The Power of being Responsible

The Power of being Responsible

There are a few things that stand out in my experience over the past 15 years on my journey as a healer and a facilitator of healing for others. One of the main things is about how critical it is to take responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. As long as we are blaming another person, situation, or anything “out there” for whatever problem we may be enjoying then we are blocking our own healing process.

Consider how the act of blaming another for your problem has the effect of giving that other person the power over how you feel. For example, if I have a friend who is always late for things and it makes me angry and creates stress and frustration for me then I am allowing his behavior to affect my feelings. The “logic” here would be that if he were on time then I would feel better. That gives him all the power in how I am feeling in this situation. A healthier approach that puts the power (and responsibility) back with me could be for me to acknowledge how I feel when the person is late and then take actions to get to a place of peace with his behavior without expecting him to change anything. One option would be to quit making plans with him when being on time matters to me. Another could be to communicate with him about it and see if we can find a way that works for both of us. Another would be to just accept it and value the friendship. I could choose not to wait when he was late and just get on with my plans without being upset at him. There are many other ways to accomplish the same result of me being at peace without him changing his behavior. An interesting side effect is that once we no longer have a charge about another person’s behavior then quite often they change that behavior around us!

It has been my experience in working with many different clients over the years with a variety of personal and business issues, that there is always blame going on related to whatever problem they are experiencing. Sometimes the blame is against themselves. Once you can identify where the blame happens to be then things can go much more quickly in healing your situation, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional.

Another rather subtle part of the blame game, is that it can be a slick way to avoid dealing with you own issues and making “out there” responsible for your life so that you don’t have to be. This can be done both consciously and unconsciously and can easily go undetected because so many people are playing this game and supporting one another in it. I recently had a client who had all sorts of apparent physical and emotional problems and one of them was a diagnosis of fibromyalgia and she had constant pain from this. In one of our sessions, she came to the realization that she had this unconscious program going that said “if I am healthy and feel good then I will have to do a job that I hate” , so she had created a way to avoid doing a job that she hated by being too sick to do it. Once she recognized this pattern and that she could be healthy and not have to do the job that she hated, the pain was instantly gone and has stayed gone.

Other examples are “if my boss were only more reasonable with her expectations then I wouldn’t be so stressed out all the time and could be a nicer person” or “if my partner were more considerate then I would be happier” or “if I only had more money then my life would be better”. The list it endless.

If you would like to discover some areas where you are losing power and blocking your own healing process in achieving a happier and healthier life, then I encourage you to take an honest look at where you are blaming another person or situation for some distress in your life and see what you can do to relieve the distress without anything “out there” changing. Once you realize the power (and responsibility) that you have it will take your possibilities to a new level.