Creating a life where you’re one hundred percent responsible for the choices you make is not a burden it is a gift. People tend to conflate responsibility with fault and or blame? The former deals with the present choice at hand and the latter primarily relates to the past. I have found that the essence of most self-improvement literature is to get us to think about the choices we are making and whether they line up with our values and the life we desire.
Taking responsibility for the quality of our life experience may seem like we are somehow letting people off the hook for inappropriate behaviors. On the contrary, it is not. The word responsibility simply means our ability to respond in the moment to what is happening. This is not to be confused with reacting, which is usually an irrational choice our brain makes because it perceives someone or something in the environment to be a threat to our survival.
For example, someone abandons a baby at your door. In a situation like this, you have a plethora of choices. You could choose to leave the baby and let it starve to death or you could call the local police to rescue the baby. Both options are a choice you are now responsible for making. You certainly aren’t to blame for the baby being left at your door, but you are now responsible for doing something about it. It is also still a choice if you do nothing. Many people don’t realize that not deciding is still a decision.
When I learned the power of taking responsibility for the quality of my life choices, it liberated me and taught me how to honor myself with the choices I get to make. It allowed me to see that I cannot control external factors that occur in my life, the good or the bad, but I had a choice in how I interpret, made meaning and dealt with the emotions of those circumstances.
Don’t take my word for it. Run your own experiment. Practice taking responsibility for the choices in your life and watch the peace that will unfold for you as well. As a gentle reminder, any self-improvement practice I promote is always grounded in self-love and acceptance. I for one, have had to forgive myself a thousand times and calm the mental chatter with antidotes that affirm myself that “in life there is no perfection only progress”.
Aristotle wrote, “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”. My modern interpretation of this is what I call emotional intelligence, which is the ability to honestly access the good, the bad and the downright ugly without applying a sticker of negative self-judgment and permanency to the Self. It’s OK, to re-cog-nize a weak aspect of your personality and make the empowered choice to do something positive to change it.
I have seen those I love emotionally stuck, myself included, over situations that are genuinely not our fault but left us victimized and stuck in the past. There wasn’t anyone teaching us the importance of knowing that we are all doing the very best we can with the information we have at the time. As you apply self-responsibility in your life, you begin to see each day as a new opportunity to begin again. Every day becomes your birthday and a chance to celebrate the beauty of your life.
OneLove
Tamara Speid is a heart-centered revolutionary, guide, and experience artist devoted to empowering you to awaken from the mindset of struggle by experiencing a life filled with beauty. Follow Tamara on IG @thespeidexperience or visit her online at www.thespeidexperience.com
