Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life PDF
Preview Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life
''This is Nathaniel Branden's summa, a brilliant, readable, and profoundly important book." -Tom Peters, coauthor of I" Search 0/ Exeelle1lCe Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life PH.D. ATHANI~l BRAND~N, Author of The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem and The Art of Living Consciously Other Books by Nathaniel Branden The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem The Art of Self-Discovery The Power of Self-Esteem Jud9ement Day How to "alse Your Self-Esteem To See What I See and Know What I Know Honoring the Self If You Could Hear What I Cannot Soy What love Asks of Us The Psychology of "omontlc Love The Disowned Self ()reaklng Free The Psychology of Self-Esteem TAKING Responsibility Self-Reliance and the Accountable life Nathaniel Branden A FIRESIDE BOOK Published by Simon & Schuster FIRESIDE Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright e 1996 by Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any fonn. First F'treside Edition 1997 FIRESIDE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon &: Schuster Inc. Designed by Elina D. Nudelman Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Branden, Nathaniel. Taking responsibility: self-reliance and the accountable life / Nathaniel Branden. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Responsibility. 2. Self-reliance. I. Title. BJ1451.B73 1990 158'.1-dc20 95-36640 CIP ISBN·13: 978·0·684·8\083-6 ISBN·IO: 0·684.81083·2 ISBN·13: 978·0·684·83248· 7 (Pbk.) ISBN·IO: 0·684·83248-8 (Pbk.) c o n t e n t s Introduction 7 1 Toward Autonomy 17 2 Freedom and Responsibility 39 3 Self-Reliance and Social Metaphysics 57 4 A Self-Responsible Life 91 5 The Challenge of Separation 125 6 Self-Responsibility and Romantic Love 144 7 Accountability in Organizations 167 6 A Culture of Accountability 191 Appendix: A Sentence-Completion Program for Growing in Self-Responsibility 223 Selected Bibliography 235 Acknowledgments 237 Index 239 Introduction I will begin with a personal story that illuminates a primary aspect and benefit of self-responsibility that is rarely understood, the achievement of happiness. As I approached my sixty-first birthday a few years ago, I found myself thinking a good deal about the subject of happi ness, and about making its attainment my conscious purpose. At that time I was embarking on a project that had the poten tial to generate a good deal of stress, and I was detennined that my daily mood and the harmony of my marriage not be ad verselyaffected. I thought about my wife Devers, who is the most consistently happy human being I have ev« known, as well as one of the most self-sufficient. When I met her I felt that I had never en countered anyone for whom joy was more her "nature." Yet her life had not been easy. Widowed at twenty-four, she was left to raise two small children with very little money and no one to help her. When we met, she had been single for many years, had achieved success in a number ofj obs, and never spoke of 7 INTRODUCTION past struggles with any hint of self-pity. I saw her hit by disap pointing experiences from time to time, saw her sad or muted for a few hours (rarely longer than a day), then saw her bounce back to her natural state ofj oy without any evidence of denial or repression. It took me some time to fully believe what I was see ing: that her happiness was md-and larger than any adversity. When I would ask her about her resilience, she would say, "I'm committed to being happy." And she added, "That takes self discipline." She also had a habit I thought unusual: She ahnost never went to sleep at night without taking time to reviewevery thing good in her life; those were typically her last thoughts of the day. I thought this was an important clue to what I wanted to understand about the psychology of happiness. We talked about the fact that there is a tendency for most people to explain feelings of happiness or unhappiness in terms of the external circumstances of their lives. They explain happiness by pointing to the positives; they explain unhappi ness by pointing to the negatives. The implication is that events determine whether they are happy; they take little or no responsibility for their state. I had always been convinced, as had Devers, that our own attitudes have far more to do with how happy we are than do any external circumstances. I said to her: Take a man who is basically disposed to be happy, meaning that he feels happiness is his natural condi tion, and is happy a significantly greater amount of the time than he is unhappy. Let some misfortune befall him-the loss of ajob, or a marriage, or being hit by some physical disabil ity-and for some time he will suffer. But check with him a few weeks or months or a year later (depending on the severity of the problem) and he will be happy again. In contrast, take a man who is basically disposed to be unhappy, who feels unhap piness is more natural thanjoy, and who is unhappy a signifi cantly greater amount of the time than he is happy. Let something wonderful happen to him-getting a promotion, inheriting a lot of money, faIling in love with an exciting 8
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