10 Ways to Take Responsibility for Your Life

Many people say they would like to change their lives or make positive changes but seem to encounter obstacles, complain, feel restless or postpone taking decisive action.  Now is the moment to be more pro-active.  Consider 10 ways to take greater responsibility for your life:

1. Prioritize Yourself

To take more control of life, deep down, we must feel worthy, deserving of good things, better decisions. Holding self-limiting beliefs, perpetuating negative self-talk ("I can't or won't...")  causes us to avoid responsibility.  Thus, we may feel undeserving of better. Thing is, we can only love and support others if we love and support self first, practice self-love and self-care.

2. Stop Blaming the External

Although common practice, blaming others for our conditions is a form of self-sabotage, an unconscious attempt to escape from growing up (maturing as a soul). Society teaches us to and judge others rather than address our own actions. When we are hyper-focused on other people’s behaviours, we often overlook signs and signals we give ourselves and available big life lessons.

3. Develop Self-Awareness

To take responsibility for our thoughts and actions, we must grow self-aware. Self-reflection allows us to deepen awareness.  To grow mindful of feelings, thoughts as they arise, helps us understand our actions,  patterns and reasons behind the things we do.

4. Be Accountable

Being responsible entails being accountable to yourself.  Some people love external praise and their own positive feelings and yet find it hard to realize they are the source of all their behaviour, perception, feelings, or results. Pride blocks growth.  To be accountable is to accept and understand our role in each situation.  How we are treated depends on how we treat ourselves. The key is self-honesty, not avoiding transparency. Of course, self-pity and guilt are not helpful.

5. Get to Know Yourself

Turns out, we are conditioned to adopt other people’s beliefs about us.  Beyond external conditioning, we all have our own sense of success and happiness.  Though family and peers may have good intentions, we cannot act to appease others and live in integrity.  If parents may want their child to look a certain way, choose a specific training, career, or partner. We would not blindly listen if we took steps to get to know self, our version of happiness and success. This requires self-honesty.  We may even need to separate from people who constantly impose their views.  This can create internal conflict, complicating our decision-making.

6. Love Yourself

Taking responsibility can be difficult until we love ourselves enough to get that every moment, we control our thoughts, feelings and life direction. Realizing this changes things.  When we judge ourselves harshly, we throw off our inner balance. We feel ungrounded, unsupported, unsustainable, and very discouraged. Self-love guides us to the wisdom within the self. A mere shift in perspective is a potent action in the name of love.

7. Eliminate Excuses

To make excuses is not responsible, like denying you are the captain of your ship. An irresponsible person may say they want to eat healthier but say they don’t have time. However, to be responsible, accountable, and honest, is to prioritize creating time. We can find many reasons not to make life changes.  Yet, this is giving our power away. We all have the same 24 hours per day. We are all responsible for how we choose to use it.

8. Remove Toxic People

Toxic people enable us to continue unhealthy habits and toxic behaviour. People who genuinely care for us and love us will hold you accountable.  They want to see us achieve our dreams. Other individuals want to keep us  co-dependent.  To take responsibility for life means taking responsibility for our entourage, and relationships. People who frequently complain, self-loathe, self-deprecate, and speak down on your progress do not benefit our growth.  Creating distance brings us inner strength. Nourish healthy and supportive interaction. Also, seek to establish emotional independence to make better decisions from an objective stance and attract authentic people into our life experience.

9. Eradicate Negative Self-Talk

Negative self-talk can arise from childhood trauma inflicted by abuse or bullying. These negative, self-limiting beliefs we have of ourselves usually originate from the projections and judgments other people throw at us. When we are younger, we tend to internalize these words, and they become ingrained. It takes time to un-condition such negative ideas about Self. However, it’s possible by doing activities aimed at self-love and self-care. We come into this world with a very clean slate.  As we grow, we begin to take on our personality. Much of this has to do with the environments. However, we can take responsibility for our lives and reclaim our full potential.

10.  Take Quantum Leaps outside Comfort Zones

The only way to truly take full and complete responsibility for our lives is to rediscover what it is to experience examples of fearlessness. This may begin in a playground swing,  allowing ourselves to fear the wind in our hair as we pump the swing higher.  As we gain courage and confidence, we increasingly make choices to do what we have not done before, confront our fears and see where assertiveness and adventurousness take us.  This may guide us to new job, new relationships, new entourage, new pastimes and ways to spend out time.  Remind yourself the five people you spend the most time with are the five people you are becoming.

10 Tips to rendez-vous with destiny

A popular question that arises is how to catch up with destiny. Many people admit they view destiny as a kind of carrot at the end of a fishing line they feel they are often chasing. Although life purpose may change at different life stages, destiny is viewed as your unique and ultimate reason for being. Does this confuse you? You may be asking what you need to do, where to go, to feel at ease or in harmony with yourself. Reflect on 10 tips to r.d.v. with your destiny: 

1. Recognize your 'comfort zone' 

This entails recognizing your comfort zone in different areas of your life and how this limits you.  In general, the more rigid your (or your kids') schedule, the more comfort zones you have created.  If you are caring for other people, (i.e., relations, pets or other friends), the more jam-packed their routine, the more you fear letting go of control, the more you fear spontaneity, fear creating something new, lasting and enriching in your life or feel uncomfortable stepping into the unfamilliar.  Conscious awareness of why you do things greatly empowers you to shift reality.

2. Find the courage to heal

Comfort zones do not just happen.  They are a symptom of repressed/ suppressed negative emotions, unhealed pain and mental suffering. Finding courage to heal implies the willingness to grow aware of triggers and habits (why these arise), and how you numb out or shift focus from the root cause of discomfort. This involves exploring character traits, possible co-dependence, people-pleasing, unconscious self-sabotage, self-hate or rejection and fear-based action.  Discover what blocks true intimacy, connnection, personal fulfillment & professional success. 

3. Stretch yourself

Watch what unfolds as you envision yourself beyond your current circumstances.  Depending on your readiness, this could mean taking up a course or training, shifting into a new vocation, moving geographically, building a dream home, renovating something, changing entourage, or generally building a new foundation from where to grow. Every instance you see things differently, even taking a new route to work, choosing to wear more comfortable shoes, or openly confiding intimate details of your life without fear of vulnerability, you are tasting your destiny. Every moment, you can take steps to find your way. Consider working with a mentor.

4. Adopt an optimistic attitude

The moment is ripe to function with an optimistic attitude. Listen to your thoughts and words more closely. How often do you hear yourself saying, "this is not possible because..." or "the time is not right because...?" Be aware of how often you talk yourself out of what you want, what feels right or do not even allow yourself to explore possibilities beyond habit. Who is really in charge here? Being optimistic is part of the process of reclaiming personal power you gave away. Imagine reclaiming it and letting go of what holds you back. How does your perception shift?

5. Stop acting to appease others

Whether or not its obvious to you at this stage, you are not always acting based on your own heart-felt desires and dreams.  Self-acceptance does not depend on the nature and intensity of your fitness practices or the amount of what you accomplish in the eyes of family or mentors and role models you admire. As you recognize and stop unconscious behaviours that arise to appease others, you move into that place where you do things you only used to speak or dream about.  

6. Tap into unused potential

Imagine the possibility you only use a fraction of your innate intelligence, wisdom and resources.  Remind yourself the moment is ripe to access diverse skills and abilities that you habitually fail to see and use. Know and accept that within you are powers that facilitate everything imaginable you could become. Simply get out of your own way. Talking to yourself can help you clarify what you wish to do or create in life.  Where you are is perfect for this moment and you are catching up with dreams realized by a future version of you watching your progress. 

7. Set new goals

Watch what happens as you give up complacency in favor of extending your wings more fully, of raising the bar for yourself.  Imagine what it feels like to blossom beyond self-created boundaries.  Set new goals that draw out the best in you.  Work toward those things that enable you to develop a sense of mastery and peak performance.  Begin with a pad of paper, writing implement and undivided attention.  Unleash the unthinkable. Let your fingers do the talking.

8. Imagine no limitations

Take a few moments to imagine you have no limitations in terms of money, no time constraints, health issues, no obstacles to contacts, experience, knowledge or education. That is, imagine whatever you write is possible for you, provided you want it genuinely and are willing to make whatever efforts and sacrifices are necessary.  This implies seeing through mid-life crisis. Go on, surprise yourself.  What would it look like?

9. Build unshakable self-confidence

It may surprise you but the mere act of writing dreams on paper takes a concept to the next level while building your self-confidence. Focusing physical and mental energy on specific ideas gives them life.  The process of adding detail and taking steps to realize it generates a greater sense of personal power and ability.  This is not ego-driven arrogance or pride but heartfelt love of life. 

 10.  Achieve peak performance

Achieving peak performance happens as you clarify goals, challenge and revise your own standards, invite feedback, do not take things personally, give yourself heart and soul to what enables you to feel harmony within yourself.  This may seem like a big ask or a tall order.  Yet, it happens naturally when you are in a state of flow because you function with extraordinary energy and clarity. Everything simply comes together. Uncover what you are uniquely qualified to do and be and even the stranger you speak to in passing reveals a connection to where you are heading. Making a meaningful and lasting impact on the world begins with cracking the shield you have build oer your own heart.  Are you ready to be proactive? Let the Soul be your pilot.