You are 100% responsible for healing and growing from the events and experiences of your life.
You’re responsible for every choice you’ve made…
- to hold onto beliefs that don’t serve you
- to avoid forgiveness
- to cultivate anger
- to foster resentment
- to allow it to define who you are
…and these choices have placed you exactly where you are.
Chances are, that if you’re reading this, you already understand the power that taking responsibility over your life holds.
So the next question is, what can we do to foster a sense of responsibility for our lives? Below are my top suggestions for taking more responsibility in your life.
10 Tips For Taking Responsibility:
1. Take ownership for your thoughts, feelings, words and actions.
To take responsibility for your life, is to take responsibility for your mind, emotions, speaking and acting, because you create your life with your thoughts, feelings, words and behaviour. What this means is that no one has control over you and you don’t control anyone else. When you’re responsible for yourself, you’re empowered in your life and no one can push your buttons or make you say or do anything.
2. Stop blaming.
Stop blaming your partner, parents, economy, your upbringing or the dog for your mistakes. Blaming keeps you stuck in your story and powerless in victim mode, robbing you of the ability to change your situation.
3. Stop complaining.
Complaining is another form of blaming and playing victim as if you have no choice. It also shows that you focus on lack, things going wrong, things happening to you. In everything not going according to plan, there is a gift, there is a bigger picture.
4. Stop making excuses.
Making excuses about your choices or lack of choice robs you of the ability to learn from your mistakes. If there’s no personal accountability, there’s no room for understanding and growth. Once you take responsibility for all of your choices, negativity silences because there is a renewed sense of understanding to the purpose of the experience.
5. Refuse to take anything personally.
Don’t assume that everything is about you. Don’t take disagreement as a personal attack. Remember, you don’t have control over how other people respond, you only have control over your response.
6. Make yourself happy.
Taking responsibility for your happiness is liberating. Recognize that happiness does not come from the outside and it’s no one else’s responsibility to MAKE you happy. Like everything else, happiness is a choice but the gateway to happiness is through gratitude.
7. Live in the present moment.
Life is now. There is only one moment, now. We cannot change the past nor can we control the future. Choose your thoughts carefully in every moment and create awareness of what you are thinking and feeling. This then allows you to interrupt thoughts that do not serve you.
8. Use the power of intention.
You have the power to choose. In fact, you are making choices all the time. Living intentionally by deliberately making choices to move you forward toward manifesting your vision or outcomes, is consciously taking responsibility for your life.
9. Feel calm and confident.
When you take responsibility for your life and experience, you step into a place of calm confidence. You feel calm because you know that you are consciously in charge of yourself and that you can choose how you respond.
10. Look for the good in people.
Exercising compassion and empathy towards others will help you understand the intentions behind people’s behaviour. So often when we understand where someone comes from, we let go of judgment. Remove the labels that we instinctively apply to people’s behaviours that give us permission to judge them harshly.
Recognizing that you are not responsible for others AND that you are 100 % responsible for everything you’ve created in your life, is liberating. This understanding changes your perspective on the purpose of making mistakes and the degree to which we have power within our own lives.
Freedom comes easily once you no longer have the obligation to change someone else’s life and you have the power to change your own.
You are responsible for either learning and growing from your life lessons or using them as a crutch to explain why you “just can’t”.
So if you want someone to save you, it’s not going to happen. That’s not how this works.
Challenge yourself to take responsibility for everything in your life and see the difference in what you create!
xo
PS: If this resonates with you, start with accountability. In what part of your life have you been resistant to taking responsibility?
PPS: Let’s talk.
Katrina Murphy is a Professional Intuitive Mindset and Confidence Coach in Ontario, Canada, serving clients across Canada and internationally. Katrina helps professionals to change the relationship that they have with themselves so they can reconnect both in their relationships and at work. She’s been featured in various publications and is the creator of the Power-Passion-Purpose Framework.