Tag Archives: be responsible.

22

Don’t Make Excuses

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One of the lessons we learn early on in life is how to make an excuse for something. We can find the most plausible excuse to justify poor behavior, poor performance, or even unethical actions. Learning to make excuses at the moment seems like a way to justify ourselves and our behavior to the world. It means that we are OK. We would have done whatever was expected if the excuse didn’t happen. Excuses are the first step in building a victim’s mentality toward life. You are not in charge; you are in reaction to whatever you face. This choice is a state of mind and will go a long way in determining the success you experience in finances, relationships, or any other area of your life. Learn not to accept a plausible excuse and accept responsibility for your situation. When you do this, you have the power to change things and create what you want in your life.

Responsibility Is Mandatory

There is always a choice when something happens to either make an excuse or accept responsibility for the situation. Accept responsibility for the situation. Making an excuse states to the world takes away all of your power and gives it to whatever excuse we are using. Even if there is a good reason for something, accept responsibility. This attitude puts all the power in your hands and will lead you to take manageable actions to counteract, correct, or rectify the challenge.

We learn early in life to find the plausible excuses that people will accept without question. An illness, a death in the family, the dog ate my homework, or whatever worked. Once you accept this victim mentality, you will start to use it more and more. Excuses seem like an easy option on the surface, but they are not. Each reason we use weakens us a bit, to ourselves and everyone we deal with. One excuse will lead to another and another, and soon you are a powerless victim for all of your life. Look at your life; at work, you find a weakness in a society where you look for excuses. Where you accept responsibility, there is a strength.

Take Manageable Actions Every Day

That strength comes in the form of manageable actions. These are steps available to you every day. Rather than making excuses, you accept responsibility for where you are on this day. That responsibility gives you a chance to take any action to change whatever you are facing and turn the day into more of what you want it to be. There is always something you can do to help alleviate suffering in the simplest terms.

The sooner you decide to take responsibility and manageable actions toward correcting the situation, the better you will handle it. An example would be running out of money, rather than waiting until you have no money left, taking a manageable action, and finding another income stream to help you make ends meet. Rather than blame the economy, a job you were fired from, the world in general, or anything else, accept responsibility for your predicament and find a way out.

Take Control and Ditch the Excuses Permanently

So it will be up to you in the end if you choose to allow excuses to rule your life or if you are going to accept responsibility for where you are and what you do, no matter what, and take action toward meeting the challenges you face. Taking action is claiming power in your life. Making excuses is giving your power away to whatever you give your excuses to. At the end of it all, nobody but you is responsible for your situation, which is reassuring. Taking action is your power of change, and there is always some action you can take. You may not like it, but you can make your life whatever you would like it to be.

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” ― Anne Frank.

“The man who passes sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones.

“In the long run, we shape our lives and ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt.

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

 

22

The Positive Turn

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If you are wondering what your thoughts and emotions have led you to in life, take a moment and look at your life and honestly evaluate your circumstances. Nothing will provide a clearer picture. The events of your life are a living, breathing display of how you think and what you believe about yourself.  We make choices every day about what exactly we “deserve” to experience every day, and the accumulative effect of these choices is our reality.  So if you are working a job you are not wild about, that is a result of your preferences. Nobody else forced you into it. You chose it for some reason. The status of your relationships in all areas of your life results from the decisions you have made based on your beliefs about life and reality. That is a fact, and if you want to change things, you need to look at the ideas that led to your thoughts and discard the ones that are leading you in a negative direction. Here are a few thoughts to move in a positive direction. There is success in everyone. The potential for joy in every day and all of it is really up to us.

Take Responsibility

The first and only place to look in answer to: “Why am I in this situation?” or “How did this happen?” is to look in the mirror and accept your responsibility for all of your life situations.  You can cry and complain about this happening or wallow over the sadness that somebody else hurt you. That is a fact; people will hurt others, be callous, uncaring, and take advantage of others.  It happens to everyone in life, but you are responsible for your reaction to everything. You are responsible.

It is easy to slip into the role of a victim and feel sorry for yourself and think about how you couldn’t help what happened because someone else made the choices. That is a very slippery slope, and it slips in more areas once you allow responsibility to fall to something or someone else. The best choice we can make is to take complete responsibility for our lives and situations, and that gives us all the power to create whatever future we want.  You are responsible for your past and your future.

Grow and Take Action

You have the opportunity in every moment of every day to seize that experience and make it something powerful and productive. Too often, I have seen myself and others sit comfortably in the virtual recliner of routine behavior. If you dream of doing something, set your intention to create it, and then take at least a small action toward developing it. In action, there is a truth. It will tell you what will work and what you need to do differently, but it will always lead you toward your reality and the accomplishment of your goals and dreams.

Action will help you gain more wisdom regarding what you want, what will make you happy, and what might not. Learning is gaining knowledge and can come to you from books, videos, classes, other people, time spent in nature, or many different sources.  Nothing will lead you to wisdom if you don’t seek it, and nothing can stop you from finding it if you look for it. So make an effort to find the knowledge available to you every day, and then look for ways you can share what you have learned with the rest of the world. To receive is essential, but to give is the legacy of your life. Make it a positive one.

Choose a Happy Destiny

It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in destiny or not; you have an opportunity in your short life to create something magnificently fabulous or something tragically awful, or something anywhere in between. It is up to you to look at your heart and see what gifts you have to fine-tune and share with the world. Your destiny will be assured once you have listened to that voice within. We are all born with something to give, and then life covers it up through programming and expectations.  The journey to find it is up to you.

Often, the simple thought and feeling of genuine gratitude will guide you back to your true self. Be grateful for what you have in life, and more will come your way. That is what seems always to happen. Have a thankful spirit, and that choice will bring happiness into your life. Grateful people are still happy, and that choice can be yours now. No matter what your situation is right now, there is something to be thankful for, and through gratitude, a small glimmer of joy will enter your life whether you want it to or not. Look for it, create it, and move more positive feelings into your life.

Forgive

Another absolute power we all have is brought to us through forgiveness. It doesn’t mean you condone any poor behavior, and it doesn’t mean you are OK with bad things happening to you, but it means you are no longer letting something that happened in the past define you today.  Refer back to responsibility. You are the only one that can choose to forgive someone and all they do or don’t do. Holding on to anger, hate, fear, or whatever negative emotion you perceive from an event will harm you. These are released through forgiveness. Decide to give heartfelt and honest forgiveness to all those in your life.

The most important person you can forgive is yourself. Deep down, we hold anger toward ourselves for all things that occur in our lives.  Some see taking responsibility for their life this way.  Looking at the past is an impossible game because you can’t change anything that happened, and if you could have done better or behaved differently, you certainly would have.  So to use your past as a punishment for your experiences today is our choice.  And it can be released by only looking into our hearts and forgiving the people who hurt us and, most importantly ourselves. A forgiving spirit will guide you to greatness and a life without fear.

Persist Always

Finally, it is vital to develop and maintain a practice of persistence in your life. Some will start many things and have a high energy level initially but will lose their momentum at the first challenge they face and move on to something else. Persist without exception.  Nothing ever takes the place of persistence. It is a trait that will lead to success in all areas of life. Keep on trying. Get knocked down eight times, get up nine, and trim will be able to stop you.  It is a great faith in yourself that will allow you to be persistent in your pursuit of a career, health, a relationship, or anything else you are shooting for. Keep on trying, and don’t give up because it gets difficult or you have an initial setback. Those challenges are sometimes needed to teach you the information you need. Persistence is power and will always lead you in a positive direction.

“The truth I know for sure is that if something feels good and makes you happy on the inside, you’re probably moving in the right direction.”- Jacqui Holland

“Surround yourself with people who talk about ideas and visions of positivity and do not waste time talking about other people.” 

 

22

Take Action

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Taking Action

Taking Action
Take action, there is no telling what will happen, but you know what will happen if you do nothing.

Many things have stopped people from taking action in life. There are dreams that people have wanted to chase that they thought about but left untested because taking action appeared just a little bit too scary or confusing. The lesson learned was clear that no matter what a person is dreaming of accomplishing or experiencing, it can only be realized by implementing action to do the thing and see what happens.

Each day, thousands of people look at their lives and have big dreams about what they would like to do, but the lack of action leaves these things in the fog of thought and out of the clarity of reality. Choosing to do things that are a part of that dream or bring that dream to life will allow you to realize your dream.

Action Time

Action can be taken at any time and will provide those who take it with many adventures and exciting experiences in life. Inventions will be invented, books will be written, and knowledge will be gained as soon as you decide to take action must happen. The best thing about it is that anyone, as far as I know, is capable of doing it. If you have been hesitant or fearful, taking action is the cure. Fear is erased with action because then, at least you know.

Many people can do great things and think great thoughts about how the world should be run or different businesses. All possess the capacity to take action on those thoughts and create them in this reality, yet very few do this.

Please Don’t Leave it for someone else.

Too often, we want to leave the chores to somebody else and conveniently forget that we are We are what we dosomebody else and can do everything. Why not us? Why don’t we take action and make the change? First, in our own lives and then to the benefit of others.

Gandhi was just a man living in India who saw racial injustice and remote control. He specialized in organizing non-violent protests that raised awareness of the cause and won the support of the world. Gandhi has been one of the most often quoted human beings from the 20th Century, and one of my favorites is, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Meaning that if you want something to be different, then act like that yourself.

Some will read this and think that they don’t want to change the world or that they don’t want to lead a revolution. That is fine. Not everyone was cut out for that type of life, but is anyone too busy or too meek to institute an action in their lives that will provide a positive

small actions define the world you live in
These define your world

change?

Taking Action of Kindness

One of the most significant actions that a person can take is to perform an act of kindness. This positive feeling doesn’t have to cost money, and it doesn’t even have to take a lot of time. It merely has to be kind and thoughtful. Hello, and a smile to someone who feels like nobody cares can buoy their soul for an entire day. Giving someone a sincere compliment can make them feel better about how things are going. All of these acts, which are pretty small in the massive scheme of things, can be done by you every day. And without you, they will remain undone. The person who receives the compliment will continue to be sad, the person who needs a smile will be going without that human comfort, and your small actions can make a massive difference in someone else’s life.

When you move through your day and you see an opportunity to make the world a little better place, you can be the change and start taking action. In the most severe cases, one small, seemingly trivial act of kindness could save a life or, at the very least, make the experience a lot more pleasant for everyone you come in contact with but most importantly for yourself. It all begins with taking action.

  • “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” ~ Joe Sabah
    “Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” ~ David Lloyd George
  • “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle“
  • The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterward says according to his action.” ~ Confucius
    • “The superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his actions.” ~ Confucius
    • “You cannot score a goal when you are sitting on the bench. To do so, you have to dress up and enter the game.” ~ Israelmore Ayivor

21

Consequence

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Every action has a reaction and a consequence.

All you experience in life is a result of the actions that you have taken. It is a bad habit we develop excuses to justify unfortunate situations faced in our experience and the circumstances we are in. Apologies are only going to hold you back. Accepting responsibility is always the best answer.  Even if you honestly feel that things are out of your control, taking responsibility for where you are is the best mindset to adopt.

Otherwise, you are always looking to accept the mentality of the victim.  We all have choices every day, and each decision we make in thought, word, or action will affect our lives.  Better to be favorable than unfavorable. In a nutshell, it is essential to understand that all actions we take will affect our experience.  Always without exception.

The Energy of Life

All things are energy. Energy can’t be created nor destroyed; it is only transformed.  In your life, the actions you choose to take will influence the power around you.  All of the decisions that we make in our thoughts become our words and our actions.  The ability associated with these things is dictated by the tenor and tone of our dreams.  Positive reviews create positive words and actions. This process leads to positive energy. The same is true for negative energy as well. Your thoughts dictate it.

There is energy all around you all the time. If you want to test this cause and effect law on point, spend time with an intensely negative person.  Someone who spends their time complaining and gossiping about other people will bring an opposing force to their lives that will diffuse into yours if you spend a lot of time with them.   The same is true of someone positive in thought and action; they will create positive, good energy around you that you will take with you.  The moral of this cause and effect moment is to look for the positive people in life, choose to spend time with them and avoid negative people.

Leave Excuses Behind

As children, we face many situations where we are trying to avoid punishment for our actions.  Not doing homework, doing something a little dangerous, or doing anything against our parent’s wishes could lead to trouble and punishment. We learn to manipulate with excuses from an early age.  Once we find the most plausible explanation that everyone accepts, we use it again and again.  It could be about our health, a mental issue, or just a lack of talent.  Once you agree with an excuse, you have pushed responsibility off.  So as you might have gained the momentary reward of not being punished or manipulating a situation in your favor, the effect of that is you will start to create and accept excuses in all areas of your life.

The effects of excuse-making take away your power.  You will now be looking for reasons outside of yourself for everything that happens rather than looking at yourself and accepting responsibility for where you are and taking actions to get you where you want to be.  The effect of taking responsibility is a personal power that will help propel you toward whatever you want to accomplish. You can take actions that will affect your life and the world, which can happen every second of every day. Leave the excuses behind and accept responsibility whenever you can in life, and be empowered with what you can accomplish.

Be a Positive Effect

In your own choices in life, be a positive force in the world.  Focus on what you think, say, and do, in particular when it comes to how you deal with other people. Be accepting of those with different views and forgive those you have perceived to have wronged you. Give to those less fortunate than you.  Be a cause that has a positive effect on the world.  Be grateful for what you have and accepting of all good things entering your life. This, to me, is the best way to understand the law of cause and effect and make it a positive thing for your life and the world. 

“Shallow men believe in luck or circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly: the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Nobody ever did, or ever will escape the consequences of his choices.” – Alfred A. Montapert.

 

21

Playing It

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Play- engage in an activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.

playLife often seems to be a somber and practical experience, making people miss the truth behind it. Life is a game, and once you accept that and learn how to play it, it will become a much more enjoyable and recreational experience.  Like any game, there are challenges to overcome and strategies to implement.  Most people never realize this is the case. They spend their life soberly moving from one square to the next,  regretting moves they made in the past or fretting over challenges that may come tomorrow.  Life is a game that is played in the now because that is all you are guaranteed.  Never forget to play with passion as you move through life, and it starts with an awareness of this game happening right under your nose, with your thoughts, words, and actions.  

Enjoy The Game

We are all born into this game, I don’t think we asked for it,  but here we are.  Like all games, you can see players using different strategies to get maximum enjoyment with minimal effort.  Some play a social game as they move around the board, and others choose to be the lone wolf.  All of us are trying Playto move through the board and find the prize of peace and contentment. It seems that the players that enjoy every experience, every move are the ones that benefit the most.

There are many truths to the game of life. Who you choose to play with will determine how well you play and how much you enjoy the experience. Some have the intention of not wanting any part of the game.  These negative souls see every changing move as a problem and a potential for pain. Avoid these players at all costs because they will make the game miserable for everyone they contact in their sport.  Spend your time with people who love the game, and it will be easy to enjoy too.

Limits to Avoid

In the game of life, there are some things to avoid as you play.  One of the most important is to avoid worrying about what other people think of your moves around the board. They may tell you that you look silly or that your playstrategy will never work, or they may say they have a better plan.  Let these reservations of others slide right off you. You are the only person who can play your game, and life provides you with many lessons that will assist you in reaching the goals of happiness and contentment.  Anyone being critical of your play is probably sliding backward themselves or can’t seek the imagination it takes to move forward. Avoid listening to what others think of you. The responsibility for your play lies with you alone.

The second thing to avoid is becoming too confident in the way you play.  Life has many penalties for overconfidence, and none of them are pleasant. Be assured, but never stop being grateful for where you are and what you have in this game. That will keep you grounded and avoid the big falls that pride can bring.  You will never figure the whole match out; nobody does.  But you can learn through playing to the end all that you need to know. Gratitude is an essential fuel for the game, play it consistently and generously, and it will take you a long way.

Finally, avoid fear as you move around the game. It is natural if you are in a “good” spot on the board to stay there. But life is a running game and never stands still; one of the specific rules is that you have to keep moving and changing. Change is life, and accepting change is accepting life.   Some call this scary. Others call this opportunity.  Call it a chance because it doesn’t matter if you like it or not; that is what will happen. Things will change, and you will have to roll the dice again or spin the wheel and take the moves in front of you.  Do not be afraid. Be confident that whatever lies ahead, you will have the ability to play through it and move on to even a better level. Each challenge of the game is an opportunity for growth. Play the game and grow!

Winning the Game

Well, here is the sad truth. There is no winning the game. There is only one playing it.  The choices that you make on the way define your play and will playdetermine the experience you have. The most crucial factor in realizing is that you have a choice. Maybe not with what the game brings you but in how you react to those experiences. These are the most important decisions you can make because they will determine if the skills you have move you forward or backward in the game.  Are you climbing a ladder or sliding down a chute back to where you started?

Try not to play the victim and complain about everything.  All challenges bring with them an opportunity. To be better or accomplish something. If you choose not to take advantage of that because of grief for what has gone or fear of what might come, then take responsibility for it.  Because in the game of life, you are responsible for how you play. You and you alone.

PLAY TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY.  That is winning the game and will allow you to get the most out of it.  We have little control over when it will end but total control over the choices we make while we play. Raise your awareness of the play with your thoughts, words, and actions. Remember, none of us will get out of here alive. 

“Life is a game, and you are the player. As you master the game, so you also create it.” ― Jay Woodman.

“The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds, and words come back to us with astounding accuracy.” ~Florence Scovel Shinn

 

 

 

21

Responsible

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responsibleI have failed to be responsible in many ways throughout my life. I have been selfish, short-sighted, greedy, and petty many times. These experiences have led me to the conclusion that I needed to become responsible for my actions in the world and the energy that surrounded my actions or lack of action.

I am Responsible for My Actions

There were too many times when I didn’t do anything productive in my life. responsibleI spent my time just entertaining myself to get through the day. Watch this, buy that, listen to another thing but ignore the actions you could take that actually provide value and contribute to a better world. As you get older, you start to understand that this game of life we are in does have a time limit, and all of the time you waste on selfish endeavors is permanently passing you by.

You have a responsibility to your life to act. There is a choice of what those actions will look like and what they will accomplish, but there is no choice that you are responsible for the results of your choices. You choose to gossip, understand the negative results that energy will bring to your life. When you choose to treat someone poorly in business, you are choosing to reap the cost of that action in your life.  You are responsible for all of the choices that you make.

Manage Your Time be Responsible

Manage your time wisely, and that means two things to me. First, you realize that time is finite, and every moment that passes is precious and provides an opportunity for you to do something great or do nothing at all. The responsi lepossibility exists for all things, and the person who decides what those things are is you.

Secondly, I think that the game could be over at any moment. One of the things that life doesn’t give you is an expiration date. The game of life could be over today, right now at this moment. Understanding this truly will make a person want to leave nothing undone. There is no guarantee that tomorrow will come, so get done today what you can contribute.  All you can manage really is the moment that you are in.

Don’t Look Back

don't look backThere is no way to go back in time and change the mistakes you have made. As much as you would like to, it isn’t possible. Accept responsibility for your actions by learning from your mistakes and moving forward with all of your experience, and try to make the world a little bit better by doing so. You are responsible for this in your life, and nobody else can help you.

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”- Winston Churchill

“Accepting complete responsibility for your life means that you refuse to make excuses or blame others for anything in your life that you’re not happy about.” – Brian Tracy

“Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.” – Jordan Peterson

“Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home, it’s your responsibility to love it or change it.” – Chuck Palahniuk