Own it!

Its your fault.  Don't bother blaming someone else, because the fault is yours.  One of my favorite sayings is "own it."  What I mean by this is that you should stop blaming the people around you for whatever is going wrong in your life.  If you screwed it up, own it.  If you reacted badly when someone else screwed it up, own it.  If you're harboring a grudge, or a lingering emotional wound from something that someone did to you, this is on you, not on them.  Own it!

I read an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago.  Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was asked if his dad had any responsibility for his struggles with drug addiction.  His dad blew pot smoke in his face when he was 4, and was there when he did coke for the first time at age 13.  I bet most people would blame their dad if he did those things, then they ended up struggling with addiction.  Mr. Kiedis does not.  He accepts that the choices were his own.  He owned it.

If your choice is to live your life on purpose; to intentionally create the life that you want to live, you have to accept personal responsibility for your life.  This includes the bad stuff.  It is so much easier to blame others when we are not happy, but where is that really going to get you?

Its hard to accept the responsibility for your own happiness, because it means that if you're not happy, its up to you to fix it.  This is not easy to accept, especially if you have created the habit of blaming others.

We have all been hurt by others, but what does it accomplish to spend your time wishing it hadn't happened, or being angry at the person who hurt you?  What good is that doing anyone?  Live your life on purpose.  Realize that the pain you experienced will make you a stronger person if you allow it to.  Decide how to use the pain to grow.  You didn't choose to be hurt, but you get to choose how you react to it.  What will your choice be?  How will that choice affect your life long term?

Here's an example from my own life.  Last year, I was thinking about why I always feel unfulfilled by my accomplishments.  No matter what I did, I felt that I could have done better and that I should not feel proud of my achievement.  For a couple of months, I really listened to the little voice in my head.  I wanted to hear exactly what it was saying.

I figured it out.  It sounded exactly like my dad when I was a kid.  My dad was incapable of giving a compliment without adding on a dig.  No matter what I did, I shouldn't feel good about it because I should have done more, or better.  Even though he had stopped doing it when I was 15 (that's another story) I had internalized the behavior, and I had been doing it to myself ever since.

So what's to be done?  Blame my dad?  Get mad about it?  How about, own it!  I was doing this to myself, and that was no one's fault but my own.  I decided to stop my little voice from talking to me that way, and I figured the best way to do it would be to set a very challenging goal for myself, and give myself permission to feel proud when I achieved it.  And that is the reason I am currently training for a triathlon.

Will you own it?  Will you take responsibility for your own life and your own happiness, instead of blaming others?  Are you ready to be happy, but accept the work that comes with it?  I gotta tell you, it feels pretty good.