People with a high degree of personal responsibility will always experience higher levels of personal fulfillment than people who blame because blaming makes you helpless, but personal responsibility, over time, turns you into an expert problem solver. In a broad way, solving problems equals success while making problems unsolvable in your head automatically equates to failure.

Every single time. Failure happens in your head before it happens in your life, while success happens in your mind first before it can be realized in your life. This is fundamentally why responsibility and blame are so important is because who we say is in charge sets the tone for every decision that comes after.

Here’s a difficult truth:

I won’t have any lasting fulfillment in my life until I take total responsibility for everything that’s happening in my life right now. Meaning: no one at any time owes me a thing. Nope. Nothing. Not a single iota. Ever.

Caveat: now, this isn’t to say that no one is ever responsible for hurting you. Because they are. Really, really bad things happen at the hands of bad people. So, in no way, shape, or form would I ever attempt to downplay any amount of undue suffering or abuse you may have suffered in your life. Life can be cruel.

These ideas are speaking to how to move forward, to heal, and to grow.

Back to blame because, no, you can’t live your entire life a victim.  It’s not healthy. I know this.

How does blame make you helpless? Simple. Someone else has the code, the answer, the ticket and they’re unduly keeping it from you. Life would be so much better if only…

if only…

if only…

You must control what you can control and release the rest. Control what you can and release the rest. When you release the rest, you’re able to better manage what you’re in charge of and, when you do, you must adamently take charge of it, understand it, and do everything you can to make sure it’s cared for. What you have is all you have. That’s it.

People love to overwhelm themselves with blame to the point they become frozen in time, take no action, and, ultimately, are nothing but dissatisfied with life. This isn’t you? Is it? It’s much easier to let blame fester and grow than to think: what can I do now?

When someone else has the code, they have the upper hand. They have one up on you. Problem is, when everyone always has all the codes, you’ve got zilch. You become, in effect, nothing but a victim because that’s where blame leads: perpetual victimhood. Any hope of fulfillment gives way to frustration as your mind is filled with thoughts of everything you don’t have, instead of what you do have, which is control of more than you give yourself credit for.

Generally speaking, you’re in control of:

What time you wake up.

What you eat.

What you watch.

How you spend many hours of your week.

And, most importantly,

what you think.

Now, that’s quite a bit of control you have. Isn’t it?

I would venture to guess that over the course of the next several days, if you were to chose to focus your attention on productive ways to handle the above mentioned variables in your life that your personal fulfillment would increase dramatically. That’s not a guess. It will.

Control what you can control and let go of the rest.

Blame is toxic because it leads to inactivity. Responsibility is healthy because it leads to an increase in productivity, which leads to personal growth, which brings fulfillment. Blame makes me dependent on someone to give me the code to life. Responsibility focuses my attention on my capabilities that can be leveraged to learn the code on my own. No one owes me anything, ever.

Blame is difficult to escape because it’s so rampant today. Many groups develop and nourish a scapegoat mentality that only breeds fear, insecurity, and division. Can you think of one such group? Getting caught up in the blame game is so tempting because it’s very easy to talk about others and their problems and rather difficult and rare to focus on your own, but this is exactly what you must do if you’re to be fulfilled.

And if you aren’t living a fulfilled life, then your days are miserable as they’re filled with frustrations about how you believe things should have gone instead of how they are in reality. Again, this isn’t negating suffering, but pity parties are a drudgery, long-term.

Blame is toxic in your life. Personal responsibility, while difficult, is the nourishment your mind needs to find fulfillment and you deserve to be whole, complete, and at rest.

–EP