#29 – Success Principle – Taking 100% Responsibility

Attract More Families

Success Principle – Taking 100% Responsibility

Length: 11m 45s

Hello again. This is Devin Murray with attractmorefamilies.com, your source for independent and private school marketing ideas and help. Today, I want to talk to you about actually one of The Success Principles. As some of you know, not all of you know, that I’m a Jack Canfield certified trainer of his Success Principles, and Jack Canfield, the gentleman who wrote or co-wrote a lot of the Chicken Soup for the Soul. He also wrote the book The Success Principles and a bunch of other books out there. You’ll be able to find his name all sorts of all other books. He actually started off as a teacher, as an educator, and then went into helping teachers get more out of themselves and out of their students. That’s actually where he started with, and that’s where The Success Principles, to a great extent, come from.

Here, from time to time, you’re going to find that I’m going to jump away from the marketing and productivity, the business side of these podcasts and these articles, and jump into that Success Principles concept. The reason I want to really dig into those Success Principles is if you use them yourself, you’ll get more out of life. You’ll actually become more productive, greater productivity, sorry. That’s what I was looking for there. You’re also going to have greater enjoyment out of your life and who doesn’t want that?

You can also use these principles for your teachers. Help them get more out of life. Help them be more productive. Help them get more of what they want out of life. Most of them came into teaching for a reason. You’re in education for a reason, and I think we lose that sometimes in the grind and the regulatory and annoying environment that education can and has become sometimes.

The final place where these Success Principles can really come into play is in helping your students. When you help a student become a better person, to get more out of life, to be happier, to find what their actual purpose in life is so they can go pursue it, are they then not become better students? Do they not become better people in our society, more useful, helpful? Their entire life becomes more fulfilling. By taking The Success Principles, you can help the students, help your teachers, and help yourself all at the same time.

This does go into marketing. I will admit very clearly that a school that has great teachers and empowered students, and leadership who is amazing that they’re actually pursuing their goal in life, their purpose in life and is doing it in a happy and productive way, it’s so much easier that people can sense the power. There’s just an energy about that school, and it radiates everywhere, and it makes parents and students want to come there. Who doesn’t want to work with a school like that? It really makes marketing so much easier. There is a subtle side benefit to marketing. That’s why I teach you this. But, I also do believe very much in just The Success Principles themselves. I am living proof of how The Success Principles have worked. Some of them even before I even knew what they were.

I used to be an airline pilot. I got seriously injured, had to move on, learned internet marketing and marketing in general, built a multimillion-dollar consulting firm. I speak from stages, right? I’m the guy that used to stutter in high school so much that I couldn’t even finish a sentence. I barely finished high school because of how bad I stuttered and, yet, I went on to become a professional pilot. Now, I speak on stages in front of sometimes 10 up to 7, 8, 900 people just because I believe that I can do it and applying these Success Principles whether I knew them or not.

Today, the one success Success Principle that I really want to talk to you about is the Success Principle of taking 100% responsibility for yourself and the results that you are getting. This is a very simple concept. You have to take responsibility for everything that’s happening around you and to you. You are the only one that can change anything about your world and what’s happening to you, how you’re perceiving it, what’s happening, what your future looks like. You’re the only one that can make any changes.

If you’re the only one that can make changes, you need to take full responsibility for everything that’s happening, and I know that’s hard, especially in today’s society and the way we look at things. We want to blame everybody else. Everyone else teaches us to blame everybody else. Oh, it’s not my fault. It was the test that was hard. Oh, it’s the people driving down the road that made me late to school today. My dog ate the homework. It’s the dog’s fault. It’s not my fault for leaving it next to the dog food bowl. Right? We hear that all the time. But, the point is we need to take responsibility, 100% responsibility for ourselves.

Now, I know the most common complaint I get is “But there’s things that I can’t control.” One of the biggest examples of this I hear from stage and when I’m working with groups regularly is, “What about something like cancer? You can’t say that I’m responsible for getting cancer. That I’m 100% responsible for that.” But, who else do you blame? Where else do you place that responsibility?

Let me ask the question. Have you eaten a raw vegan diet your entire life? Have you exercised properly? Have you made sure that you’re not living anywhere near power lines, that you haven’t had a cellphone up near your head or at a pocket? Have you made sure that you’ve been drinking eight quarts of water every day so you’re flushing your system? Have you done intermittent fasting to starve those cancer cells while they’re still at precancerous level? Have you done all of those things? If you haven’t, then you do have some responsibility for that. Take 100% responsibility for the results that you’ve gotten. Now, you can move forward and go, “Okay. Now that I know this, now let me make the changes that I need to make, that I want to make moving forward, and I’m going to take 100% responsibility for that.”

Now, as a leader, as a school leader, you need to take 100% responsibility for what’s happening at your school even if it’s a teacher who is badmouthing a student or a parent. You need to take responsibility for that. As an example, one day I was flying. I was the captain. We had a crew of four or five flight attendants, three pilot crew flying international. One of my flight attendants got very upset at one of the passengers and actually started to scream at that passenger.

When I sat down and landed the airplane, I had to call my company and I had to take full responsibility for that because I was 100% responsible for what happened. I could have stepped in earlier. I could have seen that the intercom was going back and forth, that the flight attendants were calling each other a lot. That’s generally an indication that something is going wrong and back. I could have sensed and asked better questions of that flight attendant in the morning because I usually had a sense in the morning that she was tired, that she didn’t sleep well in the hotel room the night before. I could have asked some personal questions. I actually could have found out that, yes, that she was actually going through a very bad divorce at that time. I needed to take 100% responsibility for that.

When I called up the company to complain, I took 100% responsibility for it. When I talked to that passenger both during the flight and after the flight, I took 100% responsibility as the captain of the airplane. I said, “This is completely my fault. I completely apologize. I should have not allowed this to happen.” I took responsibility for that.

You, as a leader, need to do the same thing in your school. Take 100% responsibility. Then, what that allows you to do is allows you to look and go, “How can I improve? How can I make sure this never happens again?” With my flight attendant, I made a vow to myself moving forward that I would check in more with my flight attendants and any member of my crew every morning. Look them in the eye a little bit more. See if they’re tired. See if they’re dragging. Look at their uniform. You can tell a lot by how tired somebody is by what they’re wearing. Is it nice, and crisp, and sharp? Are they standing tall in it, or are they hunched over and carrying their bag behind them because you can just tell they barely have the energy to walk?

I ask them what’s going on in their life, how things are going even though some of these crew members I saw for one set of trips. I might never see them again. I ask them about that. Ask them how things are going. What’s happening in the world? I also vowed to pay more attention to the intercom line, so that I would know when there’s a lot of conversation. I’d pick up the phone and maybe step in before things happen.

What are you doing about that? What are you doing when you’re hearing a parent come and complain about a teacher? Are you then taking the initiative to take 100% responsibility for that and figure out how things can be fixed? Are your teachers doing that with students? Are your teachers blaming the students for not having the homework done? Or, are your teachers stepping back, and looking, and going, “Hmm. I’m going to take 100% responsibility for this. What could I have done to make sure that that student got the homework done? Maybe I didn’t explain the assignment very well. Maybe I didn’t give them enough time to do it or the resources to do it.” I don’t know but you got to look. As part of taking 100% responsibility is it allows you then to fix the problems and only by fixing the problems do things get better, and we can only do that if we take 100% responsibility for everything that’s happening to us even when it’s hard to do, quite frankly, especially when it’s hard to do. If everything was easy, we would all have everything we wanted.

It’s those of us that are willing to take the choices, and the decisions, and the actions when they’re not the easiest that actually get the greatest results in life and in our businesses also.

This has been Devin Murray. That is one of The Success Principles. I would love it if you take that and share The Success Principles. I can also come in and teach more of these. You will be finding this. I will every so often pop one of these onto the marketing podcast and marketing blog that I do. If you like more, feel free to give me a call and maybe I can come in and teach you some more. If you’re really liking this, I can go and add more of these once every couple of weeks.

Anyways, this has been Devin Murray with attractmorefamilies.com, your source for private and independent school marketing ideas and help and also The Success Principles. Take care and have a tremendous week.

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