You Are Responsible for Your Life (Part 2)

The vast majority of people who I have ever counseled, all blamed something or someone else for their misfortune. This problem is at the very core of human nature; blame someone else. Even in the Garden of Eden after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam blamed Eve in front of God even though he was just as culpable as she was.

How many times have you heard someone who was going through a divorce describe his or her mate as the vile, unfair, vicious cause of all the misery in their life? Whether it is a failing friendship, a dysfunctional life, or unfulfilled dreams, people try to escape accountability by blaming others. These are emotionally charged situations and once anger or hurt enters into the mix, a person’s objectivity becomes clouded. While they are passionately blaming someone else, their skills of self-diagnosis simply fall apart.

You can never fix your problems by blaming someone else. Your best chance at getting better is to stop doing that right now. It huts to admit the truth. You’re the one who is messing up, if anybody is. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner your life gets better. Let’s face it. No matter who you want to blame:

You made the decision…. You said the words… You copped the attitude…. You bought it…. You signed on the dotted line…. You jumped ship…. You bought it on your credit card…. You listened to what they had to say…. You stuck your nose in someone else’s business… You choose the feelings… You quit…. You walked away… You sold out your dreams… You disobeyed… You took the job… You married him… You married her…. You said yes… You said no… You ate it… You smoked it… You snorted it… You inhaled it… You drank it… You believed it…. You started it… You let him come back…. You let her come back… You settled for it… You let them talk you into it… And you were the one that wanted that stupid cat!

Now own it. All of it.

If you believe that your present state of affairs is someone else’s fault, then you will spend all your time trying to fix or correct someone else instead of yourself! You will never get better by blaming someone else for your own cause-and-effect. You create your own experience by the choices you make every day. This choice-making creates your experience, because each choice has a consequence:

• When you choose the behavior, you choose the consequence
• When you choose the thoughts, you choose the consequence
  
  

Simply put, when you play, you pay. Whatever choices you make in this world, those choices have results. Those results accumulate over time to define your experience and shape the person you become. No one else does this. You do this.

We may be around other people throughout the day, but our most active and consistent dialogue is the conversation that we have with ourselves. We may be with ten different people throughout a given day, but we are with ourselves all day, every day. We talk to ourselves and program ourselves more than anybody else in our life combined. That internal conversation runs in a continuous loop – over and over again in our minds. If it is a negative conversation, it is going to result in negative experiences. In short, we create our experience by the choices we make because our choices have consequences.