be responsible

I’m having difficulty deciding what I want to be when I grow up – so instead I’m going to visit some basic principles in the hope that by revisiting these “truths” my route to the future may become clearer.
This is my own personal “tough love” therapy.
The image above is my Mind Map of this post – I thought it might be interesting to share with you.
Only I am responsible for the life that I have now – a hard one to swallow for sure, but until I take 100% ownership of my past and present it is difficult to create a different future.
The thing is, I am not “entitled” to a great life, no-one is magically going to present it to me – but it is there for the taking. To take it I need to learn how to “put up and shut up” and stop making excuses to myself. I am the responsible one and if I don’t like the outcome I have, I need to change my responses to events that happen.
Mindset is all – I decide the information I take in and how it affects me. I have decided that although there is a recession on I choose not to participate ………. I choose not to use something I cannot change as an excuse not to succeed. In my Universe I am operating as though there is no recession.
I am a product today of the choices I made yesterday – which means that my future can be determined by the new choices I make today. What a liberating concept, that I can literally create anew my future by making different choices right here and now.
After all “if you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always got”.
So from here on in is down to me and only me, not my friends, not my family, not my past, not my country, not the environment, not the recession – the future is mine to create if I take personal responsibility today.
So away with all the excuses, all the victim stories I tell myself in the wee small hours, all the outside circumstances and reasons why I haven’t succeeded until now. All that matters is that from this point forward I accept that I am the author of my future and nobody else.
No-one else is to blame, no-one else has that power over me anymore.
And whilst I can give up blaming others, I also need to give up complaining – we only complain about things we can change anyway – so why not spend the energy changing that thing instead of wasting time moaning?
So do I want to be an active author of my future or a passive observer? Do I create what I desire or do I let things just happen to me without intervention?
Can I be observant enough to recognise the warning signs that things are not going the right way to create my desired future – can I be brave enough to face these issues head on when the signs appear? I know that if I do, then I am paving my way to an easier life in the future.
I realise that to be successful what I must do is act in the ways that produce more of what I want …………. which sounds so simple. Simple as we know doesn’t necessarily mean easy.
So I need to pay more attention, make sure that I am monitoring my results and that those results are moving me towards my desired future.
As Henry James says ” It’s time to start living the life you imagined”[left]