Own It: Take Personal Responsibility for Everything in your Life
Takeaways:
• Taking personal responsibility for everything that happens to you is vital to change. • Swapping this simple phrase (that everyone uses) is a quick way to begin owning your life and your choices. A large part of losing weight and transforming your body and life is making it happen in the midst of your current circumstances – before you have the support of your family, while they still eat whatever they eat, and while you have lots of other responsibilities. So here’s the deal…
Either life happens to you or you seize your life
It’s your choice.
Your chains or your freedom.
While you can’t control what happens in your life, you can control your reaction. You can decide who you will be.
This is what owning it is all about, choosing to accept who you are right now (and who you’ve been) so that you can blossom into who you want to be.
Taking personal responsibility liberates you from always waiting for someone else to do it, so then you can be happy.
- “Once my abuser apologizes, then I’ll love and forgive them…”
- “When work slows down & I’m not so busy, then I’ll exercise consistently.”
- “When I have more time from juggling a few jobs, then I’ll make the habit of cooking.”
The ugly and often painful truth is, the if/when never comes. And no one else can do it for you.
In the midst of today’s passage from Galatians about supporting each other’s burdens, we see a clear directive that…
Each person will bear his/her own load
There’s a lot of sucky stuff that happens in life. It’s often not “fair.” But you know what… it happens to all of us. We’re all busy. We all have better things to do than exercise, cook, and practice self-care.
But we always make time for priorities
Whether those priorities are sleep, checking Facebook, or flipping channels. Have you ever received your credit card statement in the mail and been shocked at how much money you spent this month? Because you weren’t tracking? Whoops. That’s often the case with our time and energy too. We give it away to things that don’t matter while mourning the loss of what we don’t have – time and energy – for the things that we say do matter – exercising, cooking, sleeping, spending time with loved ones.
Reclaiming responsibility
In the Luke passage about the parable of the dishonest manager, I never understood its purpose in the Bible. Who cares about a dishonest manager??? But then I realized that we, too, are managers of things that aren’t ours. Our whole lives are gifts from God. This opportunity at life is a stewardship from God. Stewards are entrusted with responsibilities – to care for, manage well, and if possible, to increase the possessions of the owner. For us, this means that we manage our lives, our finances, our bodies, and our circle of influence well so that we can grow it. Fully reclaiming responsibility takes time, but beginning is as simple as noticing the words you use. This week I challenge you to:
- Notice how often you use the phrase “have to”
- Swap it for an empowering phrase – “choose to,” “get to,” etc.
***
Until we take personal responsibility for our lives, we can never make or sustain change. We often we give our power away to other people – what we think they want us to do, say, be – in hopes of being accepted. But when we give away our power, we stay stuck in resentment. You’ll either be a passive recipient of your life and always “should be doing something” or you’ll take the reins and accept responsibility for the outcome. Yes, this is scary, but courage is feeling the fear and taking wise action anyway. The payoff is huge. When no one else is responsible for your happiness, your joy, your contentment, you’re no longer washed to and fro by waves of feelings, but daily striding forward from the depths of character, integrity, and purpose.[/text_block]
- What area(s) of your life need some work in the personal responsibility area?
- What’s one thing you can do today to begin reclaiming responsibility?
- What feelings come up for you when you think about owning it? Fear? Excitement? Doubt?
Share your responses in the comments section below.[/text_block]