Personal Responsibility

Hi All,

Thank you so much to those of you who took an interest in my initial blog kickoff and to those of you who are joining me for this one. Just to reiterate my vision for this blog; it is my attempt to encourage others to begin making changes in their lives such that they can begin living their authentic lives. I use the term authentic life to describe living a life that is in line with your heart’s desire. I believe it is the only way to find true fulfillment, which is something that I believe a lot of us are searching for, whether we recognize it or not.

I don’t think living your authentic life has to mean, though it could, uprooting your current life.  Also, living your authentic life doesn’t necessarily mean going after the only dream you’ve ever had for yourself, though, again, it could. I recently watched Oprah interview Rob Lowe and I think he made a pretty profound statement when he said, (paraphrasing) “If you would have asked me in my early 20s what my dream was, I would have said being in a Martin Scorsese film, but God had other plans.” He went on to say that his life’s dream was met through his loving and committed relationship with his best friend and wife of 23 plus years. I thought the statement was beautiful and profound on multiple levels. It showed that sometimes (many times) the initial dreams we set for ourselves are not necessarily the answers to our happiness and it shows that perspective is everything. He could have easily written his story about the same events very differently but he had the foresight not to do so. He could have lived his life feeling he had never been validated as an actor because he was never cast in a Scorsese film. He could have seen his marriage as settling since it wasn’t the same as achieving his initial life dream, but he didn’t. The point that I’m trying to make is that everything, and I absolutely mean everything, is based on perception and we control/choose our perspective based on the story we choose to associate with the events that take place in our lives. Perception is the meaning that we give to a set of events. The events themselves are neutral until we assign a meaning to them. And it is from that meaning that we create our entire life perspective.

To me, that choice is taking personal responsibility for our lives. It’s extremely empowering and depending on how you’ve painted your own life story, it can be quite scary. Sometimes it appears easier to hide behind our stories, never recognizing that we’ve unconsciously placed ourselves as the victim in our own story. Today’s video blog is about realizing you have a choice in painting the story of your life, so why not take responsibility for the choice and paint the story that you want?

Click here to watch the video!