Taking Responsibility For Yourself

The act of taking responsibility for oneself is an essential ingredient to a consciously-lived life. If we want to better understand the sources of our discomfort and upset, we must be willing to turn the mirror on ourselves and ask What can I learn here?

When we take responsibility for ourselves, we align fully with what is expected of our spirit in order for us to grow beyond our limited mind.

This need not be viewed as carrying an albatross. That you are taking on a task that will make you weary and doubtful, overwhelm you with its need for attention and tiring vigilance.

In fact, you might consider it a privilege. The opportunity to peer more deeply into your heart and mind, body and spirit, get to know all of the twists and turns, historical imprints that make you who you are.

Only with that self-understanding can you make the wise choice to change, shift something within yourself that clearly is no longer a necessary part of your reference book, free yourself of hidden burdens, hair triggers, and dusty old behaviors.

And while this undertaking need not keep you awake at night, neither is it something that should be taken lightly.

Taking responsibility for our actions could, in fact, be considered one of the most serious and singularly important things we can do to ameliorate our suffering.

It’s not a one-time deal, either. We must choose it again and again.

Just as the sun choses to rise each day, you must look yourself in the eye each day and say Yes, this is another day that I can take responsibility for myself, come what may.

The pitfall of not taking responsibility for yourself is that you turn toward others, ask them to take care of things, absolve you of the need to get involved. Worse yet, you might go so far as to blame them for your circumstance, expect them to mend fences that have been broken by you.

When we turn toward others in an attempt to avoid the challenge of taking responsibility for ourselves, we are without a doubt relinquishing our power. The power to take hold of our own choices, contribute to a satisfying outcome, or at the very least reflect on what might be done differently next time.

Not to mention we then slowly give rise to stagnation and self-righteousness within ourselves.

It’s not always an easy road. You most certainly will lose your way from time to time. Sometimes, you’ll have to admit that you were wrong. That you made a mistake, hurt another, mis-stepped to the point of making a mess of things.

This is when it will be hardest: When you will have to see the import of stepping up to the plate in these situations and realize that your strength of character is being built in those very moments.

Not the ego of you, but the spirit of you. Fortified by the sheer act of taking responsibility, no matter the circumstance.

For though your choices will ripple out, touch other people in myriad ways, the primary beneficiary of such acts is you.

Taking responsibility for oneself is the central act of tending the karmic wheel, clearing the pathway for growth and transcendence, updates to old perspectives, contracts outdated. Setting the stage well for what is yet to come.

In the end, you will come to find that being at the helm of your own life is infinitely more satisfying than getting to the end of the line and wondering what you could have done differently along the way.

 

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