THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF‐RESPONSIBILITY is becoming increasingly important in a time when others are to blame. In both professional and personal life, there are situations where others are to blame for mistakes.

In every company, one person, or a few people are in charge. It should go without saying for business owners that they are responsible for every project outcome. The larger the company, the more likely it is that unsuccessful projects will end up being just a matter of saving one's neck. The partner of a company blames his managers, or even customers (?) for the failure without realizing that perhaps they put together the wrong team, the tasks were not distributed properly, or the project control did not work.

Much worse, however, is often the complaining at all levels in the company and in private life and the proclamation of one's own helplessness.

An employee who rebels against their superior must expect the possibility of not being considered in the next career round. A partner who wins all engagements by competing on low prices should not be surprised about negative contribution margins and possibly lower partner compensation. A person who does not spend time with their life partner and their children must not be surprised if these people distance themselves.

This applies to both professional and personal life. The answers to these questions are important at every stage of life.

As an entry‐level professional, most of the time we receive directions from others. As we advance in our career, we move from being the recipient of instructions to being the person who gives instructions. Those who are at the top of the company only give instructions and usually no longer receive instructions from colleagues. Many times, people do not go through these career phases with an awareness that would be necessary to successfully lead themselves and others. Too often, behavioral patterns and role models are unconsciously adopted by superiors, and the professional does not realize that at the top of their career they are often only a reflection of their former superiors.

Therefore, the psychological knowledge of the following regularities is particularly important.

LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

Everything has a reason, and every effect has its specific cause. Aristotle believed that we live in a world governed by laws and not by chance. He explained that there is a reason for everything, whether it is known to us, or not. There are one, or more causes for every effect. Every cause, or action has some effect. We do not always recognize the cause.

Based on this premise, success is no coincidence! Success has nothing to do with luck. Everything has a reason. However, this reason is not always apparent to everyone. “You reap what you sow” is a well‐known saying from the Bible. Newton's third law, also known as the principle of interaction, the principle of counteraction, or the principle of reaction (“actio equals reactio”), states that for every action there is an equal and an opposite reaction.

Thoughts are causes and circumstances are effects. By changing the way you think, you change your life. All it takes is making a decision. You become what you think most of the time. What you feel and how you react is not determined by what happens, but by how you think about it. It is your inner world that is responsible for the conditions of your life. You yourself determine your feelings and behaviors by the way you view your environment and how you think about the things that happen to you.

For professionals, the law of cause and effect is relevant. If an ICS does not work, there is a risk that things will go wrong in the company and be incorrectly reflected in accounting. Lawyers know that missed deadlines lead to the rejection of requests at court. The law of cause and effect does not only apply to these easily understandable facts but to one's own management as well as to the management of others that finds its way into our private lives.

LAW OF FAITH

What we believe deep in our hearts becomes reality. We believe not what we see, but what we already believe. We reject information that contradicts our already established opinions, regardless of whether our beliefs – or even prejudices – are based on fact or fantasy.

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can, or think you can't – you are right.”

Each of us has certain beliefs, or belief systems that are linked closely to our personal values. These belief systems make up several sets of beliefs. It's what we think about ourselves, reality, or the world. They determine our expectations. They indicate what we believe to be true and what we believe we can achieve. They are our inner beliefs.

Many of the thoughts we think are beliefs. Soliloquies are often based on beliefs, although we might not be aware of it. What we tend to think about ourselves and believe about life comes from our habitual thought patterns. However, we are not born with these beliefs and thought patterns. They are often formed in childhood and remain with us throughout our lives unless we replace them with others, be they positive, or negative. Negative beliefs often limit us, make us doubt ourselves, and prevent success. Positive beliefs, on the other hand, can give us energy and motivation. They can help in overcoming challenges and in achieving our goals. Beliefs are formed through upbringing as well as through our observations and experiences.

The effect of beliefs was discovered by the French pharmacist Emile Coué at the beginning of the 20th century. He told his patients that they would surely get well very quickly with a particular medicine. His patients were also told to recite the following sentence 25 times a day, morning, noon, and night: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

From this, Coué developed the doctrine of autosuggestion. Nikolaus B. Enkelmann developed 14 basic laws of life development. In these basic laws, faith and positive thoughts are at the center of personality development. Enkelmann perfected the teaching of autosuggestion and expanded it to include mental training. The fourth basic law of life development is: “The subconscious mind – the construction site of life and the working space of the soul – has the tendency to realize every thought.”

Every thought has the tendency to become a reality. Beliefs govern our daily lives because they reflect our beliefs, attitudes, and faith. We think countless thoughts every day. Of these, as a rule, only a few thoughts are positive and uplifting. Far more negative thoughts pass through our brains, often given additional weight via negative media coverage. In addition, we have a multitude of insignificant, neutral, and fleeting thoughts. When we memorize thoughts, it can have far‐reaching consequences. First, a recurring thought becomes familiar to us until it becomes an inner conviction. Positive and negative actions can arise from this.

A Harvard University study found that each adolescent hears about 180,000 such negative suggestions by age 18. These suggestions can become beliefs through their frequent repetition. In this respect, what and how we say something is always important. This is true with our co‐workers as well as with our family members and friends. If you want to do something good for those around you, always suggest positive beliefs to them.

In the mental training tool, the topic of beliefs is covered in more detail.

LAW OF EXPECTATIONS

Whatever you expect with certainty becomes your self‐fulfilling prophecy. You always have the function of a fortune teller in your life. Things become the way you think and speak about them. If you are convinced that good things will happen, they normally will. But if you expect negative things, there is a high probability that you will be right in this case as well.

Your expectations not only influence you, but also the people around you. Your attitude toward people and certain situations is essentially shaped by what you expect. In the 1960s, Robert Rosenthal and Leonore Jacobson discovered the Pygmalion effect as part of a research project. In this experiment, two school classes were randomly put together with other students. One teacher was told at the beginning of the school year that his class contained only highly talented students. The other teacher was told that there were only students in this class who were less gifted. At the end of the year, it was found that the class with the supposedly highly gifted students did significantly better than the class with the less gifted. Although there are now numerous studies that place restrictions on the age of the children in each class and the pedagogical skills of the teachers, the Pygmalion effect is recognized and established. According to this, the teacher's expectation of the students' abilities plays a crucial role in their learning success. Certainly, we all remember teachers who were either unaware of the Pygmalion Effect, or grossly disregarded it.

But what about our expectations of co‐workers, or those close to us? Do we always expect the best from people, or certain situations? It doesn't take a psychology degree to realize that there are a multitude of self‐fulfilling prophecies in each person's past. Oftentimes, sentences such as “I had a hunch,” “I knew this would happen,” or “If only I had listened to my gut/feeling” are uttered. The principle known as “self‐fulfilling prophecy” is obviously known to many, but few people act accordingly.

LAW OF ATTRACTION

You are a living magnet. This means that in your life you will inevitably attract those people, situations, and circumstances that fit your predominant thoughts. You attract everything in your life through your mindset and personality. You can change your life by changing your mindset. You have most likely heard the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

The law of attraction also shows up in a completely different form. Have you ever thought intensely about a person and a few minutes later this person called, or you ran into them? Or has it ever happened to you that your counterpart yawns and you automatically have to yawn too? Or someone smiles at you, and you smile back without thinking? The research of mirror neurons explains such behavior. Mirror neurons are a resonance system in the brain that makes other people's feelings and moods resonate in the receiver. What is unique about these neurons is that they already send out signals when someone merely observes an action. The nerve cells react in exactly the same way as if you had performed what you saw yourself. The best comparison comes from playing music: When we pluck a guitar string, we also make the other strings of the instrument vibrate; we create a resonance. To feel compassion, joy, but also pain, is only possible in this way.

Thoughts are forces. We attract into our life what we think about most of the time. If we want to become successful, it is best to surround ourselves with successful people.

LAW OF CORRESPONDENCE

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world and corresponds to your prevailing thought patterns. Since our outer world is in every way a reflection of our inner world, we often encounter only that which corresponds to our innermost beliefs.

If we want to change, we have to start inside our thinking. Our relationships always reflect the personality we are inside. Our attitudes, our health, and our material conditions are reflections of how we think in these areas. “Nothing changes unless I change,” Nikolaus B. Enkelmann, a famous German personality trainer, says in his seminars. There is only one thing in the world that you can really control: That is your own thinking. By taking control of your thinking, you get control of all other aspects of your life. By thinking about and talking about only the things you want, and by refusing to talk, or think about things you don't want, you become the architect of your own destiny.

There are two central life decisions of every human being. In my opinion, they are the most important decisions you will make in your life:

• The choice of profession.
• The choice of a life partner.

Both decisions will have a lasting impact on your life and are not easily reversible. When it comes to choosing a profession, the vast majority of readers of this book have already made up their minds. You may be a CPA, or a lawyer, or you may be on your way to becoming a professional. This decision was probably well‐considered in light of the difficulty of the professional exams. After passing the professional exam, some auditors move to an industrial, or service company, to a bank, or an insurance company. Then the professional exam was a means to an end and the profession not a vocation or calling. Regarding the second important life decision, the choice of a life partner, I will present a valuable tool in Chapter 17.

Almost every decision is associated with more or less significant risks. The principle of self‐responsibility should help you become aware that with almost every decision, decisions in favor of alternatives would also have been possible. So, if you have decided in favor of something, you have thereby also immanently rejected the alternatives.

I advocate elevating the principle of self‐responsibility to a maxim of life. This applies to both professional and private life. I am not suggesting that you should slip into a victim role. Assume responsibility only for what you are in fact responsible for. It is often mistakenly assumed that you are at a certain point in your life only because you made “right” or “wrong” decisions before. Warren Buffett once said, “You have to do very few things right in life as long as you don't do too many wrong.”