and such) is covered by a Creative Commons license.

There are some exceptions. We have created content for many publishers who retain the rights to their publications. For these, you would follow generally-accepted guidelines for using copyrighted material.

Christopher’s books

The Responsibility Process book and Teamwork Is An Individual Skill are covered by international copyright laws.

If you wish to quote or excerpt The Responsibility Process book beyond what copyright law allows, contact us to request permission.

If you wish to quote or excerpt Teamwork Is An Individual Skill beyond what copyright law allows, contact its publisher, Berrett-Koehler.

Proprietary materials

All materials for workshops, seminars, training, and online programs are copyright protected. These materials are for the personal use of the participant only and may not be copied, cited, or distributed.

An exception to this is for Certified Responsibility Workshop Leaders. People in this group have access to proprietary materials for the workshops they are certified to lead.

That’s it for intellectual property. Now let’s turn to some ideas we can offer you to help your students.

Teaching guidelines

There is no one right way to teach Responsibility. We suggest that you create your own presentation based on your understanding.

And, if you are looking for outlines, search on “The Responsibility Process” or “Responsibility Process Avery”. You’ll find lots.

Here’s one of my favorites.

Here’s what we’ve learned about teaching Responsibility:

• Own your level of expertise. Be transparent about the depth of your own understanding and practice.
• Start teaching before you are ready. If you wait until you are living in Responsibility all of the time, you’ll never teach it.
• Be light. It’s a heavy subject – if you come in with “Thou shalt take Responsibility” you will lose your audience.
• Avoid preaching right/wrong, good/bad, or should/shouldn’t. Simply share and teach how the mind works.
• Use yourself as the example for each coping state. Since your mind goes to Lay Blame, Justify, Shame, Obligation, and Quit every day, you have lots of material. Poking fun at yourself gives your audience permission to acknowledge their mental states.
• Respect the integrity of the material. If you want to teach The Responsibility Process and related material, then please don’t alter it.

And here’s the most important observation:

You can teach Responsibility only to the extent that you have integrated it into your life.

And if you want to integrate it faster, teach it. It’s a recursive dynamic.

Those are our best teaching guidelines. Employ them, and see how they work.

Now let’s provide some next steps for you and your students.

Direct your clients and students to Responsibility resources

Encourage your students to develop their own Responsibility-thinking practice. Let them know that we  — The Responsibility Company — are here to support them. We provide tons of complimentary content, tools, and many free email series.

Send your charges to responsibility.com to explore for themselves. More specifically, they can:

• Take the Responsibility Scorecard Self-Assessment and see how they compare
• Download, print, and post The Responsibility Process poster as a reminder
• Join the Responsibility Community and receive an introductory email series about Responsibility, plus receive occasional all-value, no-selling content

When your charges come to the official source for Responsibility, you invite us to help you help them.

How can we better support you?

Thank you for reading this. We’ll take a continuous improvement approach to expanding it. To that end, we want to know two things:

• We want to know the value of this guide to you as the teacher or coach.
• Tell us what change we can experiment with that will produce significantly more value for you or others.

To address these questions, send me an email.

To your freedom, choice, and power.
Christopher Avery and The Responsibility Company team

Thank you to Ed, for an excellent question. Ed writes “If I give someone negative feedback, is that laying blame?”

We’re presented with many opportunities to give feedback, so this is an excellent opportunity to practice Responsibility. First of all, Ed, if it feels blame-y or shame-y, it probably is. If the receiver of the feedback feels blamed by your feedback, there’s a good chance that it isn’t really feedback – it’s probably criticism.

What’s the difference between feedback and criticism? We’re going to get into that. I’m going to give you tips that I use to give Responsible feedback. There are three important aspects of giving Responsible feedback: get permission, show up with pre-approval, and give feedback instead of criticism.

Let’s start with feedback versus criticism.

The idea of feedback actually comes from information science. It has to do with sending a tiny signal back to the origin of the information, the person, that allows them to make a change or stay status quo.

Criticism comes from judgment about the person or what they did. Criticism always comes from good, bad, right, and wrong. You and I have grown up in a critical society, so we’re really good at criticizing. We’re good at being judgmental.

So simply check your feedback and ask, are you coming from a place of making the other person either good or bad or right or wrong? Are you coming from a place of making what the other person did good or bad or right or wrong? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then you’re giving criticism, not feedback.

Instead, simply tell the other person how what they did landed on you.

What did you like about it? What did you not like? What surprised you? What did you learn? What did you appreciate? What didn’t land well on you?

You can do this from truthfulness with compassion. Even negative feedback can be received well because you’re not making it about the other person. You’re making it about how what they did landed on you and went through your filters.

My next guideline is to get permission. 

One of the things that we learned in our studies of Responsibility is that unwanted help is received as abuse.

Imagine a parent or an adult leaning over a six-year-old at the table and cutting up their meat and their vegetables for them and the six-year-old goes, “Get out of here.” If it didn’t start with, “Honey, can I cut your meat and vegetables for you,” it was unwanted help. It’s received as abuse.

If you want to give feedback, get permission.

There are many ways to get permission. You can have ongoing permission, you can get permission in the moment. If someone asks you for feedback, you can say, “Are you absolutely sure, and specifically, what do you want me to look at? I’d be happy to.”

My last guideline is to do it with pre-approval.

In fact, in most of the guidance that you give to others, do it with pre-approval. Pre-approval of them as a human, pre-approval knowing that they are always doing the best they know, given the circumstances and their mental state.

That means you can trust them to take advantage of the information that you have to give them. When you give pre-approval, you also create much higher levels of safety for them, making it easier for them to receive what you offer.

So here’s an example of giving Responsible feedback. 

Let’s say someone gave a presentation, asked you to attend, and give them feedback. Beautiful. Number one, are you showing up with pre-approval?

Remember that humans are always doing their best given their level of consciousness at that moment, in that situation. So you’re not there to correct them as a human being. You’re there to approve of them as a human being.

Permission. Even though they asked you for permission, double-check. Are you sure? Or is there anything specifically that you want my input about?

Finally, feedback versus criticism. Instead of I thought this was good, I thought that was bad, right, wrong, you should never do this, you should always do this, that’s all opinion. And it’s all biased. Instead, a good rule of thumb is to use “I statements” so that you own your feedback to them.

Here’s some feedback that you might give.

“I thought you took on a bold challenge. I also thought that you looked really confident and in charge of yourself in the presentation. However, I didn’t follow your argument on Slides Five and Six. I’m not sure if management will buy your proposal based on those arguments.

“I may not be your target audience for those points, but if you think I am, or if you think I can help, I’d be happy to work with you a little bit to make sure that the points you’re making on those slides really drive home what it is that you want.

“Is there anything else that you’d like feedback from me on?”

So there’s an example for feedback.

In closing, feedback always honors the ability of another to make their own choices about what they do with the information you give them.

It usually comes from compassion and empathy and from your own truth told with compassion. And it rarely comes from judgments of right and wrong or good or bad, which we know is criticism.

So here’s something you can do today. 

Catch yourself thinking a critical thought about what someone else is doing. See if you can turn that into a neutral observation as if you were trying to tell them how what they did landed on you.

I thought this, I liked this, I appreciated this, I didn’t appreciate this, I found it hard to accept this.

You can use this as an exercise for yourself, or you can get permission, show up with pre-approval, and turn that observation into some feedback for them.

Send all your questions to hello@responsibility.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

We’d like to introduce you to a feature linked from our homepage, the Leadership Scorecard Self-Assessment tool.

The self-assessment can be helpful in identifying sticking points and can act as a benchmark for your future progress. No opt-in is required to take the assessment, and we encourage you to share it with friends and colleagues – and compare your results.

(Note: The video above is more engaging than the text below, even though the words are the same. Even if you prefer reading, you might want to watch the video this time.)

If you start on our homepage, you’ll see a button near the top that says “assess yourself with the leadership scorecard.” That button will take you to the self-assessment.

The assessment consists of ten sets of paired statements. You’ll be ranking how true each statement is for you, right now. We’ll use the first one as an example.

On the left, you’ll see “much of what’s required of me feels off purpose and uninspiring.” If that’s true, then you would choose the one button on the left. On the right, we have “I generally feel on purpose and inspired about leading myself and others.” If that’s true, if that is your complete reality, then you would choose 10.

For most of us, the answer is somewhere in between. Choose what represents your reality. There are no right or wrong answers.

The more honest you are, the more you can learn from this assessment.

In each of these categories, you’ll see that the statement on the left aligns with a  stuck, coping, suppressed, burdened mindset. The statement on the right aligns with being free, powerful, and at choice.

We help people move from the mindset on the left to the one on the right. That’s our mission at the Responsibility Company.

When you’ve rated all ten statements, click “see your report” and you’ll be taken to the report page.  At the top of the page, we list your statistics and how you compare them to other items in the database. You’ll see your scorecard there.

We go into a detailed assessment of how you can use this tool to examine where you want to take more ownership of your mind and your life. We go into the relationship between Responsibility and self-leadership.

Why am I not showing you that report? Well, that’d take all the fun away from you seeing it for yourself. So I invite you to try it and invite your friends to try it.

Take the Leadership Scorecard Self Assessment.

(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It is 2000 words and takes 10 minutes to read. Hopefully, 10 minutes of inspiration and value. It’ also in sections, so you can scan and read it in parts.)

Reading for fun

Until recently, I wasn’t much of a pleasure reader. For most of my life, the bulk of my reading (or listening, thank you) ​has been for learning.

Earlier this year, I decided to dip into reading for pleasure.

A self-proclaimed crazy man named Ron recommended Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta. For context, Ron is a former professor from my PH.D. program and a friend across the decades. He was also my first mentor for the speaking and workshop business.

Ron tows his “Airstream of Consciousness” from the Baja beaches of Mexico in the winter to the mountains of Colorado in the summer — and perfect seasonal points in-between. So when Ron posted on Facebook that Dispatches from Pluto is the only book he would buy and read multiple times, I felt inspired to see what thrilled him so.

The author, Richard Grant, is a hilarious observer of the human condition, and he happens to do it as a travel writer. I went on to devour God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre and Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa.

Thank you, Crazy Ron.

I’m now reading In a Sunburned Country (about Australia) by Bill Bryson. Bryson is also an endlessly witty observer of people and their places. I think there will be more of Bill Bryson’s travel adventures for me in 2022.

It looks like pleasure reading may become a happy habit.

Reading for growth

For decades I have read for ideas and tools – and in my twenties and thirties, for scholarly advancement.

Today I read for wisdom, awareness, and consciousness growth.

In recent years, I’ve been intrigued with metaphysics, which means “beyond the physical.” After applying the three Keys to Responsibility (Intention, Awareness, and Confront) for years, it became clear that much is happening beyond the physical, that is, beyond Newtonian principles of cause-and-effect.

This year I reread (and listened to, while hiking or driving) Power Versus Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by Nobel collaborator David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. I first read it perhaps fifteen years ago and considered it the most formative book ever.

It still is.

Why? After experiencing enlightenment (a rare occurrence), Hawkins developed a research-based paradigm that includes science and spirituality, usually separate paradigms.

He equates spirituality with consciousness. (And I am in the consciousness-raising business.)

The centerpiece of his work is the Map of Consciousness. Using this map, you can calibrate everything (and everybody) on a scale from 1 to 1000.

Where one calibrates determines how one experiences life. Since we define Responsibility as “owning one’s ability and power to create, choose, and attract” the Map of Consciousness helps me understand how I am creating, choosing, and attracting my reality — the parts I like and the parts I don’t.

The higher the calibration, the more aligned with truth, and thus more powerful. Buddha, Krishna, Brahman, Zoroaster, and Jesus all calibrate at 1000.

Power Versus Force is the first book in a trilogy (and it is not an easy read). I wasn’t ready to confront the other two books until this year. I’m thrilled that I’ve nearly finished The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing is Hidden.

In January, I’ll begin reading (and listening to) I: Reality and Subjectivity.

One other audiobook I consumed this year is The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality, by physicist Robert Lanza, M.D., a man with an impressive bio. This book continues to document evidence from quantum physics that the universe is a function of consciousness (and not vice versa, as commonly thought).

It’s a mind-blower.

Elegant tools

Each day there are more tool choices than the day before. Here are three simple tools that help me manage life.

I lean on Apple Reminders, an app native to Mac OS and IOS. Yes, a simple reminder app, and I use it hourly.

Since I operate in the Apple ecosystem, I choose this native app to remind me of repeating activities (“change the furnace filter”). It works with iCloud, so the reminders appear across all of my devices.

That’s key.

(I’m not recommending Apple Reminder over other reminder apps. There are lots of reminder apps for every operating system. I assume many of them will work across all of your devices.)

Reminder apps support Responsibility-thinking

As participants in Responsibility Immersion continually seek tools and resources for practicing Responsibility-thinking, I now suggest the use of reminder apps. For instance, every hour, your app could ask you, “What is your attention/awareness on right now?” Then you could check to see if you are upset and experiencing Lay Blame, Justify, or another coping mechanism.

If you want to remind yourself of particular intentions (for instance, “be bold”), you could set a daily reminder.

I have a half-dozen reminders for specific intentions around Responsibility. Here’s one that reminds me each morning to face challenges.

You can gamify reminders

I set them to pop up early in the day. If I am feeling as the reminder says – that is, in the case of the Helen Keller quote above, if I feel like life is a daring adventure – then I click on “complete,” and that reminder goes away until the next day.

However, if I don’t feel that way, then I click on “remind me in an hour.” For instance, if the Helen Keller quote pops up and I’m feeling victimized, bored, or like life is unfair, then I’ll click “remind me in an hour.”

It’s a win when the reminder comes back later and I realize that I’ve corrected my mental state, so I dismiss the reminder until tomorrow.

One final thought about reminders. If you appreciate affirmations – self-affirming statements – reminder apps can make your affirmations come alive by showing up at whatever frequency you set.

Other valuable tools

The aptly named World Time Buddy is my friend. It makes it easy to coordinate meetings across time zones.

Making useful agreements, and keeping them is a sign of owning your agreements. Time agreements are the nursery school of all agreements. If you want to know what time it will be on the other side of the world at a future date and time for you, World Time Buddy has you covered.

The final tool I’ll highlight is Insight Timer, a meditation app for IOS and Android. The free version offers you over 100,000 guided meditations, calming stories, and sleep music.

I use it every day.

How does meditation support Responsibility? It supports consciousness growth with inner peace and clarity — it moves you toward freedom, choice, and power.

I like the app and the company behind it enough that I subscribed to the premium version even though the free version provided everything I required. I simply wanted to support the company.

I hope at least one of these resources or ideas adds value to your life.

Looking forward

The Responsibility Company and I continue to build on the serve-first principles we’ve adopted. Here are a few of the things to which you can look forward.

Soon, you’ll find an engaging leadership self-assessment on our website, hopefully sometime in the first quarter. You will also see new content designed to support individuals, coaches, agilists, and leaders in practicing and even teaching Responsibility.

If raising your consciousness, doing your “inside” work, and taking charge of your life is on your to-do list for 2022, the next Responsibility Immersion may interest you. It starts on 9 February 2022.

Also, look for us to announce one or more virtual workshop deliveries. We shut these down in 2021 and look forward to reopening them.

You can also expect more valuable free email series as well as paid email courses.

On behalf of my amazing teammates at The Responsibility Company, I wish you a New Year full of freedom, power, joy, growth, and love.

P.S. I made no New Years’ resolutions.

Why? I’ll tell you.

First, I’ll tell you about an annual New Years’ ritual that I did participate in again. It’s the Burning Bowl ritual. It goes back centuries at least, maybe eons.

In this ritual, you write on a piece of paper things from the past year that you are willing and ready to let go of and leave behind you. Then you shred or wad up the paper and burn it.

If you want to learn more, there is not one derivative source, buts lots of sources, so here’s a search.

There are several reasons I no longer make New Years’ resolutions. They all stem from discovering powerful truths through developing my powers of Intention, Awareness, and Confront.

Years ago I adopted the belief that each day is the first day of the rest of my life. That means I no longer depend on this week, month, quarter, or year to end so I can “turn the page.”

I realized that I can and do make resolutions anytime I’m inspired to make a change.

Finally, I never make goals, commitments, or resolutions out of Shame or Obligation (for instance, “I really should get in shape”). I found those never work.

Why?

Such goals do not represent my authentic and unique genius and inspiration. They come from anxieties such as seeking approval, not fitting in, or not being good enough. And that means while I think I should — or even have to — I don’t really want to.

So, if you are wondering whether you should do something – like, “set a goal for XYZ” – my suggestion is this: Don’t do it until you truly want to.

Think about it.

(This post began as a Responsibility Community Newsletter. It’s about 2300 words and takes 12 minutes to read. Hopefully, 12 minutes of value and entertainment.)

An apparent Japanese proverb says “Fall seven times, get up eight.” This proverb lends a Responsibility-thinking theme to our 2021 review.

2021’s path was set in late 2020

As it did for so many businesses, the pandemic gave us lots of opportunity in 2020 to ask ourselves what we are doing and why, repeatedly. All the fun and easy speaking gigs had dried up. The glitz of international travel was gone.

The pivot to selling virtually-delivered workshops was challenging (read: no fun). In fact, after making substantial investments in marketing virtual public workshops – which at first were successful, and then registrations dwindled – we stopped.

Yet, we believed the world could use the value we offer more than ever.

So, we chose to put our efforts into creating value for the entire Responsibility Community.

Late in 2020 we stumbled across an ultra-high-integrity approach to email marketing from Tiny Little Businesses. We loved it and dove in, reading all their free content, taking some of their courses, and implementing some of the plays in their playbook.

In December 2020 we made a public commitment. We announced The Pivot to a new way of providing value. We also then announced our Declaration of Intention.

(Talk about falling down and getting up. We’re a thirty-year-old company falling down again, and getting up again.)

Our new commitment is to be a serve-first operation.

What does serve-first look like?

We didn’t exactly know what this serve-first approach would look like for us.

(It looked great on the Tiny Little Businesses website and in their content, but we were miles behind in understanding and executing. And, we were facing a total makeover.)

We knew it meant writing.

Writing lots of content, much of it in the form of free email series. These email series are multi-day guided adventures in some aspect of Responsibility-thinking that our community members can choose to take. More about these series below.

We also knew that it meant operating at the highest level of humanity, respect, and integrity regarding what we do with your email address and how we speak to you. So we tightened up our policies and our CRM settings. We removed a lot of unengaged followers from our email list.

And we set out to create content that you want to open, read, and yes, click.

We already had two vlog series that you like (according to the high open and click rate, and your feedback and questions). We chose to continue these at the beginning of 2021.

We produced the following in the first few months:

• Space: Freedom,
• Responsibility Answers: Is The Responsibility Process Different Across Cultures?,
• Space: Responsibility,
• Responsibility Answers: Will The Responsibility Process Work in my Culture?, and
• Space: Choice.

And then we fell silent.

Life happened

You didn’t get anything from us for nearly three months in late Spring and Summer. Why?

A long-standing cyclical health issue flared and I had limited inspiration, focus, and creativity. My teammate Joseph Thomas and I kept collaborating as we were able on the new strategy. He carried me in terms of remaining inspired and committed.

We just weren’t producing vlogs or email broadcasts.

Finally, I felt alive enough to get back in the saddle.

(Fall seven times, get up eight.)

I wrote the long-form newsletter turned blog post Be Bigger Than Any Problem. In that piece I confessed my health issue and shared my personal philosophy of being bigger than any problem.

(Note: Since all problems are conceived and defined in the mind, you get to determine how big – or small – a problem is.

I can’t think of a more attention-sucking problem in my life than this one. Yet, I am at peace with it. I am not my body’s illness. However, it is mine to own.

It’s been an amazing spiritual journey. I have more gratitude and joy for life than ever. And I have tremendous compassion for myself, especially when I don’t feel well.

I am very easy on myself.

Nor have I given in to the pesky condition. I intend to be healed, whole, and healthy. I surround myself with a carefully chosen wellness team and friends who support me completely.)

From there we produced a long-form newsletter that contains some newish thinking about how to explain coping below the line versus growing above the line. We turned that newsletter into a blog post called Respond or React.

We followed with the vlog Responsibility Answers: How do I say no?, the vlog Space: Be, Do, Have (on the three conditions of existence and how we use them in our thinking and language), and the long-form newsletter turned blog post Breaking Up Well.

You seemed to acknowledge this new approach with higher open and click rates, lower opt-outs and spam complaints (which were already very low), and more questions.

Thank you. That’s rewarding.

Many more vlogs exist in the Space series and in the Responsibility Answers series. It’s fun to go to the Resources page and click the Responsibility Answers tab to see the various questions. You can do the same with the Space tab.

Meanwhile, collaborating in the background, quiet as mice

We remained fascinated with the serve-first approach to marketing and have only begun to scratch the surface of what we are learning. We would study a little, fumble around with what that meant for us in terms of planning and execution, and then create a little.

(Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat.)

We have lived at the edge of our comfort zone all year. This type of significant change is confronting.

And, we know that there is no effective change without disturbance.

Are there results that matter?

Yes.

For our first project we iterated on our already-existing 2020 email series turned blog post called Responsibility Immersion Why and Who. It became a longer and more valuable email series. We renamed it Responsibility Immersion What, Why, and Who.

That series is now available 24/7/365 from the Responsibility Immersion page.

In part, this new series contributed last summer and fall to one of the easiest and most stress-free recruitment and registration periods ever for Responsibility Immersion. This was gratifying, happening so close to the beginning of our serve-first journey.

Next, we undertook a huge (in hindsight) project with a high degree of uncertainty and complexity. We felt the potential value and learning curve were worth it.

That project was to create a 6-week email course product (supported with live group mentoring Zooms and a Slack space) titled Launching Your Responsibility-Thinking Practice. The project includes all the operational and promotional pieces around it.

This product meets a long-standing intention to offer an entry-level self-study product for busy professionals who have never heard of The Responsibility Process and who want to take charge of their lives.

It’s also part of a social media advertising play to reach every free corner of the globe. We followed a framework we learned from Tiny Little Businesses Momentum Builder Workshop.

And because it is a paid advertising play — and we have no competency in that area — we wanted help from some experts.

It was a good thing that we had been talking with Shore360 for a couple of years about helping us with various activities. Their digital marketing group – ShoreDigital – stepped right up and immediately demonstrated competency. They understood our flows, set up tracking and analytics, and developed a plan for low-cost learning. This way we could spend just a few hundred dollars at a time on advertising and learn what part of the flow was working well and what part required improvement.

It’s been an excellent experience with Shore Digital. They are part of the team now.

(It reminds me of an old partnering principle: Start early. That means start building relationships before you need them.)

As part of the flow we also created a free 4-day email series to introduce the email course. The free series is called Responsibility-Thinking: From Coping to Growing.

We continue testing and iterating both the email course and the free email series. We’ll have more news about these in the Spring.

Lastly, we developed a 4-day Welcome email series for newcomers to the Responsibility Community. The purpose of this series is to build relationships with new community members.

(Start early.)

The Welcome series introduces the Responsibility Community, The Responsibility Process®, The Responsibility Company, and provides a summary of Responsibility-thinking products and services.

This just in

A serve-first approach calls for less click-bait and ethical bribes (that is, freebies in exchange for your email address so we can immediately send you “buy now” emails). So we are starting to evolve this site to reflect this.

In just the last week we have altered the Resources section to eliminate all the ethical bribes. Some of these will reappear as free email series adventures.

And that means we no longer require an email address in exchange for downloading The Responsibility Process poster. We are busily converting all 27 language translations into our new branding. Many are already done and available as an immediate, unprotected, download.

We’re also adding version information in the footer and switching to the three-letter ISO code for country-name in the filename and version statement.

We hope and assume all of this makes it more convenient for you to grab a current poster PDF. It might also be easier to tell a friend about downloading the poster if you know they don’t have to opt in.

If all of these changes are in a positive direction for you, then I think you have more goodness to look forward to.

Looking forward

What’s going to be new and different?

Responsibility Immersion — now in its third year — continues to grow and delight participants as they consciously transform their lives. More on that below.

We’ve only just begun understanding and implementing this new all-encompassing and all-consuming serve-first approach. There are so many distinctions and nuances.

We continue to explore and learn new competencies. We are beginning to see new rhythms emerge.

So, we will continue.

I can only imagine where we’ll be with it a year from now.

I think you can expect more website changes as we re-imagine the customer journey and guide visitors to find valuable information and adventures.

You can certainly expect more free email adventures. We’ve already conceived of more than we know how to prioritize. But you might expect an email series or two around our usual themes of

• Change and Responsibility,
• Leadership (and Responsibility),
• Teamwork,
• Agility, and
• Teaching Responsibility

And maybe another email course or two. Who knows?

I hope all of this is worth staying around for.

More delights

The phone started ringing (well, emails started arriving) around March 2021 with requests for virtual keynotes and mentoring. I’ve done a bunch of virtual keynotes for audiences worldwide this year to excellent reviews and participant feedback. I also supported a number of mentoring clients to take charge of their lives by breaking through pesky problems.

I accepted a challenge to support the senior executive leadership team in a global business to come together as a team in this “post”-pandemic environment.

(I’m not sure we are past the pandemic at this point.)

Yes, I’m flying to support clients again after eighteen months of not stepping foot in an airport.

And, I’ve enjoyed being interviewed for a number of podcasts.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this year-in-review. It was therapeutic for me to retrospect.

What have I learned?