That's the essence of this month's newsletter. No matter what challenges may come your way in life you always have a choice about how you respond (and you always have whether you’ve felt it or not). After all, that’s where the word ‘responsible’ comes from – response able!

How you have chosen to respond to the circumstances in your life has created your experience of being alive today - where you are, what you do, who you are for yourself and for others.

Take a minute to think about any aspects of your life where you may not be taking full responsibility. Whatever’s been bugging you consider how you might be served by responding differently than you have until now – where you’re life might be served by some new and different choices. As much as you’d like to blame others for your problems, the only person responsible for your happiness in life is you!

Where are you not taking full responsibility for your life? 

You may have heard the idea before that you are totally responsible for your life. You may have also concluded that it was baloney because there are so many things that have happened to you in life that you weren’t responsible for; which you felt you had no control over; where you were really just a victim.

I invite you take look a little deeper into what this idea of being fully responsible is all about.  Unless you accept full and complete accountability for your life you will continue to misdiagnose problem situations that you find yourself in.  If you misdiagnose the cause of  your problems then you won’t be able to respond to them effectively nor experience the happiness you really want.

You ‘re Responsible For Your Happiness (Or Your Lack Of It!)

If in any aspect of your life you are unhappy, angry, hurt or upset you own those feelings and you’re 100%  accountable for them.  As humans though we really don’t like to take the blame for our unhappiness – our innate instinct for self preservation wants us to avoid the pain of owning our part in creating certain situations. It has us blame other people or circumstances for our failure to have what we want, be who we want or feel as happy as we’d like. Happiness alludes us because there’s always something or someone which isn’t as we want it to be.

What happens is that most people live their lives in denial about the role they’ve played in their problems opting to lay the blame elsewhere rather than own role in their creation.  But if you don’t own your past, you cannot own your future. And if you aren’t the master of your own ship in life, then who is and where does that leave you?  Adrift!

What Role Have You Played?

Reflect back on a particular problem or misfortune you have (or have had) in your life where you feel angry,  resentful or unhappy. Then honestly ask yourself how you may have contributed to the situation. If you believe that you are totally a victim of circumstance then you are claiming a degree of perfection that is unrealistic. These questions may help you identify your role:

• what choices did you make that led to the result you didn’t want what did you do or fail to do?
• did you trust someone foolishly?
• did you settle too soon or for less that you really wanted?
• did you commit yourself to something for the wrong reasons (to please someone, because it gave a short term boost to your ego,  or to avoid conflict)?
• when did you compromise your values and integrity for the sake of short term peace or pleasure?
• did you fail to communicate clearly and were misunderstood?
• did you choose not to confront someone about something important?
• did you allow someone to continually treat you with a lack of respect or dignity?
• did you jump into something without enough thought?
• when should you have said ‘yes’ to something but you held back and missed out?
• did you fail to take real action when things started to go off the track hoping it would just get better?
• who did you not tell to go ‘take a hike’ when you should have?
• what destructive habits or behaviours have you failed to address in yourself or others?
• what decisions did you make in the heat of the moment that caused a lot of damage?

You see until you acknowledge the role you’ve played in your problems you cannot really move forward. This doesn’t mean you’ve made decisions recklessly or with poor intent; it doesn’t mean you didn’t have justifications for them at the time;  it just means that YOU made the decisions (to stay in a job you hated, to stay in a relationship you were miserable in, to not confront a deception, to invest in Enron, to take out a 2^nd mortgage,  to put up with being treated poorly, to let your mother- in-law come and live with you,  to sell your house too soon…)

What’s Pay-Off  Are You Getting? 

The reason so many people don’t feel powerful in their role in life is because there’s a pay-off in not taking responsibility. Sometimes the pay-off is simply that they can continue to play the “oh poor me” victim, sometimes it’s that they simply get to be “right”, sometimes its an excuse for playing safe and not taking a risk to live a bigger more rewarding life (“I did something once and it failed so I will never risk failing again” or “I was cheated on once so I’ve never trusted a man since”).

I can assure you of one thing, that no matter how destructive the behaviour appears to be or how unhappy one might be about a situation, there is always a pay-off on some level.  Always. We humans may sometimes be mightily misguided but we’re not totally stupid and we never do anything unless we judge (however poorly) that on some level we will get some positive value or reward from it.  Until you identify  the pay-off you get from whatever problem or circumstance you’ve got on your hands, it will be damned hard to do something about it.

You Choose How You Let Childhood Impact Your Adulthood

Perhaps there’s something that happened to you as a child you feel very justified in feeling bloody angry about.  After all you had little choice in how your parents parented you and can’t be blamed for trusting them (or other caregivers).  Of course not. What I’m saying though is that as an adult you can choose how you react to the events of your childhood. We can never change the past, but we can change how we choose to think about it and we can make the decision not to let the past continue to have power over our future (in doing so letting go the pay-off of feeling victimized). Letting the past go isn’t about letting our parents (or whomever we feel ‘wronged’ us) off the hook - its about cutting the chains that keep us bonded to the past so we can move forward to create whatever our hearts desire for the future – free of the resentment and anger and bitterness. I once heard it said, being angry with someone is like swallowing a bottle of poison and waiting for the other person to die. You choose to harbor the anger or you choose to let it go. It is YOUR choice how you respond and YOU are accountable for it’s impact in your life.

The Buck Stops With You!

But the fact is, you will never have the life you really want - that wonderful relationship, exciting job, fabulous life - while you lay the blame for your lack of it at someone at anyone’s feet but your own -  your financial advisor, your ‘ex’ , bad genes, the economy, racism, your parents incompetence, your boss, your children… and on it goes.

So given that where you are now is the lump sum of all the choices you’ve made up to this moment in time – whether consciously or not – where would you like to be in 1,5,25 years from now? Wherever it is, you – and only you – are responsible for whether you get there and you - and only you -  are e responsible for your experience of the journey.

Don’t settle for less than the best of yourself or less than the best of what your life has to offer and remember that no matter what happens…. the buck stops with you!

• "Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters” Phillip C. McGraw, Ph. D – Dr Phil’s practical and straight talking approaches are powerful and very effective and this book is

Margie is available to do key-note and workshops in your organization or association. Please contact her for a summary of her key speaking topics. For speaking testimonials please visit www.margiewarrell.com.

• Dallas Fort Worth Mid-Cities HR Managers Association: “Success Through Balance”, July 7th
• SMU (Southern Methodist University), Fall Lecture Series: “The Balancing Act” September 16th
• Los Colinas Executive Business Women’s Association: “Success Through Balance” September 16^th