Take responsibility for your life and you will take control of your life

You feel so much better about yourself even if you only take personal responsibility for your own life. Take responsibility; accept control; move forward.  

Once you accept responsibility for yourself, people will acknowledge and respect that. Those who don't align with your lifestyle, or support you reaching your goals, will weed themselves out in your path to fulfillment. Believe in yourself, push yourself, and learn to accept whatever may come. Become your conductor in life. Rather than feeling the weight of mental weakness, you will soon take initiative and become proactive with your newfound self-esteem. You won't wait on others for answers. You'll look within, find drive and with this decision, move forward.

1. Give yourself the permission to live the life you want.

By taking responsibility for our lives we not only gain control of what happens. It also becomes natural to feel like you deserve more in life as your self-esteem builds. By removing the inner resistance you must feel and think that you actually deserve what you want. You may be able to do a little about that by affirmations and other positive techniques. But the biggest impact by far comes from taking responsibility for yourself and your life.

2. There is always a price to pay.

Not taking responsibility may be less demanding, less painful and mean less time spent in the unknown. It’s more comfortable. You can just take it easy and blame problems in your life on someone else. But there is always a price to pay. When you don’t take responsibility for your life you give away your personal power.

3. Give yourself freedom.

By taking responsibility for yourself, and only yourself, you become aware of the true connection between your inner and outer world.   You are the one and only creator of your life. Taking responsibility for yourself gives you freedom, because it grants you true awareness of your power as a creator. There is no one else to blame for what your life is.  When we take responsibility, we take back control of our experience. 

4. Build your self-esteem.

The big reasons why do people often have self-esteem problems are from not taking responsibility for their lives. Instead someone else is blamed for the bad things that happen and a victim mentality is created and empowered. This damages many vital parts in your life and will not stop until you wise up and take responsibility for your life. This is also a way to stop relying on external validation like praise from other people to feel good about you.  Start building stability within and a sort of inner spring that fuels your life with positive emotions no matter what other people say or do around you.

5. Know the limits of your responsibility.

Taking responsibility for your life is great. But that is also all that you have control over. You can’t control the results of your actions. You can’t control how someone reacts to what you say or what you do. It’s important to know where your limits are in order to avoid a lot unnecessary suffering for yourself and waste energy and focus by taking responsibility for what you can’t and never really could control.

6. Take responsibility of your thoughts, words, and actions.

You must take responsibility for your thoughts, words, and actions. Without taking responsibility for your life, your thoughts often just stay on that mental stage and aren’t translated into action. Taking responsibility for your life is that extra ingredient that makes taking action more of a natural thing. You don’t get stuck in just thinking, thinking and wishing so much. You become proactive instead of passive.

7. Aim to be your best self.

The cause of our problems is not outside of us. We do not need to wait for anyone or anything to happen to change our lives. The beginning of change always lies within us.  By taking full and complete responsibility for both the roots and the fruits in our lives, we will change our lives for the better. If you want your life to change and if you want less to complain about, you are going to need to change how you think. Aims to build your self-esteem to higher levels to gain an inner stability and create your own positive feelings within without the help of validation from other people. You will discover that many smaller problems you experience regularly such as negative thinking, self-defeating behaviour and troubled relationships with yourself and others start to correct themselves as your self-esteem improves.

8. Stop having too much fear.

Fear is like a parasite inside of you, and it feels very threatened by the idea of freedom and of living with conscious awareness.  Be aware of this fear parasite as you learn and grow in wisdom and experience. If you can become aware of how fear uses you to feed itself, you can overcome it by simply being aware. When you become aware of the choices that fear is trying to make for you, you have taken responsibility for yourself, and are one step closer to being completely free. This internal parasite feeds off of drama, judgments, negative emotions and off of your fear of change. 

“One of the greatest challenges in creating a joyful, peaceful and abundant life is taking responsibility for what you do and how you do it. As long as you can blame someone else, be angry with someone else, point a finger at someone else, you are not taking responsibility for your life.”

—Iyanla Vanzant

Writen by Agnes Mbonyiryivuze