It’s impossible to build your power until you accept total responsibility for your life. It’s certainly possible to give up control, but final accountability always rests with you. You can’t duck or dodge that, no matter how hard you try. If your body is out of shape, you’re the one who’s out of breath after climbing the stairs. If your credit cards are maxed out, you’re the one who must deal with the debt. If you don’t like your job, you’re the one who must suffer through your work each day.
Your experience is unquestionably your own. I (Steve Pavlina) can discuss your life with you. I can empathize with your situation, and I can do my best to help you. But afterward I can go home to my own life and leave yours behind. You never have that luxury.
If you try to deny or escape the burden of responsibility, it will only come back to haunt you later. You can let yourself go and slack off in your career, eat lots of junk food, and yell at your family, but the mess you create will be yours to experience. The sooner you recognize that total responsibility is inescapable, the better off you’ll be.
When you were a child, others may have assumed some responsibility for your well-being, yet you and you alone must still deal with the results. Whether you were raised by loving and attentive parents or angry alcoholics, the burden of responsibility for your life now rests squarely on your shoulders. That may seem completely unfair, especially if you didn’t have much control over your childhood experiences, but such are the vicissitudes of life.
It’s entirely pointless to blame God, your parents, the government, or anyone else for your lot in life. Blame can only make you powerless. It doesn’t matter who contributed to your current situation—all that matters is that you must live with it. No amount of blame can make that burden any easier.
I learned one of the most powerful lessons of my life after being arrested for felony grand theft at age 19. For several days as I sat in jail, all I could do was think about how I got there. At some point I realized that I’d put myself in that cell: I was in jail because I failed to wield conscious control over my life. In that moment, I finally accepted complete responsibility for my life. It still took me years to fully recover from the bad decisions I’d made, but knowing that I was responsible made it possible for me to build a new life for myself—a life of my own choosing.
No one is coming to rescue you. No one will hand you the career of your dreams, and no one will solve your relationship problems. No one will lose the extra fat on your body. If you don’t proactively solve your own problems, they’ll never be solved.
If you want different results, you must go out and create them yourself. Accepting full responsibility for your life means being willing to do what’s necessary to create the outcome you want. You must be willing to pay the price to meet your needs and fulfill your desires. You must actively make your life happen instead of passively letting it play out. You’ll surely make mistakes along the way, but you must never give up on yourself.
The bright side is that while accepting total responsibility can be very challenging, it isn’t untenable. You may not have had much control over your results thus far, but the commitment to develop your power gives you the opportunity to finally create a life of your choosing. Your human will is far stronger than any obstacle in your path. You’ll surely encounter challenges and setbacks while pursuing worthwhile goals, but if you simply persist in your willingness to pay the price, you’ll eventually succeed.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina