You MUST accept personal responsibility, you and only you are responsible for the outcomes. -Darren Hardy
I want to take a second and talk to you guys about personal responsibility. We live in a day and age that continually loves to toss blame around. Millennials want to blame the Baby Boom generation for saddling them with insurmountable debt. Baby Boomers want to blame the Millennials for being lazy and entitled. Husbands want to blame wives, sisters want to blame brothers, students want to blame teachers, teachers want to blame parents…the list goes on and on. No matter what, it seems that just about everyone wants to look anywhere else but in the mirror to find the reason for their circumstances. Here in America we have a media that loves to celebrate every single polarizing injustice but refuses to celebrate the millions of kind acts that happen daily. We are surrounded by negative news and we are negative as a result (see what I did there?).
I think there is a very distinct reason why. Blaming someone else is easy. It’s easy to absolve yourself from any responsibility if it’s always “the Man” holding you down. After all, how can you ever hope to get anywhere in a life dominated by the “Insiders”, the “Illuminati”, the “Military Industrial Complex”, the “White Privilege”, the “Glass Ceiling”. Now please understand I’m not saying that the playing field is fair…not by a long shot. Trying to dissect the landscape of fair opportunity would be a topic all on its own. I’m not denying that rules favor the few over the many. What I am saying, is once you understand this, then you can figure out how to play the game. According to Thomas J. Stanley, author of “The Millionaire Next Door” 80% of millionaires are 1st Generation millionaires, what he calls the “nouveau riche”. Let that sink in for a second. 8 out of every 10 millionaires DID NOT inherit vast fortunes from dead relatives! How is this possible in a world plagued by barrier after barrier? Personal Responsibility.
Look what I’m about to say may offend some of you, hell it may offend most of you. Perhaps I’m jaded by a 20 year Air Force career where all I saw was BLUE or GREEN who knows? What I do know is this, until you are willing to look yourself in the mirror and say “I REFUSE to be victimized” you will be stuck in the paralysis of every other thing holding you down. Now I’m sure most of you are saying, that’s easier said than done and you’re damn right!! I never once said this would be easy. As a very proud man, swallowing my pride is a very hard thing to do. It’s not going to be easy, in fact at times it will seem damn near impossible. However you MUST understand that you cannot control life’s many externalities, variables, walls or “curve balls”…the ONLY thing you can control is how you choose to react. Will you be victimized or will you claw your way back to the path that you were on or forge a new one altogether?! The choice is ALWAYS yours!
Simple yes, easy no. It boils down to this: the only path to true liberation is through your decision to take personal responsibility and change your mindset. Start telling yourself: you are not overweight because of McDonald’s, you are overweight because of YOUR CHOICES. You are not unhappy with your marriage because of your spouse, you are unhappy because of YOUR CHOICES. It’s not the “boogie mans” fault you are unsuccessful, you are unsuccessful because of YOUR CHOICES. Take responsibility, stand the hell up, dust it off and soldier on! Make the choices you need to make to affect the outcome you are looking for! You are going to cross that road, whether you have to run or crawl across it, dig under it or fly over it. Don’t be the majority of those that CHOOSE to stand there with their excuses, BE the LEADER! BE YOU, DO YOU and I’ll see you on the other side!
ASP Fit-Life 