The Difference Between Responsibility and Deliberate Action

Something clicked for me while I was at the gym today. I was contemplating why I was there - the obvious answer is that I want to get muscular and look good. The second thought was that I had a responsibility to myself to be healthy. And then I got thinking, why am I responsible to myself if I'm the one who created the responsibility. Why couldn't I just get rid of the responsibility and not have to fulfill it. My third thought after that was asking what the definition of responsibility is, if I in fact don't want to get rid of the responsibility to myself to be healthy. After all I'm the only person in my life really affected by my health, at least directly on a day-to-day basis.

If you break the word down, responsibility is a response ability - the ability for you to respond to the demands of the world. But if the world doesn't demand anything from you (besides maybe your job), who do you become responsible to, and where does your life lead from that? I was at the gym because it was a deliberate action. I decided deliberately that I would be there, to lift the weight, because lifting the weight was outlined in this action.

When I'm at home and I'm scrolling through Youtube shorts, which I often find myself doing nowadays, I think of that as a non-deliberate action because it's part of my subconscious behavior. On the case of these Youtube shorts, a format of consumption of short videos one after another, the question I'm asking myself is, is this deliberate, non-deliberate, or is it responsibility? I think it can be put in both the non-deliberate and responsible category. If the definition of responsibility is the ability to respond to demands the world has, is Youtube not demanding my attention, and am I not fulfilling the demand subconsciously?

I think to really change your life you have to fill it with deliberate action, and stop solely responding to the world. It's the age old question of, does the external world dictate your reality, or do you define your deliberate actions to predictably dictate how the world responds to you. Nobody really is going to tell you what deliberate actions to take, but they will try to assign you responsibilities, because most people want you to value their life and their actions, and for you to respond accordingly in order make them feel good. Do you live for other people, or do you live for you?

Philosophy of how you live your life is cool and all, but of course the whole purpose of me writing this is to get myself and yourself to define what your life is to become, and work backwards defining the actionable steps of what it takes to get there, and then execute the steps forwards. If we are to define a life we want to arrive at, we have to have a space in which to define it. You can't have matter without the fabric of space in which it resides, so take that principle and mold it to goal making and deliberate action. Thoughts can reside in a notepad, or in a notes app, or somewhere outside of your brain, because your brain is the thing controlling your subconscious actions, and through repeated deliberate action can you create desirable subconscious actions that are in accord with the life you want to live. Personally I get the most stuff done with a simple 4"x6" notepad. The apps create a bunch of complexity that I don't really think is conducive to actually getting to the executing part, and it's just a lot of tracking for the sake of tracking. Might work for you though.

-knny