My friend Maggie wrote an interesting blog post about all the complaining she and others have been hearing from people about the state of the economy. You can read about it by going to her blog.
Well, it got me thinking about how tired I am of hearing people complain about what they don’t like yet not being willing to make the changes that would give them more of what they want. So, I wrote the following response to her blog entry:
“Every success begins with a dream. Every “failure” is the result of abandoning that dream.
When you know what’s important to you and keep it alive, the rightful action will show up for you to take. We only falter when we take our eyes and vision away from the passion/dream that we’ve identified for ourselves.
It’s easy to blame the outside world for the results you have in your life – easy and mistaken. The circumstances are simply the playing field. The real game is inside each of us. Until we can acknowledge that we alone are responsible for our successes, it’s pretty difficult for us to claim them as “our” successes.
If I’m not the one responsible for how I show up in the world, then everything here is a whim anyway and I have absolutely no control over who is and who is not successful. Nice excuse for giving up, but not very effective for having the results I want!!
My personal experience is that when I recognize my passions and my dreams, and take full responsibility for seeing them through, I always find a way to get what I want. It’s only when I drop the ball, stop looking for better results, or claim someone or something outside myself is holding me back, that my results are less than what I really wanted.
I can’t always control what’s happening outside myself, however I absolutely control what’s going on inside. Only by staying focused on my dream and where I do have control will I be in a position to recognize the inspired action that presents itself as my next step in moving towards my goal.
So long as I am diverting my attention to the distractions of trying to make the world different from how it “really” is, I am fighting a losing battle. Keeping true to my personal vision gives me the insight to recognize the opportunities for what they are.
I really appreciate you standing up for personal responsibility in a world that seems to want to blame everyone else for their own inadequacies!'”
Let’s face it, we all have circumstances we don’t like. It’s a part of the game. If everything was easy and smooth all the time, how complacent would we all become? Personally I don’t really want to live in a Utopia. I think I would be bored stiff.
At the same time, I don’t want to live in a world where there is only struggle and strife and nothing I can do to improve my circumstances. If I am not responsible for the results and consequences of my actions or inactions, then basically I have no control, and that means there’s nothing I can do. How terrifying that would be!
Fortunately I recognize that the divine spark inside me is what gives me the power to define for myself what the circumstances outside of me mean. It also gives me the power to focus my energies in the directions that either improve my lot in life or destroy them. I have that choice every single moment of every single day so long as I am on this planet breathing.
That doesn’t mean I make the absolutely best choice every time – that’s part of the beauty of it all! I get to try things out – decide what gives me the results I want and what I want to do differently next time. And so long as I am continuing to adjust, there is no failure.
Ultimately, that gives me control over myself and my life – being able to make choices, try things out, and readjust as necessary – all the while being able to define what those results mean to me.
However, this only works if you truly believe you are the one in control of your life and your results. As soon as you start blaming someone else, you are giving over that control to an outside source. Once you’ve given over control, you are doomed to being “at the affect” of whomever assumes the control (and trust me, someone will step in to take it!). No wonder people who blame others feel depressed or angry!
The only antidote to the feeling of helplessness is to resume control of your thoughts, your actions and your life. Even when you can’t change the circumstances (and most of us can’t at a National or World level), you get to decide what they mean to you. That means you can change the way you interact on a personal level, and ultimately that spreads out to the society as a whole. That’s true power, and it’s yours to take back whenever you’re ready to.
In fact, we need you to do exactly that. It’s the only way we’ll ever get back to feeling good as individuals or as a society. And wouldn’t that be a welcome relief right now!
P.S. For a fascinating study of what happens when people retain or relinquish their sense of personal responsibility and control, read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning:
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”