By Dr. Evan Parks—When you face the hard truth that your life is not what you want and that you spend a lot of time blaming others, your circumstances, and the past, you have only one place left to look—at yourself. This is where we can easily get stuck. Some people shift the blame to themselves and go for a nice, long guilt trip. Being responsible for your life does not start with self-blame and guilt, it starts with ownership. I am responsible for my life.
Avoiding Reality
Imagine that you are working as a volunteer one Saturday at your local school and have spent the morning doing some needed repair projects. You planned to spend a few hours in the morning working at the school and then have other plans in the afternoon. At the end of your time, the project coordinator says, “You are so helpful! The volunteers coming this afternoon have no idea what they are supposed to do. You need to stay and help supervise everyone. I expected that you would be here the whole day. You cannot leave now! We need you!”
This little scenario is a test. If you have a problem defining yourself, just reading that encounter will get your blood pressure up. You will be convinced that if you were in that situation, the coordinator would be responsible for making your day miserable and stressful. The pressure you feel to change your plans, fix someone else’s problem, and be responsible for the other people’s happiness seems like real, legitimate pressure. If you think the pressure and the stress are coming from the outside, your ability to see what is really happening is not too clear. The coordinator’s behavior is not what is causing you the stress that you feel.
Ownership
No one is making your day bad. No one is creating stress for you. No one can make you feel guilty. If you feel that others make you miserable, you will always be controlled by what is happening around you.
Imagine a neighbor coming over to your yard and dumping all his extra leaves and grass clippings onto your lawn and then saying, “I think you need to start a compost pile. This will give you a head start.” Your neighbor is deciding what is good for you, what you want, and what you should do, not you. Your neighbor is acting like he is the owner of your yard! When you take ownership of your life, you make the decisions about what you need, where you go, how you spend your time, and what is important to you. No one should be given permission to make these decisions for you.
Think of the times you have complained about your schedule as if you have no control over what happens in your day. Look at your life and the number of people who can show up and their very presence makes you feel like you are loosing yourself and your ability to speak your mind. How many times have you looked at your health, weight, finances, relationships, or the impact of your work and wished, “If only these things would change”? It is as if your life cannot change until your circumstances change. Our circumstance do not control our or make our lives miserable.
A starting place is recognizing that we are owners of our life. What happens with our life is our responsibility. Keep these two principles in mind:
1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.
2. All we can give or get from other people is information. How we deal with that information is our choice or their choice.
If I am upset by the words of the volunteer coordinator, then I am responsible for being upset. I feel upset because I lack ownership of my life; I am not owning what I need, what, think, and feel. Because I don’t take ownership, I lack the strength to speak honestly about what I have already planned, what is important to me, and what I am going to do.
Rather than being responsible for my feelings, I feel responsible for how the coordinator feels. I think I am causing the other person to feel bad if I speak the truth and let others knows that I am in charge. Remember, how a person responds is their choice. All we are doing is giving them information as we tell people what we need, what, and plan; we are not able to do anything else that impacts them. What they do with that information is their choice. We are responsible for expressing clearly who we are, without reservation, apology, or trying to take care of the people who choose to be upset.
Let me know your process of defining who you are! I am looking forward to hearing from you.
