352 I Take Full Responsibility For My Life | December 2017 Monday Week 4

Mindful Mondays-#352 December 18 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast I Take Full Responsibility For My Life “I don’t want excuses. I know what you’re up against. We’re all of us up against something. So you better make up your mind, because until you have the balls to look me straight in the eye and tell me this is all you deserve, I am not letting you fail. Even if that means coming to your house every night until you finish the work. I see who you are. Do you understand me? I can see you. And you are not failing.” – Erin Gruwell, from the movie Freedom Writers This quote from the movie Freedom Writers is based upon a true story of a teacher who’s given the task of teaching at-risk students…or what some have termed as the untouchables.  I really like this quote, and it’s a wonderful thing to have someone believe in us that much…but I want to pose the question of: how do we believe that much in ourselves first? I was thinking about an acronym to use for the word excuse and I came up with this: EXCUSE—   Enjoys eXtinguishing   Chances   Under   Silly   Elaborations Most of us have heard the saying, “If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a reason…if you don’t…you’ll find an excuse.” But yet it’s easy to forget that reasoning when we’re in the moment. It’s easier to place the blame or direction elsewhere instead of taking responsibility for what has happened. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to take all of the blame, it just might mean that maybe we need more time, we need to find a better way to work on something, or maybe that we look deeper and ask ourselves if we really gave a valiant effort in making whatever we set out to do…a reality. I spent some time trying to find words to match the letters, so the acronym could be complete crap, but I think there’s a lot of truth in those words because when we use excuses we are essentially finding joy in using excuses. We love extinguishing our future chances by conditioning ourselves to be comfortable in excuses rather than taking the uncomfortable hit of responsibility when things go wrong. We find silly and unnecessary ways to elaborate why it’s ok to stay in our failures…rather than create results. And so excuses feel natural, the more we use them. I read an article by a man named Jim Collins who wrote the books Good to Great and Built To Last. And in his books he talked about how major companies become so successful. And some of the points I remember him making, I wanted to bring up in this specific podcast on excuses: The egg principle. Jim talked about the world will see an egg, and it looks uninteresting. It looks like every other egg out there unremarkable and ordinary. Until the egg hatches and a little chick pops out and people are amazed. So while people see this miraculous thing happen, and it seems instantaneous looking at it from the outside…the chick had a different point of view. It had been struggling and working to break itself out of its mold. It wasn’t magic or instantaneous, as the baby chicken kept growing and pecking at its problem to create a better solution to its tight situation. If you looked at two companies who went through the same traumatic event…people would respect them differently by how the company responded to the tragedy. So take for example when the economy was in a huge recession, the first company would say that their issues were because of the recession, but don’t worry things will pick up eventually. Where the second company wouldn’t make any excuses. They would talk about where they went wrong and how they could have performed better even in a down economy, and while it’s unfortunate what happened…they are going to learn from these lessons to become better. Now after hearing that, what company sits better with you? I could be going out on a limb making an assumption for you, but I would guess you’d have more respect for company two. They didn’t make excuses of external factors. They said we could have done better, we could have planned better, and while it’s unfortunate…we will rise up from learn from this to become better. Excuses weaken you. They are small lies we tell ourselves to take us off the hook. And the more we allow them to seep in our lives, then the more natural they become to us. Now it doesn’t mean we have to take responsibility for everyone…but it does mean we may need to begin operating differently in how we go about our lives. I know I want to be valued on my word, I know I want to be respected when I make a mistake instead of deflecting it somewhere else, and I know I want to grow from my mistakes instead of removing myself from responsibility. I talk a lot about making mistakes and being ok with them, so today let’s be willing to rid ourselves of the excuses by holding ourselves to a higher standard. Mistakes are inevitable, but how we decide to handle them will make all the difference in our lives. So how do you want to live your life? Do you want to be putting the control somewhere else placing the blame somewhere else, or do you want to be in control of your life taking responsibility for the mistakes and the wins…learning from them to become a better you? In every moment you have a choice….you can hold yourself to a higher standard…or you can shirk responsibility and become weaker in the process because of it. I hope that we all choose a little more wisely in how we handle our mistakes from now on Today’s Personal Commitment:When something goes wrong, where is your natural tendency to put blame? None of us are perfect, and even if we take a good amount of responsibility for our mistakes there may be a few spots that we’ve fallen short on. So get out a piece of paper, and write down some of the big mistakes you’ve made over your life time. Also look at some of the unfortunate situations you’ve gone through and write them down. And see how you handled those areas of your life. Why did they happen first of all, and what was the story you told after they happened? Did you try to excuse yourself from the problem, did you try to place blame elsewhere, was there something better you could have done and learned from them? If we don’t look at how we think when mistakes happen, what our most automatic response is and did we follow through with that thought process…then we will be doomed to allow our emotions to continually control us…instead of allowing our mind to process how we want to feel, and then following through in a manner that is more in alignment with how we want to be. I Take Full Responsibility For My Life     Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together, Personal Development Life Coach- Chris O'Hearn Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247     Music by: - Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. - I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide