Taking Radical Responsibility for a Life You Love

Are you fighting for what you really want? Or are you just following breadcrumbs - unsure of where it's all leading?

Are you caught up in what's expected of you today? Or creating the future you actually want?

I truly hope it's the later, Sunshine.

♥️ Living the life I love ♥️ is to inspire you to do just that - to dream up, create, and live a life you truly love, deliberately and with intention, based on your unique combination of gifts and abilities, passions, experiences, and desires.

So please allow yourself the gift of answering this one question...

If you stay on your current trajectory, do you like where it's leading you?

Furthermore, don't just stop at answering the question. I urge - and maybe even push - you to be so bold as to take complete responsibility for your answer so you have the power to make it whatever you wish. Delete all "if's," and "but's" in your responses.

As your thoughts sink in, take responsibility at a much deeper level than most people even consider or wonder about. Here's what I mean.

There's taking responsibility...

Stephen Covey called being response-able being proactive in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - still a chart-topping, best selling book many years after it's original publication. Reading and applying what's inside that book kicked off my journey into personal development in my early 20's - changing my life for the better, forever. 

Taking responsibility means to stop blaming others for your predicament. Responsibility means to acknowledge the decisions YOU made that got you where you are and the role YOU play in what comes next.

Facts are just facts. No more, no less. No, you can't control what's hurled your way. Control is but an illusion anyway. You can indeed, however, choose how you respond to it. Response-able is a great place to start.

And then there's radical responsibility...

 ...a STRICT editing of one's list of demands and priorities to ONLY include your zone of genius and things you value at the highest level, the things that lead you to the outcomes and life you dream of. When you take radical responsibility, you shed all weight of other people's requests for your time, and their opinions about how your life should be and what you should spend it doing. With radical responsibility, you edit that stuff out and the guilt that goes with it, leaving you free.

Free?

Yes!

Free to spend your time and your life in a way that brings you total bliss. Freedom to own your choices, not have them thrust upon you.

And freedom to spend your precious time here in a way you'll be glad you did, not a life full of regrets when you realize all the stuff that wasn't really important after all.

I want to clarify something right away. Radical responsibility does not mean to shirk off "duties" like caring for an elderly parent. It means CHOOSING to IF you want to BECAUSE you want to, not because you "have to" or "should."

Then you get to do so joyfully.

Responsibility and radical responsibility aren't really that different. 

A distinction between the two is...so many of us think and filter requests so that they sound something like...I know (abc) is important and I fully commit to doing it [responsibility]...and I will as soon as I (xyz) (insert some day-to-day to-do, crisis, last minute request, emergency, or duties I *think* I must do but really don't if I stop to think about it.)

And then, said thing takes over and we have little precious time remaining to do the thing that makes our soul sing, the thing we were put here to do.

I'll work on my business after my inbox is empty.

I'll workout after I take care of cleaning the house and doing laundry.

I'll take that class after I finish this last minute request to help so-and-so.

Radical responsibility sounds like...I know (abc) is important and I fully commit to doing it [responsibility]...and I will no matter what. I will put less important things on the back burner or perhaps delete them altogether. I give my time and attention for what I want my life to be about, eliminating the distractions and interruptions that stand in my way.

I hear so many people talk about their dreams and how important they are to them. They'll be so excited; and so will I just listening to them.

And then when we get down to it...I see why they're not making progress. They try to cram the life they want to lead into two or three 30 minute sessions per week. They put it on the back burner - not because they really have to, but because they *think* they have to.

Because that's what good girls and boys do. Well-mannered girls and boys do everything others expect of them and put themselves and their dreams last. (ALERT: These are limiting beliefs.)

So they go around fulfilling these obligations (and they do see them as obligations) of life. 

And the most bizarre part of it is that if those things didn't get done- I'm not sure anyone would even notice. Or worse yet- there is someone waiting in the wings dying to do that thing - it's their dream. Yet, someone who feels obligated holds onto it. 

When you claim your freedom, you just might be giving someone else theirs, too.

What a gift - for yourself, for others, for the world.

Radical responsibility is putting your big girl panties on and dealing with it. All of it. Everything that needs dealing with to have the life you love, no exceptions or free passes for anyone or anything. 

So one more question...if you do not like where your current trajectory is taking you...

What needs to change to put you on a trajectory you are total excited about?

Today is the day to #GoForIt and take RADICAL RESPONSIBILITY for living a life you love. #Live Deliberately, my friends.

Founder, Personal Evolution Co.