“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.”
~Carol Burnett

Talk about personal responsibility and personal accountability. No one can change my life for me…no one is responsible for what I achieve and how I live, but me. I like these words.

So often we find ourselves waiting – waiting for things to get better, for people to get better, for times to get better. Waiting for our boss to give us a promotion so that we can excel, our loved ones to change their behavior so that we can be happier, or our colleagues to get their act together so that we don’t have to keep cleaning up their messes. I believe Dr. Seuss, in Oh, the Places You’ll Go! calls this “the waiting place.” It’s a place where people get stuck – waiting, blaming, and often complaining.

No one is responsible for my life and what happens to me but me. (For that matter, no one is responsible for your life and what happens to you but you.) No one can step into my life, my work, or my home and make it all better. That’s my job, if I choose to do it. This gives me absolute freedom to excel (as well as absolute freedom, at times, to fall on my face). It offers me the ability to change my life by living each day as if what I do matters – because my daily do’s and don’ts make up my life. I no longer have to wait for someone or something else; this yields me the possibility, endless possibility, of changing my life to what I want it to be.

Identify a point where you are in “the waiting place” and stop waiting. Get out there and make a change for which you’ve been waiting.

Where are you abdicating responsibility for the changes you want in your life? Where can you take back your power and make changes for yourself?
Please leave a comment.

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