Fate and Personal Karma: All About Taking Full Responsibility For Your Life

The American Heritage dictionary defines fatalism as “The doctrine that all events are determined by fate and are therefore unalterable.” To us, fatalism is more forgiving. We have found through our long-term empirical research that at least 75% of everyone’s key life circumstances are predetermined. The type of financial standing, love life, recognition and fame, personal adversity, life purpose, and more, and the related timing; we think it’s all part of your unique personal destiny.

Fatalism in its Proper Perspective

Fatalism can be the predisposition that someone will over-indulge in and become addicted to sugar and nicotine, for example, and therefore incur serious health problems.

Fatalism, seen through comprehensive astrology and numerology, and intuitive readings, consists of general inclinations, and sometimes specific circumstances, such as an alcoholic parent, strife within the family between siblings, three difficult romantic breakups or divorces, two kids, a dynamically successful self-employment career involving publishing, or shrewd investing yielding vast abundance.

You Can Improve Your Life Even With the Most Challenging Fate

Even with the most dire personal fate, you have some freedom within your karmic plan to strive toward a better life. Additionally, we are convinced that much of predestination involves taking the right action at the right time, utilizing your free will; we believe fate and free will are intimately connected. Yet many times, significant events happen in your life no matter what you do. As the saying goes, the way to make God laugh is to make plans.

We always advocate the following life philosophy: understand yourself to the point of knowing your personal fate, deal with the hand you’ve been dealt (by your higher-self, your soul) constructively, take care of your responsibilities, and do everything you can with your free will to enhance your life.

Karma and Fatalism Aren’t Excuses to Avoid Responsibility

Unfortunately, too many people mistakenly think they have 100% free will while dismissing the belief in karma and predestination as a way to dodge obligations, commitments, and taking responsibility for their lives. Some people have the wrong idea about the topic of “fatalism” and “believing in karma.” They erroneously believe that karma is “...merely an excuse (like the will of God) to never take charge of your life and actually do something.” Or they may say that it’s just a tricky way to avoid taking responsibility because the person is too cowardly to act.

While some people on this planet (e.g., in select non-Weste
countries where Eastern religions prevail) believe in and practice absolute fatalism, meaning they believe they have zero free will to influence their life, all superstition aside, by and large the rest of the human race believes it is possible to improve their lives (at least to some degree) through appropriate action. “Control over one’s destiny” is another way in modern times to say "taking action to make a better life.”

Fatalism doesn’t have to mean 100% of everything in your life, even what you decide to have for desert, is fated. That’s silly. Equally silly is a lot of praying and, or visualizing without taking any concrete, efficient action toward your goals, or setting unrealistic goals.

Acceptance of Karma Equates to Taking Full Responsibility For Your Life

Most rational people today who believe in the notion of karma understand that embracing the idea of karma is all about taking responsibility for everything about your life. There’s nothing cowardly about, for example, forgiving those who have hurt you, healing yourself, accepting that you may have had the negativity coming to you (since you know that what goes around comes around even if it finally comes around from, for instance, 70 lifetimes ago), and not placing the blame on someone else.

Americans mostly believe that consistent, efficient effort makes for a better life, and we believe it does too, within the confines of personal fate. But don’t deceive yourself out of overbearing pride that you can “be or become anything you want.” You can if the desire matches your path, but life doesn’tnalways work that way (total free will) despite what many self-help "authorities" might tell you.

That might sound unpleasant, but we believe you’ll agree, in time, it’s ultimately far more unpleasant to be led astray on the New Age path of illusion. Being sold New Age snake-oil is something you want to avoid, no matter how enticingly poetic and heartfelt the sales-pitch might sound to you.

Fatalism Includes Rewards Too

Occasionally there is an innately talented and intelligent person who works his or her way up from ground zero to accomplish great things, but this is all in the realm of fatalism too, in our view—big things happen because they are fated to happen. Success, good fortune, and failure is relative to your karmic plan. Hang in there and make the most of your life, it’s within your fate to do so.

Scott Petullonhttp://www.scottpetullo.com

Stephen Petullonhttp://www.holisticmakeover.com

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo