Even as I stood there glaring at him through my tear-filled eyes, for one single moment thinking “I hate you more than I can say”, I knew that he was right.
When you receive the truth from a dumbass, it doesn’t mean that the truth isn’t true. And that’s what I was facing at this moment. This is true and it hurts.
What he said was “you need to look inside to find out why this happened, your experience sources from you”.
By the time we were having this discussion I had been practicing this discipline for about ten years. I wanted to be responsible for myself and moreover responsible for my own feelings. Self-Responsibility is a discipline and for me, one that I had to fight for and train for. I felt strongly about teaching my children to own their circumstances and their own lives, no matter how difficult it could be. In order to do this, I had to learn and apply this discipline without failure.
But I didn’t want to hear it from this man, my husband, who had never practiced any type of self-responsibility in his life. We were in a Lifespring training, working on our own human evolution and it wasn’t my business whether he was learning or not. The only thing that was my business was my own learning. And vice versa.
The sad fact of the matter is that, in that ten-year interim, I hadn’t met anyone who understood the concepts surrounding responsibility for self. People just don’t believe that way. I was back in this training room because if you live for ten years believing in concepts that no one else believes, you can start to question those concepts. And I certainly did. I thought maybe there was some mistake. Aren’t there situations where it was someone else’s fault? So here I was in this training room working on my own human evolution, but this time with a husband, who didn’t understand me at all.
My husband was very good at getting people to believe that he understood how to hold himself accountable to his commitments. In reality, not only did he break his commitments, but he didn’t take any responsibility for what he did. From what I remember about us; it was all my fault.
The definition of self-responsibility is accepting your role in your situation and in your thoughts and feelings. It is your decisions that made your life what it is today. It is not an opportunity for self-blame and other-blame. It is merely an understanding of the reality of our lives. It is an opportunity to look within to see hidden motivations and irrational beliefs that explain decisions. Or even merely to reinforce the state of your mental health. There is no time in our lives when we are not responsible for ourselves.
“Self-aware: conscious of the moment and your surroundings, the purpose of getting away from ego is to be self-aware.” “Self-awareness and self-responsibility go hand in hand.” (BHB)
“I can’t get a job because I have to wait for paperwork that will help me.”
Self-aware is “I don’t want a job.”
“I can’t move because it will upset my family.”
Self-aware is “I don’t want to move.”
It’s been 45 years since my first personal growth training. It’s been that long since I became responsible for myself. I don’t doubt it anymore. Just last week my granddaughter called me about her tax return, and she couldn’t understand why someone else had not fixed her problem for her. We are going to have a talk soon. The only item that’s really important for us to talk about is this concept of who is responsible for her taxes and why is she letting overwhelm crush her ability to manage her life?
I don’t blame her. Overwhelm was always my mistake. When you know that no one is going to fix things for you, your approach to life changes. You really do need to stop and figure out how to manage the issues. If you don’t, then the issues begin to manage you.