9. What Happens When You Take Radical Responsibility

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners and other cool people. I help you overcome your obstacles in running and life, so you can unleash your inner badass.

And I’m really excited about an upcoming event I’m doing here. It all starts Monday, March 9, it’s a three day challenge called how to solve any problem. And the good thing about this is that it is totally free. That is correct, you will learn how to solve literally any problem that’s on your mind. Big or small, earth shattering, or maybe it’s just something that’s annoying, it might be something from your past that keeps coming up, it might be something that’s just bugging the crap out of you right now, whatever it is, show up on day one with your problem. By the end of day three, your problem will be solved. That’s right, it’s that simple.

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This is going to be fun, I’m very excited about this, this is the best training I have ever put together. And I’m super excited to share it with you guys. So it all starts on Monday, March 9, I’ll be holding the class in a private Facebook group, you have to sign up to get in, just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge to save your spot.

You’re gonna get live coaching and training with me, your master life and success coach, you’ll get to ask me anything. There’s probably something on your mind right now where you’re like, Patrick, I’d really love help with this, well bring it to the table, and I’ll help you. You can also access all the live trainings after the fact.

So you don’t have to actually be on the lives at the time that I do them live. You can watch them later, whenever it works for your schedule. And I got a special bonus for you guys. If you just show up. If you do the work for those three days, which is, it’s not a lot of work, okay. It’s not like training for you know, 50 miler or something like that.

All you got to do is do a little bit of work. Do your homework for those three days, and you’re going to get a free coaching session with me. I know it’s awesome. And I’m calling this a challenge, mostly because most people will not do it. Most people will not take action. Most people have a problem in their life. Most people want something to change in their life, but they’re not willing to actually take any action to do anything about it.

But I know you’re different. You want to make change happen, you’re willing to do the hard work and show up. All you have to do is show up and do the work. Do it for you. Because you deserve this. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have more confidence, more inner peace, you deserve to feel good about yourself. Learn how to solve any problem and you can have all of that just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge and sign up now it’s going to be super, super fun.

Okay, on to today’s topic, which is what happens when you take radical responsibility. This is, I love talking about this topic, because this is one of those concepts that has radically changed my life. I used to blame others for everything that was happening to me. And I don’t do that anymore. I take responsibility for every result that I get in my life. And you know what? My life is way better now.

So let’s talk about the difference first of all between blame and responsibility because when I talk about taking radical responsibility, you’ve got to stop blaming other people and other situations for the way you’re thinking, feeling and the things you’re doing.

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about blame. First, what is blame? What does it mean when we blame someone? So the definition of blame is to assign the responsibility for something bad. And it doesn’t have to be bad, but this is what the definition says. You assign the responsibility for something bad to someone or something. So when you blame you assign responsibility to someone else or something else, you push that responsibility outside of yourself and you assign it to someone else. Okay?

Blaming is when you look outside yourself, usually to other people, as the cause of all of your thoughts, or your feelings or your actions. So you blame others for how you think and feel and for what you do. That’s like saying, Yeah, I threw that plate against the wall, because you yelled at me. Okay, that is blaming someone for your actions, just kind of crazy.

But when we blame, what happens is that we give all of our power away to the other person. You know, if I say, you know, I threw that plate against the wall, because you yelled at me. I’m giving the power, I’m giving all of my power to that other person, I’m saying, you know, like, you have control over me. So when you blame, it’s very disempowering.

When you blame others, there’s nothing that you can do about it, you’re like a helpless victim, you become like a pawn on someone else’s chessboard, someone else’s driving the bus. When you blame others, it means you’re living at the effect of what everyone else is doing. You know, you’re perceiving everything is like happening to you.

And people that blame, they have lots and lots of excuses, they have excuses for everything, why? They don’t have what they want. They have lots and lots of excuses. So that’s all blaming is, you know, pushing the responsibility off of you and onto someone or something else. Now, the flip side of that is taking responsibility.

What does responsibility mean? So the definition of responsibility says the opportunity or ability to act independently, and make decisions without authorizations. I love this definition. You act independently, you make decisions without authorization. So you act on your own, you have agency, over your own decisions over your own existence over everything that is happening in your life.

When you take responsibility, you accept that you are the cause of all of your thoughts, and all of your feelings and all of your actions because you are, no one can cause you to feel sad, or feel hurt or feel angry. You actually choose to feel those feelings. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. But it is true. But here’s the thing that’s cool about this is that it’s very empowering.

When you are the cause of how you’re acting and what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. When you take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life. It’s empowering. Because you know what? There’s something you can do about it. You’ve no longer given the control away to somebody else, you have taken back the wheel of the bus, okay, you’re back to driving the bus again.

And when you live with radical responsibility, you’re the cause for everything in your life, good and bad. Okay, which is good news. This is actually very good news. You’re responsible for all of your good results and all of your bad results too. But that means that you get to do something about it.

You can make changes to that, you’re not a victim, okay? You’re not, you know, just being you know, told by somebody else what to do or act or think. Okay, so people who take radical responsibility, they get awesome results in their life. Okay, so how do you know when you’re blaming someone else you might just think oh, you know, I’m just thinking this way.

Just because or I feel this way just because well, usually, you know, you’re blaming somebody else because when you feel that feeling inside there’s like the it feels kind of icky. It feels terrible inside you. There’s like this internal conflict inside. Do you feel helpless and disempowered? Blaming others feels very disempowering, you can feel it.

So let’s say you think something like, oh, my husband leaves his clothes all over the floor, and it drives me nuts. He makes me so angry. You, when you say that you start to, you start to feel that little disempowered like achiness inside you, you know, you feel that turmoil inside you, that’s like he’s doing this. And I’m, it’s making me angry.

I got news for you. Nobody can make you feel anger, you are choosing to feel that way. But what happens is you put your husband’s actions, you’re making his actions, be in control of your emotional state. That’s just crazy. Because we know, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know that your thinking causes your feelings, your thinking causes your emotions.

And the fact that he leaves his clothes on the floor, it does not cause you to feel angry, what causes you to feel angry, is what you’re thinking about him leaving his clothes on his on the floor, the clothes on the floor, this is just a neutral situation is just a pile of clothes on the floor over there, okay? There’s no magic power in the clothes. It’s not beaming anger into your heart, okay?

You have a story that you’re telling yourself about what your husband should or shouldn’t do with his clothes. And reality does not match your story. The reality is the clothes are on the floor, you don’t think it should be that way. So you are in conflict. Okay, so your husband’s clothes on the floor or him doing this thing is not causing you to feel the feeling you’re choosing that emotion based on the story you’re telling yourself.

Or maybe you are blaming the weather for your last race performance. So you didn’t do so well in your last race because it was a little too warm, or maybe it was too cold or raining or whatever. And so because of the weather, you had all this self doubt, or at least that’s what you’re saying to yourself, oh, you know, I always bonk in my marathon when it’s over 70 degrees. Or, you know, I hate running in the cold. I always do terrible when it’s cold out.

So you have an internal story about what the weather means about how you perform, okay. And this is kind of crazy, because now granted, if it’s like 90 degrees out, you are probably going to run a little bit slower in a marathon. Okay, that’s just science, okay. But to say like, oh, I won’t be able to finish or something like that, like you can, you know, adjust your training to account for slight changes in the weather.

But I have a feeling inside like, I can’t do well because it’s 70 degrees, or it’s 30 degrees, whatever it is, is kind of crazy. You’re putting your power, the power that you have to run this race in the hands of the weather gods, you know, and just FYI, I don’t like running in the cold. Okay, but I ran my marathon PR in November a few years back, but it was in November, and there was an ice storm during my marathon. It was cold.

And then I don’t know about mile 16-17 it started raining and then it turned into ice and like the last five miles of my marathon was this crazy ice storm. I still kicked ass, I felt damn good about myself. Despite the weather. I chose not to believe this thought that the cold weather would affect me negatively.

So when you take radical responsibility, you are the cause of all of your results. Only you are responsible for the way you think the way you feel and the way you act. No one or nothing outside of you can cause you to think, feel or act in a certain way. Your husband can’t do it. Your kids can’t cause you to think or feel stuff. Your training partners, your coaches can’t do it.

The weather has no effect on your thinking, your actions or your feelings, okay? And taking radical responsibility means that you know if it is 90 degrees and you ran a little bit slower than you train and you plan for that next time, that’s what tight taking radical responsibility means in that situation. Okay?

So one of the things you can do to see if you are blaming or if you’re more in the radical responsibility end of the spectrum here, which I’m hoping you are, is to start asking yourself better questions. Tony Robbins says quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions. And as a result, they get better answers. Love Tony Robbins.

So blaming people ask terrible questions, blaming people ask questions like, why does this always happen to me? Have you ever found yourself asking yourself something like this? Or how come everybody else can do this, but not me? Or how come I can never get it? Why isn’t life fair? These are the kinds of questions that blaming people, people who are living in effect of everyone and everything around them, they ask questions like that.

People who take radical responsibility for everything in their life. They ask questions like, How can I get this done? Like what do I need to do to change? What do I need to change in this situation in order to get better results? You know, what internal resources can I tap into? To make this better? How can I figure this out? What can I do better next time? What do I need to learn to make this happen for me now?

Those kinds of questions are empowering. Those kinds of questions will help you to take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life. So what happens when you take radical responsibility for everything, you take back your control, you know, you, you regain agency over your own results, you take back your power, okay, you are empowered. You control your thinking. And if you want to, you can change it.

You control your emotions, you get to choose your feelings, somebody isn’t bestowing them upon you, okay? You control what you do, you control the actions that you take. And if you want to, you can always do something different, you can always take different actions. The best part though, is you control your results. Your results are not determined by others, you are in charge, you get to be the your results are determined by you alone, okay? And you have no excuses, all the excuses are gone. Okay? That’s the good and the bad news.

So, think about this, you don’t need anyone else to change anything. They don’t need to change what they’re doing at all. You have the power within you right now. To get whatever you want in your life, stop living at the effect of what others are doing or saying or poor, or thinking, stop blaming others, start taking radical responsibility, and you’re going to see some amazing changes happening in your life. Cool. That’s all I got for you today.

Remember to sign up for the three day challenge on how to solve any problem and running and in life. It all starts Monday, March 9. It’s a challenge because most people will not take action. That’s not you, though. People who take action get results. And I’m putting this out there because I want to challenge you, my runners. My people who love challenges show up and do this work for yourself. Bring your problem to the table on day one, have it solved by day three. There’s nothing to lose. It’s totally free.

The worst thing that could happen is that you learn some new tools and you could handle problems way better than you ever did in the past. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge to sign up now. And always, you can reach out with questions or comments at hello@innerfiretribe.com. I would love to hear from you. I’d love to hear what your biggest takeaway was from today. And I hope you all have an amazing day. Much love to each and every one of you

Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.