If you are in a hurry and running late for work, you want the bus to move at 200 kilometers per hour. Or you want to borrow Harry Potter’s wand so you can make other cars disappear to make way for your car. Imagine if you have X-Men Storm’s power to control the weather and drive away typhoons and hurricanes and will the rain or the Sun to come to your place.

Too bad you can’t. You would still be late for work. The weather will continue to be erratic and will depend on the whims and processes of Planet Earth. And the Red-Yellow-and-Green traffic lights will continue to appear according to the appointed time. Oh well, so much for human will controlling the elements of the world.

We cannot control the weather, the traffic light, some of our circumstances and what do you know. Other people! We don’t know how to read minds and control them to our drive for world domination! (There are ways to control people but that would be the subject of another post.)

But you can control your life if you only knew where to look and how to do it.

Negative emotions bombard us daily. The grumpy officemate. The difficult boss. The nagging spouse. The co-dependent friend. The a**hole driver in the highway. The gloomy weather. Name it, it’s there waiting for you at every turn.

image credit: www.schoolweb.dysart.org

If you don’t know how to shut the negative emotions out, you’ll end up being controlled by the actions and emotions of other people and circumstances.

You lose personal responsibility and personal power!

Steven Stosny said:

The first step toward personal responsibility — and true personal power — is to realize that if you do not reduce the amount of emotional pollution in your environment, you will certainly contribute to it, at least indirectly.

What exactly can you control?

Take control of your emotions and moods. When you’re feeling down and gloomy, it’s easy to fall prey to your emotions and be lethargic and sluggish. But it’s quite difficult to control emotions. How do you overcome sadness and moodiness? By taking control of something else–your actions.

Take control of your mind and your actions! It is much easier to control your hands and your feet rather than your emotions. That’s why you gotta keep moving and doing what you’ve set out to do no matter what your emotion is. Sometimes, you gotta trust past decisions and act on them blindly instead of getting discouraged by your present circumstances.

Take control of your decisions. If you don’t make decisions for yourself, other people will. So to make sure that you get what you want, you had better decide for yourself and claim personal responsibility for your future and for your success.

Other people (and circumstances) can easily override your decisions, actions and even emotions. The controlling father or mother. The obsessive-compulsive boss. The unexpected sickness. If you want to be the “victim” of your circumstances, by all means, blame other people. Blame the recession. Blame God. Blame your parents. Blame the world!

But that won’t change anything won’t it?

Here’s Dr. Wayne Dyer’s take on blame (taken from davesoucy.com

“All blame is a waste of time.

No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.

You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.”

Don’t waste your time blaming others. Take personal responsibility and do something about it.

Have you been having any issues on personal responsibility lately? What are your usual excuses from taking responsibility. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Check out these blogs dealing with personal responsibility:

Financial Personal Responsibility by FiscalGeek
Personal Responsibililty and Health by HealthUniversity
Personal Responsibility and Abundance Mentality by MakingHerHappy
Fingerpointing and Personal Responsibility by James Shiffer of StarTribune Blogs

These books can help you learn more about personal responsibility: