How to Get Our Sh** Together (The Power of Personal Responsibility)

Let's talk about personal responsibility and self reliance. Have you ever met somebody who just drives you nuts because you're like, why are they not more responsible and it drives you insane? Or you know, somebody who just, I mean, they just, for whatever reason, cannot stand on their own in life? You're like, could you please make a decision? You know, you go to dinner with somebody like, I don't know, honey, can you tell me what to order? You're like, ah, now we all know somebody like that and some of us have been guilty at some parts of our lives of being that type of person. So let's dial this in. What does personal responsibility really mean and what happens in our lives when we have it? Well, I personally feel that when we are more personally responsible for our own lives, life blooms. You know, a magic enters our life. Not just the magic of confidence and certainty in who we are, but a sense of total truth with what life is supposed to be for ourselves. You know, we are not meant to be victim or apathetic people laying around hoping that something comes along and changes our lives. Because only two things change our lives. Either something new does come into our life and it changes our direction, changes our insight, changes who we are. Maybe we win the lottery, or that lucky white knight comes in and saves your life, you know, or something new comes from within you. And I think what that thing is that comes from within us, that's so powerful, that retakes our life, what is that magic? Personal responsibility. I know that's so similar. It's like almost like it doesn't sound sexy to say be responsible for your life, but I think we have five main responsibilities in our lives. And if we take control of each of these areas of our lives, like a new power comes into our life, a new joy and zest. And I would argue more over time, success, connection, joy, love, abundance, come along with it. And that first thing that we are personally responsible for is our aim, our ambition, our desire, our goal, our dream. I just call it our aim. You know, successful people, they kind of look out there and they say, what is it that I desire of my life? And they go for it. You know, they've set an intention, they have set a direction for who they are and where they're going and what is meaningful to them, who they want to have along with them. I mean, their aim is extraordinarily tight. I mean, they really do see where they're going and what they want. They don't always know the full picture. They just kind of know. I want to be like this. I want to do things like this. And they start along that path. And because they're following their own path, even if they don't know where exactly it goes, they're living the adventurous life. You know, they're entering a new phase of their life where they truly feel like this journey is their own versus just being carried along by their parents or their professors or their peers or their co workers. It's their own. They have their own aim in life. I think we have to take control of that. I think tonight would be a good time for you to sit down and say, okay, what is it I want in the major areas of my life? What is it I truly have an aim and ambition for in my work life, in my relationships, in my sense of spiritual and emotional self, you know, in my physical health and vitality, in, you know, my overall direction in life, you know, what do you want next week to be about? And if you don't know, then you are, quote, unquote, aimless. And when you're aimless, it's pretty easy to feel pretty lost. You know, it's like you kind of wander around and the world is a big, full, big wilderness. That's why in Montana, we always say the time to have the map is before you enter the woods. You know, the world's a big thicket of crazy throngs of people who have all their wants and their wills. And if you don't have your own direction, if you have not set your own life agenda, they will set one for you. So you have to direct your own aim. The second thing you have to direct is your attention. Where is your attention going each moment of the day? The ability to be fully present is really just guiding one's attention to this moment, giving ourselves an alertness and attention, an awareness to the very now that we are experiencing. Right? That's power. When you are more attentive to your life, to the moments that you experience is amazing. But attention also applies to what are we paying attention to overall in our life? And most of us are being guided again by the aims of others. So we are taken from our own attention of what we should be focusing on and stripped away into the distractions of the world. Most people's attentions are not being. They're not paying attention to what they should be paying attention to based on their goals, their desires, their. Their dreams, or their demands and responsibilities of life. They're paying attention to the distraction that showed up. Oh, look, a new Michael Jackson song that happened right before this video, just saying, you know, sometimes we really. We're going to accomplish a lot and go where we want to in our lives and really sense the fullness of this moment. We have to guard our attention from all the garbage that can come in and sweep it away. You know, I think the third thing that we are absolutely responsible for in our lives, when we take responsibility of this thing, life absolutely explodes in joy. And that's our attitude. How are you meeting life? Are you meeting life, you know, energized and alive and buoyant and excited and enthusiastic and positive? You can't wait for the next moment to unfold. Or you're like, well, here we go again. And you know, these people, have you seen them? I see them watch people when they walk down the street. Damn light. It's like they're so upset. It's like their attitude stinks so bad that I can't stand to be around them. It's just like they're just. Just emanating nasty, dark, bad energy in the world. And why? Because they chose to. And some people say, no, Brendan Nolan would choose that. Yeah, they did. They chose to have a bad attitude just enough over a period of time that became part of their personality, that their attitude now is just fixed. It is closed. It is angry, upset, or bordering on the negative emotional qualities of life rather than realizing the incredible magic and experience that we all have available to us each and every single moment of the day. There's a lot of magic around here, you know? And when you sense that when your attitude is open, you're allowing yourself to learn. When your attitude is open, you're allowing yourself to connect with other people when your attitude is open. Finding happiness isn't something you do. You create it. You choose the attitude of happiness. You don't have to have happiness. You generate. You don't have to have good energy today. You generate it. I would say the power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy. And you yourself are generating an attitude. It was not fixed on you. Everything we've learned in psychology over the years that you can literally change your attitude just by controlling your thoughts and directing them in a new, positive, healthy, social ways. Why not do that? You all deserve to have a good attitude. It's a choice. Just like happiness is a choice. It's a choice. Choose to have a good attitude. I think you know that fourth thing. If we're talking about directing your aim, we're talking about making sure that your attention is focused on the things that should be and that you're directing your attitude. The fourth thing that we get to direct is our affections. Our affections in terms of our emotional quality in life, but also those that we care for. You know, we should take responsibility for the amount of love that we're giving our loved ones. We should control the amount of emotion that we have throughout the day. Not to control it and stifle it, but to allow the beauty of it to come up. To allow ourselves to feel affectionate towards other human beings. To allow ourselves to feel affectionate for causes, to allow ourselves to feel affectionate for Mother Nature and our planet and our God, you know, to allow that emotional connection, that affection. That happens when we care deeply about something again. And a lot of people, you know, they got hurt a couple times in their life, so they shut off. They close down. They're like, I'm out. And they stopped allowing that beautiful part of their lives. It takes a lot of responsibility to allow ourselves to love. Because, you know, it's so much easier to shut down, take no responsibility whatsoever. Become a victim, Become very upset. Because, you know, when we're a victim, we don't have to be responsible. It's somebody else's deal. They have the power. They took the power over us, whisked away all our goodness, and now we can just be upset and angry. That's such an easy route for people to take, Demanding that we take control of our emotional reality and the affections we have for others and other things that brings about risk. If you heighten the affection you give to somebody, they might hurt you. So love is never hurt, ever. Maybe your ego gets trounced a little bit. Maybe you feel sad for a couple moments, but at the end of the day, what's life? It's supposed to be a bland, colorless universe where we don't get to experience the heights and the joys and the rainbows and the gifts of love. I don't think so. I think affection is something that we can all choose to have and feel and cultivate in our lives. If we are not overcome with emotion once in a while for somebody, then we're not thinking about the beauty in other people. If we're not overcome with emotion and disconnection and we just want to grab someone and kiss them all over the face, then you know what? We're not paying attention to people anymore. We've gotten too trapped in our own thing. Other people, they should fascinate us. We should be excited to meet them. We should look out into the world and say, wow, you know, there's so many people, they're all so different. What an incredible zest that we get. You know, our brain is hardwired to love novelty. Well, guess What? We got 7 billion people who can give us that dopamine drip just by talking to them and connecting real emotion with them. Again, let's do that. I think that fifth thing people need to be personally responsible for in our lives is action. Right? Our behaviors. What is it that we are doing each and every single day? Right? Taking responsibility for our actions because they are adding to our character and they are adding to our destiny. Who we become is a result of our disciplined actions, not our random thoughts initiatives that we do once in a while to respond to something. But what do I want to be about? And being disciplined about being that, what do I want to achieve? Being disciplined about achieving that, what do I want to give or serve? And being disciplined about giving and serving in those ways. When we do that, something completely changes. We get a remarkable amount of momentum and progress in our lives, our personal responsibility in being able to control our actions and and guide them towards healthy and positive outcomes for ourselves. That gives us extraordinary confidence. It gives us an extraordinary sense of progress in life. And we're confident in who we are, and we're confident in our progress towards where we are moving. Then it's a lot easier to sense that magical element called happiness. And it all comes from being responsible for those five things. Our aim, our attitude and intentions, our affections, and ultimately our actions we take each day. Because look at the opposite. Look at those who have no aim in life. Look at those who have not controlled their attitude. So they've just taken on and imbued the negative emotional attitude of those around them. Look at those who cannot control their attention during a day. How much do they accomplish? Look at those people who have no affection for other people and they do not control their emotions at all in positive ways. And look at those who are not directing their actions intentionally. What happens? They always end up derailing their life. They end up lost somewhere. They end up frustrated. They end up irresponsible for not only their own lives, but often for the lives of those who they are entrusted to care for. So personal responsibility, it's a big thing. But now you master those five elements of your life, you bring intentionality to those five elements of your life. And like I said at the beginning, life blooms. An extraordinary new quality of experience comes into our lives. We feel an incredible spark and zest about it each day. We feel what we call the charged life.