It's helpful to make a distinction between accountability and responsibility. Accountability is an agreement to be held to account for some result. Responsibility is a feeling of ownership. You can assign accountability to yourself and others, but responsibility can only be self generated. Responsibility means to completely own - rather than deny, blame, or rationalize your situation. Think of the cause-effect equation. Instead of seeing yourself as the effect and something else as the cause, responsibility means seeing yourself as both cause and effect for your situation. Therefore, develop your ability to respond.