Taking Responsibility For Your Life's Journey

Accept Personal Responsibility for Setbacks and Successes 

Your life is in your hands. It is up to you to determine your happiness, your satisfaction, your contentment. No one else is in charge. No one else gets the credit. And likewise, no one else is to blame. It is squarely your responsibility. 

In fact, this is at the crux of what we mean Living A Determined Life. 

In fact, as American psychologist Albert Ellis wrote, "The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You can realize that you control your own destiny."

You, and no one else, are responsible for the energy and attitude you bring into every situation, every encounter with other people, and even every room you enter.

As George Bernard Shaw wrote, "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

It is rather fascinating that the last two letters of the word blame are me. Is this just a coincidence? Or is it an indication that taking responsibility for blame ends with me and not someone or something else? Is it a sign that we should each focus blame and responsibility for our circumstances first on ourselves ("me"), rather than assigned and delegated to others, outside circumstances, or factors beyond our control? It is something worth thinking about.

Plus, when you blame others you give up your power to grow.  You give up the power to learn from mistakes. You give up your power to learn new things. And you give up the power to understand your own decision-making process.

Your Project You Life Journey will be made easier when you learn to accept personal responsibility for failures and setbacks, and when you see each and every failure or setback as a learning experience. The importance of this is illustrated by these perspectives:

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts. ~Nikki Giovanni, American poet

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying he is wiser today than he was yesterday. ~Alexander Pope, English poet

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. ~Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else. ~John Burroughs, American naturalist and essayist

When you encounter pain, frustration, disappointment and all of the other emotions related to unfulfilled desires and delayed dream achievement, realize that these are signals that something in your life needs to change. 

And most important, understand that these signals are also telling you that you are responsible for making the required changes that will either place you back onto your correct Project You Life Journey path or will speed your progress on your chosen path.

This article is excerpted from the Amazon best-selling personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in Kindle and paperback formats. 

Optimism Has Many Benefits

Optimism Is Crucial For Success

Here's one of our favorite quotes, which comes from American editor and writer Thomas Dreier:

The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly and helpful to you. The world is what you are.

The same goes for optimism. An optimistic person will find, notice and leverage positives in life and opportunities. A pessimistic person will see the negatives and hurdles in the same life opportunities. As Sir John Lubbock, an English baron and philanthropist in the 19th century wrote, "What we see depends mainly on what we look for."

Dr. Martin Seligman, professor of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and best-selling author, writes, "The traditional version tells us that there are two things you need to succeed: talent and hunger, or drive. I have added a third thing, and that is optimism. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't believe you can overcome failure, if you do not mentally rehearse success, then your talent and drive will come to nothing once you have been knocked down."

Everything you read on the subject will tell you that optimism boosts energy levels, creates higher levels of focus and concentration, improves your chances of reaching a set goal, and prevents health problems from occurring. That would seem to be a better route than wallowing in pessimism and depression from the setbacks and hurdles that get thrown at you.

Ever met a truly successful cynic? It's doubtful. Any level of real success in life will not be achieved in the presence of cynicism. In fact, there are no successful cynics to be found.

Cynicism, while not quite as bad an opposite to optimism as pessimism, is an attitude that should be avoided. Cynics tend to play the blame game, citing a long list of external circumstances or people blocking their way. 

Successful people focus on the positives in their lives and take responsibility for finding solutions to whatever they deem as problems. Cynics, unfortunately, have an attitude holding them back.

As Nobel Peace Prize winner Nicholas Murray Butler said, "Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."

The following comparison pretty much sums up the difference between a positive, optimistic attitude and a negative, cynical or pessimistic one:

Winners say: "It may be difficult but it is possible."

Losers say: "It may be possible but it is too difficult."

As the old saying goes, since you're going to have an attitude you may as well make it an optimistic one. 

This article is partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in both paperback and Kindle formats.