Certified Public Accountants (CPA’s) are all about accountability, right? Well, here I use CPA as something different. In this model, the C stands for Caused it (or created it). Looking into ourselves, and looking deeper into our story, we are able to see if there is someway we caused it, created it or at least contributed to our story occurring.
Sometimes when we’ve been victimized, either in reality or in our perception, we tell the story again and again again and it kind of becomes our story. Well what does that do? Law of attraction; we start attracting that kind of situation to us. We all know that we can find ourselves getting victimized in the same way again and again and again. Or perhaps it’s easier to look out at how other people do this. We can see other people who get into the same situations again and again, take for example, how we keep getting in the same kind dysfunctional kind of relationship again and again. We’re unconsciously driven to keep playing out the same scripts, again and again!
But, if we look into our victim story, we can ask ourselves, is there someway we’re setting ourselves up for this? Is there someway we’re promoting this?
The A in this equation stands for Allowed it. At the very least can we say “I let it happen” or “I didn’t have good boundaries” or “I could have seen it coming” or “Could have been less naive” or “more mindful” or “more prepared” or “I didn’t know how to stand up for myself” or or or?
There are many ways we can ‘own’ our situation, take radical responsibility and get ourselves back above the line.
So, go ahead, dig deep into your own personal victim story now. See if there’s anyway you can find you may have caused it, promoted it, or, at the very least, you’ve allowed it. Keep going, even when your defenses come up. See if you can get that door to responsibility to even just crack open, find that little hair opening of a place where you caused it, promoted it or allowed something to happen. Start with that little opening and go from there.
This piece was taken from Fleet’s talk on getting accountable (for more info please check out the talk on Fleet’s YouTube channel).