1. Your Actions Objectives:
* Understand that you are responsible for your own actions.

2. Personal responsibility for One’s Actions
The third thing leaders are responsible for is their actions or behaviors.
Why is this important for leaders?

3. Why?
We often like to blame others for our own mishaps or failures, but this is an unhealthy practice. We do it because of our concerns about what others will think about us.
But there remains little doubt that one of the toughest obstacles leaders have to overcome is this tendency to “pass the blame” on to someone or something else.
For leaders, it shouldn’t be “pass the buck”, it should be “the buck stops here!”
It takes courage to accept responsibility for our own actions, but this is a characteristic of true leadership.

4. How do you respond?
You skip school with several other students. All of you are sent to the principal’s office.
You and another student cheat on a test together and get caught by the teacher.

5. Have you ever…?
…said to your brothers or sisters, “You make me so mad!”
What kinds of things did they do to make you so angry?
So, you’re saying that you had no control?...that you were somehow “forced” to get angry at them?

6. You know, I wonder why, instead of getting angry and yelling at them, we don’t instead say something such as: “When you act that way it makes me feel sorry for you.”
…or…
“Is there something I could do to be a better example for you?”
Why, I wonder, aren’t we having feelings of compassion for them rather than screaming at the top of our lungs and beating them up?

7. Are we selfish?
Don’t you think it has something to do with how selfish we can be?
What do you think?

8. What do you think? How can somebody else really make me mad?
“Nobody can make me mad… I choose to be mad.”

9. Who decides whether or not I get mad?
I do!
The truth is, whether we like it or not, we are responsible for our behavior. If someone pulls out in front of me…I choose my response!
If someone attacks a member of my family…I choose how I will react!

10. Whose taking responsibility for their actions? What examples to you see?
Our society is changing to where people no long take responsibility for their actions.
Lawyers get rich while doctors and insurance companies have to charge higher rates because of the law suits being filed.
Federal and state governments subsidize pregnant teens through abortion, as well as teen mothers through entitlements, depending on the individual’s choice for her child.
Kids steal and then say that the victim should have taken better care of their stuff.
Despite all of this, we are ultimately held accountable for ALL our actions because that is how life really works.
The results are felt in how it feels to live our lives. Do we feel secure and safe? Happy and content? OR insecure and unhappy?

11. Whose hand is this? It’s mine, and I’m in charge of what it does!
I’m in charge of three things:
My thoughts
My attitudes
My actions!

12. What if you want to run for office
What if you want to run for office? People who oppose you are going to accuse you and abuse you something fierce!
They’ll dig up every piece of dirt they can find, call your mother names, and question your heritage!
Now, if you start acting the same way toward them, what am I going to say to you?
I’m going to say…”…don’t do that! You have a choice! Don’t act that way!”

13. We are held responsible…even if we don’t want to be responsible.
Life can be difficult!
Who’s in charge of how YOU handle it?

14. Get up! Line up. Fold line in half.
With the partner across from you, take turns answering the following question:
If you brother, sister, or friend does something that irritates you, how can you handle the situation? What can you choose to do?
Loop the line around 4 people to the left and take turns answering the following:
Why is having the courage to accept responsibility so important to a leader?