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Taking Responsibility..!

By Robert Clements. Dated: 3/24/2015 11:51:11 PM

Most of us never take responsibility for our actions, we tend to blame others. "I mixed with wrong company, so my life is ruined!" we say, or, "My parents never gave me an education, so that's why I still am where I am!"
And the list of blame goes on!
I once heard a story of a 40-year-old woman who was jogging in a U. S. state park when she was attacked and killed by a mountain lion. Her family immediately filed suit against the state because of its failure to manage the mountain lions.
But an interesting thing happened. Her distraught husband felt it was wrong to blame the state or anyone else for his wife's death, even though he stood to possibly win a small fortune. Against her family's wishes, he dropped the law suit. "My wife and I have always taken responsibility for our own actions," he explained. "She chose to run in the wild and, on a very long shot, she did not come back. This is not the fault of the state, and people should take responsibility for themselves."
I would like to meet that man. He no doubt believes that blaming others is a no-win in the long run. He seems like a person who would rather spend time fixing what's broken than fixing the blame for it on someone else.
This isn't about law suits, it's more about whether we are essentially victims of life or whether we are powerful and responsible people. An important step in gaining mastery over your life is to resist the urge to make something or someone else responsible. Like novelist J. K. Rowling (of Harry Potter fame) said to graduating Harvard students, "There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you." Certainly background and circumstances have influenced who we are, but who is responsible for the person we become?
An important decision I made was to start taking responsibility for my life: The day I realized that I was in charge of how I was going to approach problems in my life, that things would turn out better or worse because of me and nobody else, that was the day I started knowing I would be a happier and healthier person. And that was the day I knew I truly started building a life that mattered.
The choice is yours, you can either keep blaming others, or start taking responsibility for your life and steer it to successful living..!
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