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Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life

Everything you experience today is the result of choices you have made in the past. Most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves on the parts of our life we don’t like. We blame our parents, our bosses, our friends, the media, our clients, our spouse, the weather, the economy, our lack of money, anyone or anything we can pin the blame on. We never look at where the real problem lies in ourselves. If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in life. This includes the level of your achievements, the result you produce, and the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts. That means giving up all your excuses, all your victim stories, all the reasons why you can’t and why you haven’t up until now.

 

You have to take the position that you have always had the power to make it different to get it right, to produce the desired result. For whatever reason – ignorance, lack of awareness, fear, needing to be right or to feel safe, you choose not to exercise that power.

 

Give up excuses and complaining

You have control over three things in your life – the thoughts you think, the images you visualize, and the actions you take. You thought the thoughts, you created the feelings, you made the choice, and you said the word, that’s why you are where you are today. Everything you experience today is the result of choices you have made in the past. If you do not like what you are producing, you have to change your responses, change your negative thoughts to positive ones, change your habits, change what you read, change your friends. You will never become successful as long as you continue to blame someone or something else for your lack of success.

 

Likewise to be successful, you have to give up complaining. The truth is people only complain about things they can do, something about – but have chosen not to. You complain about your job, you can get a better job. You complain about your partner, you can change your partner, you complain about lack of money, you can save for the future, you complain about your neighborhood, you can move to another. However, people choose not to act because they involve risks. To further complicate matters, people are fond of complaining to people who cannot do anything about their complaint.

 

They go to work and complain about their spouse; then, they come home and complain to their spouse about the people at work because it’s easier if you find in a situation you do not like, either work to make it better or leave. Agree to work on the relationship or get a divorce. Fight to improve working conditions or find a new job. Don’t just sit there and complain. Do something.

 

Learn to complain to the right persons. Ask your boss to plan better so that you don’t end up working. Every weekend as only your boss can do anything about that, your spouse can’t.

 

Create your future from your future, not your past

Clarify your vision of your deal life. Before you can become successful, you have to decide what success looks like to you in clear and compelling detail.

 

Inside of every one of as is that tiny seed of the ‘you’ that you were meant to become. Unfortunately, you may have buried this seed in response to your parents, teachers, coaches and other adult role models as you were growing up. You started out as a baby knowing exactly what you wanted. You knew when you were hungry; you had no trouble expressing your needs and wants, you simply cried loudly – with no inhibitions or holding back – until you got what you wanted. As you get older you crawled around and moved towards whatever held, the most interest for you – without fear. Somewhere along the way, some said don’t touch that! Stay away from there. Keep your hands off that. Eat everything on your plate whether you like it or not! You don’t really feel that way. You don’t really want that. You should be ashamed of yourself. Stop crying. Don’t be such a baby.

 

As you grew older, you heard you can’t have everything you want simply because you want it. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Can’t you think of anybody but yourself?! Stop being so selfish! Stop doing what you are doing and come do what I want you to do! Your vision is a detailed description of where you want to get to. It describes in detail what your destination looks like and should include your work and career, finance, recreation and free time health and fitness, relationships, personal goals and contribution to the larger community.

 

The following exercise is designed to help you clarify your vision. Although you could do this as a strictly mental exercise by just thinking about the answers, and then, writing them down.

 

1.Focus on the financial area of your life.

What is your annual income? What does your cash flow look like? How much money do you have in savings and investments? What is your total net worth? Next . . . what does your home look like? Where is it located? Does it have a view? What kind of yard and landscaping does it have? Is there a pool or a stable for horses? What color are the walls? What does the furniture look like? Are there paintings hanging in the rooms? What do they look like? Walk through your perfect house, filling in all of the details. At this point, don’t worry about how you’ll get that house. Don’t sabotage yourself by saying, “I can’t live in Ikoyi, Lagos, because I don’t make enough money.” Once you give your mind’s eye the picture, your mind will solve the “not enough money” challenge.

 

Next, visualize what kind of car you are driving and other important possessions your finances have provided.

 

2. Next, visualize your ideal job or career.

Where are you working? What are you doing? With whom are you working. What kind of clients or customers do you have? What is your compensation like? Is it your own business?

 

3. Then, focus on your free time, your recreation time.

What are you doing with your family and friends in the free time you’ve created for yourself? What hobbies are you pursuing? What kinds of vacations do you take? What do you do for fun?

 

4. Next, what is your ideal vision of your body and your physical health?

Are you free of all diseases? How long do you live to? Are you open, relaxed, in an ecstatic state of bliss all day long? Are you full of vitality? Are you flexible as well as strong? Do you exercise, eat good food, and drink lots of water?

 

5. Then move on to your ideal vision of your relationships with your family and friends.

What is your relationship with your family like? Who are your friends? What is the quality of your relationships with your friends? What do those friendships feel like? Are they loving, supportive, empowering? What kind of things do you do together?

 

6. What about the personal arena of your life?

Do you see yourself going back to school, getting training, attending workshops, seeking therapy for a past hurt, or growing spiritually? Do you mediate or go on spiritual retreats with your church? Do you want to learn to play an instrument or write your autobiography? Do you want to run a marathon or take an art class? Do you want to travel to other countries?

 

7.Finally, focus on the community you live in, the community you’ve chosen.

What does it look like when it is operating perfectly? What kinds of community activities take place there? What about your charitable work? What do you do to help others and make a difference? How often do you participate in these activities? Who are you helping?

 

You can write down your answers as you go, or you can do the whole exercise first, and then, open your eyes and write them down. In either case, make sure you capture everything in writing as soon as you complete the exercise.

 

Everyday, review the vision you have you have written down. This will keep your conscious and subconscious minds focused on your vision, and as you apply the other success principles and tools, you will begin to manifest all the different aspects of your vision.

 

Determine and understand your purpose in life.

We were born with a life purpose, you need to take the time to understand what you’re here to do and then, pursue it with passion and enthusiasm.

 

Ask yourself the question, what must I put on this earth to do? Without a purpose in life its easy to get sidetracked, wonder, drift and accomplishing little. But with a purpose everything in life seems to fall into place. To be “on a purpose” means you’re doing what you love to do, doing what you are good at and accomplishing what’s important to you. Examples of life purpose statements are as to inspire and empower people to achieve their destiny, or to educate and inspire people to live their highest self-based in courage, purpose, and joy, versus fear, need and obligation.

 

Believe it’s possible

According to Napoleon Hill, “you can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the man can achieve.”

 

Doctors in Texas, for example – studying the effect of arthroscopic knee surgery – assigned patients with sore, worn-out knees to one of three surgical procedures: scrapping the knee joint, washing out the joint, or doing nothing.

 

During the “nothing” operation, doctors anesthetized the patient, made three incisions in the knee as if to insert their surgical instruments, and then, pretended to operate. Two years after surgery, patient who underwent the pretend surgery reported the same amount of relief from pain and swelling as those who had received the actual treatments. The brain expected the “surgery” to improve the knee, and it did.

 

Why does the brain work this way? Neuropsychologists who study expectancy theory say it’s because we spend our whole lives becoming conditioned. Through a lifetime’s worth of events, our brain actually, learns what to expect next – whether it eventually happens that way or not. And because our brain expects something will happen a certain way, we often achieve exactly what we anticipate.

 

This is why it’s so important to hold positive expectations in your mind. When you replace your old negative expectations with more positive ones – when you begin to believe that what you want is possible – your brain will actually take over the job of accomplishing that possibility for you. Better than that, you brain will actually expect to achieve that outcome.

 

Believe in yourself

Max Lucado, a best-selling author, said “you weren’t an accident. You weren’t mass produced you aren’t an assembly line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically a gifted, and loving positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman. If you are going to be successful in life, you have to believe that you are capable of making it happen. You have to believe you have what it takes – the abilities, inner resources, talents and skills to create your desired results.

 

If you are going to be successful, you need to give up the phrase “I can’t” as that word actually disempower you. Your brain is designed to solve any problem and reach any goal that you give it. The word you think and say actually, affect your body.

 

Anticipate obstacle and look for the opportunity in everything

Think about this, was there a time in your life when something terrible happened that later became a blessing in disguise? Possibly, successful people approach every experience as an opportunity. They enter every conversation with the idea that something good will come from it. If you take the approach that “good” is not an accident – that everyone and everything that show up in your life is there for a reason – and that the universe is moving towards your ultimate destiny for learning, growth and achievement, you will begin to see every event – no matter how difficult or challenging – as a chance for enrichment and advancement in your life.

 

Set a goal that commands your thoughts, vibrates your energy and inspires your hopes.

The brain is a goal-seeking organism. Whatever goal you give to your subconscious mind, it will work night and day to achieve. To be successful, know your life purpose, determine your vision and clarify what your true needs and desires are. Then, convert them into specific, measurable goals and objectives.Then act on them with the certainty that you will achieve them. Be as specific as possible with all aspects of your goals – include the make, model, color, year and features… the size, weight, shape and form and measurable quantity such as Naira and a specific time and date. When there are no criteria for measurement, it is simply something you want, a wish, a good idea.

 

GOOD IDEA

I need to treat my employees better.

 

GOOD OR OBJECTIVE

I will acknowledge a minimum of six employees for their contribution to the department by 5 p.m. this Friday.

 

Get out of your comfort zone

A baby elephant is trained to be confined to a very small space. Its trainer will tie its leg with a rope to a wooden post planted deep in the ground. This confines the baby elephant to an area determined by the length of the rope – the elephant’s comfort zone. Though the baby elephant will initially, try to break the rope, the rope is too strong, and so the baby elephant learns that it can’t break the rope. It learns that it has to stay in the area defined by the length of the rope.

 

When the elephant grows up into a 5-ton colossus that could easily break the same rope, it doesn’t even try because it learned as a baby that it couldn’t break the rope. In this way, the largest elephant can be confined by the puniest little rope.

 

Perhaps this also describes you – still trapped in a comfort zone by something as puny and weak as the small rope and stake that controls the elephant, except your rope is made up of the limiting beliefs and images that you received and tool on when you were young. If this describes you, the good news is that you can change your comfort zone. How?

 

There are three different ways:

 

Think of your comfort zone as a prison you live in – a largely self-created prison that consists of the collection of can’ts, must nots and other unfounded beliefs formed from all the negative thoughts and decisions you have accumulated and reinforced during your life time.

 

Act as if it’s impossible to fail

Nothing happens until you take action. One thing that separates winners from losers is that winners take action. They simply get up and do what has to be done once they have developed a plan, they start. Even if they don’t start perfectly, they learn from their mistakes, make this necessary correction and keep taking action, all the time building momentum, until they finally produce the result they set out to produce.

 

According to Abraham Lincoln, things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. When you take action, you trigger all kinds of things that will inevitably carry you to success. You let those around you know that you are serious in your intention. People start paying attention. People with similar goals become aligned with you. You cannot be learned from listening to others or from reading books. You begin to get feed backs about how to do it better, more efficiently and more quickly. You begin to attract others who will support you and encourage you. Planning has its place, but it must be kept in perspective some people spend their whole lives waiting for the perfect time to do something.