TAKE 100% RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself.
If you want to succeed in your life, you have to be brave and stay out of your comfort zone to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings — Everything!!
Of course this not easy.
In fact, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life we don’t like. We blame our parents, our bosses, our friends, our coworkers, our spouse, the weather, the economy, the government, our astrological chart, our lack of money — anyone or anything we can pin the blame on. We never want to look at where the real problem is — ourselves.
It is time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers to why you haven’t created the life and results you want, for it is you who creates the quality of the life you lead and the results you produce.
It’s You!! — no one else!
It’s time for us to ask a simple question to ourselves
“Have you ever blamed anyone for any circumstance in your life? Have you ever complained about anything?”
If you answer “Yes”. That means you don’t take one hundred percent responsibility for your life. Taking 100% responsibility means you acknowledge that you create everything that happens to you. It means you understand that you are the cause of all of your experiences.
If you really want to be successful, and I know you DO!
Then you will have to give up blaming and complaining and start to take total responsibility for your life — that means all your results, both successes and failures. That is the prerequisite for creating a life of success. It is only by acknowledging that you have created everything up until now that you can take charge of creating the future you want.
If you want to create the life of your dreams, then you are going to give up all your excuses, all your victim stories, all the reasons why you can’t and why you haven’t up until now, and all your blaming of outside circumstances. You have to give them all up forever.
The formula to take 100% responsibility:
E + R = O
(Event + Response = Outcome)
The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life (whether it is
success or failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life.
IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR OUTCOMES, CHANGE YOUR RESPONSES
Let’s look at some examples:
An earthquake happened in Los Angeles. Two days later, a CNN reporter interviewed people commuting to work. The earthquake had damaged one of the main freeways leading into the city. Traffic was at a standstill, and what was normally a 1-hour drive had become a 2- or 3-hour drive.
The CNN reporter knocked on the window of one of the cars stuck in the traffic and asked the driver how he was doing.
He responded angrily, “I hate California. First, there were fires, then floods, and now an earthquake! No matter what time I leave in the morning, I’m going to be late for work. This sucks!”
Then the reporter knocked on the window of the car behind him and asked the second driver the same question. This driver was all smiles. He replied, “It’s no problem. I left my house at five AM. I don’t think under the circumstances my boss can ask for more than that. I have lots of music and my Spanish-language lessons with me. I’ve got my cell phone. I have coffee in a thermos, my lunch — I even brought a book to read. So I’m fine.”
Now, if the earthquake or the traffic (the event) were really the deciding variables, then everyone should have been angry. But everyone wasn’t. It was their individual response to the traffic that gave them their particular outcome. It was thinking negative thoughts or thinking positive thoughts, leaving the house prepared or leaving the house unprepared that made the difference. It was all a matter of attitude and behavior that created their completely different experiences.
EVERYTHING YOU EXPERIENCE TODAY IS THE RESULT OF CHOICES YOU HAVE MADE IN THE PAST
Everything you experience in life — both internally and externally — is the
result of how you have responded to a previous event.
Event: You are given a $400 bonus.
Response: You spend it on a night on the town with friends.
Outcome: You are broke.
Event: You are given a $400 bonus.
Response: You invest it in your mutual fund.
Outcome: You have an increased net worth.
You have control over only three things in your life — the thoughts you think, the images you visualize, and the actions you take (your behavior). How you use these three things determines everything you experience. If you don’t like what you are producing and experiencing, you have to change your responses. Change your negative thoughts to positive ones. Change what you daydream about. Change your habits. Change what you read. Change your friends. Change how you talk to yourself and others.
IF YOU KEEP ON DOING WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE, YOU’LL KEEP ON GETTING WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS GOT
The day you change your responses is the day your life will begin to get better! If what you are currently doing would produce the “more” and “better” that you are seeking in life, the more and better would have already shown up! If you want something different, you are going to have to do something different!
This is the first chapter of “The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” book.
Thank you so much for reading this article. I hope this gives something positive for you to bring to your life.
Have a nice day!
