What if you walked out in public with a $100 bill sticking out of your shirt pocket for all to see? What if some guy reaches for your shirt, grabs the $100 bill, and runs off with it?
Are you responsible for that theft?
No, you aren't responsible for someone stealing your stuff. Nor are you responsible for someone committing violence against you or those nearby. But you are response-able.
What's the difference?
If you are the causal agent for the activity or incident, you are responsible. The guy who stole your money out of your pocket is responsible.
However, in almost all cases you have the ability to act beforehand to mitigate or avoid the situation, or once it begins you have the ability to respond. That's response-ability. You should have known better than to put your money in your pocket. You could also have seen the guy's body language signaling he noticed the money and was about to take action on it.
What does this have to do with your professional performance, living out your identity and experiencing fulfillment?
It's recognizing there's much you aren't responsible for in your life. You don't control much in the grand scheme of things. But in almost all of it, you are response-able.
One of my shooting instructors, a Canadian national IPSC champion, is a great instructor but prides himself on having achieved what he has because "I control everything." While he controls a lot with his individual training and competitive performance, and he is certainly precise, he's giving himself far too much credit for his degree of responsibility. He does, however, display the great degree to which he controls the factors under his purview: his physical and mental training, preparation and planning.
He over-estimates his real degree of responsibility for his commendable life outcomes, when he is actually maximizing his response-ability. He makes the most of what he has and minimizes the impact of foreseeable adversity.
Maximizing your response-ability is critical to your maximizing your performance, living out your identity and potential, and experiencing fulfillment. There is much that is and will forever remain out of your control. Sometimes those things are unfair, whether that's unfair against you or unfair in your favor. Sometimes things are seemingly random. But there remains much you have within your control - beforehand, during, and after.
That begins with awareness of the breadth and depth of your response-ability. It's not just about "being responsible" as in "acting responsibly" but also about deciding to exercise your ability to control and improve that which you can. Much of that will be internal, because in the end what you and I control is really only that which is within us. Most of what is outside of us we don't control.
Recognize the degree of control you have over body, your mind, and your emotions. Recognize there is no such thing as "time-management", only "self-management". Recognize you can't control what happens, but you control your response to what happens.
Much of modern culture negates response-ability, putting all outcomes at the feet of external forces. What others have done or haven't done. Systemic this, structural that. We're just blown by the winds of actions by other people, in history and the present.
This is a worldview that dehumanizes everyone by demonizing those who have greater external response-ability and influence, and removing agency from those who have lesser external response-ability and influence. It does not and cannot account for individual outcomes that do not break the pattern declared by the underlying assumptions and narrative.
Within this worldview, fulfillment is impossible. What you accomplish or achieve, within or outside yourself, is not because of you but because of this, that and the other thing outside of you. You're just a passenger along for the ride, for good or bad. Identity is about external categorization and not about internal drives or innate potential. Purpose becomes a nonsensical concept. Each individual becomes irrelevant.
Since you're reading this, you don't hold this worldview in its entirety. But you may not yet fully realize the breadth and depth of your response-ability.
As you begin to recognize more and more of that breadth and depth, you'll discover greater avenues for choice, action, response, and adjustment. You'll find greater precision in your prayers for God's work in you. You'll not only perform better, you'll also be more optimistic, more resilient, and improve faster.
While walking down the street with a $100 bill sticking out of your shirt is just foolish, inviting trouble for yourself from others, isn't it equally foolish to ignore the power you have?
You may not control much, but you control something unique & powerful: yourself.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Yπερνικᾶτε ἐν Χριστῷ. "Let us go be more than conquerors in Christ"