Do You Feel Responsible for Your Life?

I have been reading this brilliant book by Jack Canfield "How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" for some time. In this book, Jack Canfield has laid out the 25 principles of success, and to begin with...

Principle #1 - Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life.

Many times I have seen people put the blame on external factors for the disappointments in their life. They put the blame on luck for not having the one golden opportunity to succeed. They put the blame on their spouses for not being supportive and understanding enough when they wish to pursue a new career or investment opportunity. They put the blame on office politics and favouritism for not getting the promotion that they have longed for. They put the blame on their children for occupying their precious time, and so not having the time to pursue any business venture. They put the blame on almost everything under the sun, expect for themselves. I had been guilty of all these too.

"You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself." ~ Jim Rohn.

This basically says that, if you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. Taking 100% responsiblity means you acknowledge that you create everything that happens to you. It means you understand that you are the cause of all your experience. This can be simplified further with this formula below:

E + R = O

(Event + Response = Outcome)

The idea of this formula is that every outcome you experience in life is the result of how you have responded to earlier events in your life.

Can we change the events which are occuring outside of us? Posible, but not likely.

Can we change our response towards the events? Absolutely yes. We can continually change our responses to the events until we get the outcome that we want.

The life you currently live is the result of all of your past thoughts and actions. If you want things to change for the better...

You have to give up blaming.

You have to give up complaining.

You have to start paying attention to the results you produce. Results don't lie.

When you start taking responsibility for your life, that is when you start gaining ownership over your life.

"99% of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses." ~ George Washington Carver.