73: Personal Responsibility is the WORST

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Welcome to Grief and Guts. I'm your host, Melissa Dugulecki. It is my honor and privilege to serve you by sharing stories, tools, interviews and strategies that will help you transition from what do I do now?

How do I get through this?

Those feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty to.

Truly standing in your power.

From my grief journey in losing my daughter laden in 2014 that I learned, practiced, was exposed to all these tools, but they are not grief specific. In fact, they apply universally to all of our unique situations. You've already done the hard part by showing up, by opening up to something new. So without any further ado, let's get to the good stuff that's going to help you in your journey. Let's dive in.

All right, guys, we are sprinting into a topic that is actually a marathon.

We are not going to cover it all today.

I went deep in it this morning with our move community, with the women that we support who are committed to changing their life. They do mindset work, gut health, fitness and nutrition. And you know, a big thing that has been coming up with this time in our life when arguably our government, our world, isn't taking enough responsibility for us to feel clear on what we're supposed to do or how we're supposed to act or what boundaries we're supposed to set that it puts more on us. And I always say in grief, and I have said on here before, that what we're experiencing now in coronavirus and Covid is essentially collective grief, right? In many ways. And so what grief does is it doesn't create anything new. We don't come up with any new tricks or toys. It puts a magnifying glass on it. And so right now we have a magnifying glass on this, like, weirdness, this difficulty around personal responsibility. Now, all I want to do today is just introduce you to the topic and leave you some time to think about how it integrates in your life so we can go deeper at a later time. Now, Louise Hay, she is an amazing researcher, writer and pioneer in self growth and self development. And she really coined the term to my knowledge, first that I saw and who I have studied it the most under her work, personal responsibility. And I said today on the call, I don't like it because in my background, maybe because my background's in education, but when I hear like, personal responsibility, I feel like I'm getting detention. Like, I feel like I'm being blamed. And it actually is kind of built into the definition of responsibility. So I might challenge you guys who are movers like, maybe we need to come up with our own definition of this concept. So let's not worry about the word of it so much, or our own title, rather, right. Of the concept. But the idea of personal responsibility is that we take full responsibility and ownership, like ownership of what we need to do for our own energy. We take full ownership of our own energy. I first learned this after losing Laden and I was like, wait, I said this in a podcast recently. I said, you know, I. I just lost my daughter in a case turned to catastrophe. Now I have to take responsibility for my grief and how I heal and how I feel better and how I channel this. I can. No, right? All I wanted was for other people to take care of me and take. Carry my grief for me. I did not want to carry my grief. So I can tell you firsthand it was only because I carried my grief, not on my own. I want to be very clear with that. I had a grief coach, I had grief groups, I read, I traveled, I listened to podcasts, right? Largely in part why I started this. There weren't enough supports out there. It wasn't that I took responsibility in the sense that I didn't allow and help. It was that I actually took in responsibility to allow help.

Right?

I took responsibility for saying, what do I need to change? How am I going to do it? How am I going to enlist the supports to do it? So personal responsibility is this concept of us fully owning our energy. It's this idea if somebody else triggers an emotion in us. Our first question is, what is that triggering? Not how could that person do that?

Right?

If somebody doesn't meet our expectation? And guys, I talked about this in a podcast episode recently on dealing with disappointment. When we're disappointed, our first question isn't how could that person do that? Our first question is, what was my expectation? And the next question is, if your expectation was spot on, right aligned, then it's did I give the person the tools I need them to do? And then it's, do I need to create a boundary, right. With this person?

Right.

Or this situation? Personal responsibility isn't blaming ourselves. I had to. I actually blamed myself more for Leighton's death before I took personal responsibility for my healing. It was actually easier for me to blame myself, beat myself up, and go into this place of like, this is all my fault, right? That was actually easier than to be able to understand and acknowledge what happened and to just move forward without there being blame or fault. Even with our case being termed a catastrophe, Personal responsibility is being able to own our own energy, know that if we're not feeling happy, if we're not feeling good, it's no one else's job to change our state. And with that, it's embracing the idea that it's no one else's privilege to do it either.

Right?

It's breaking free of dependent relationships. That was something I had a history of. It's establishing boundaries. That was something I didn't do well. So I'm sharing this because I don't want anyone to hear this and put shame or guilt on themselves and say, like, oh, why don't I do this? What's wrong with me? It's a process. We're not conditioned in our world to take personal responsibility. In fact, our world undermines our ability to do so. Our world tells us you need so and so to come into your life, to live happily ever after. You need this designer bag to show your status. You need this number of garage doors to show that you've made it. You need X amount in your bank account, X amount on your scale. Our world puts the responsibility everywhere else for our happiness. And then we wonder why we're not happy. And what I want to do, what I want to hold space for is for you guys to recognize it's all about our energetic state inside, right? And it's knowing that it might be our responsibility to have a difficult conversation. It's not our responsibility to manage someone else's reaction. So it might be our responsibility to have that difficult conversation, but it's not our responsibility to manage their reaction or to carry that that comes into boundaries. We have been talking without calling out personal responsibility since this podcast started. There is an episode on boundaries. There is an episode on disappointment. There's an episode on relationships and growth. It all hits this concept, and now I'm calling it out more loudly because what I see happening in our world is putting a magnifying glass on this fear that masks the power of fully owning our energy. All right, I'll say that again. The fear that masks the power of fully owning our energy. I want to encourage you to step into full ownership of your energy without blaming or shaming or guilting with doing the very best you can one day at a time, and of beginning to release the things you can't control, the people we can't control, the circumstances we can't control. And with refraining from giving your worthiness away. Don't let society take it. Don't let anyone else be responsible for your worthiness. Don't let anyone else be responsible for you feeling like you're good enough. I mean a person, a product, a number on the scale, a number on the bank account. Don't give away your power. So perhaps you guys will join me and together we can rename this concept and teased out, of course, always in honor of Louise Hay. I believe so much in you and your growth and I know that this is not easy stuff. This is deep and it is so worth it. Trust me. I did not want to take personal responsibility for my grief. It was only through doing that that not only did I own it for my grief, but I began to own it for my life. And truly, it is in my greatest loss that I was saved. So in honor of my daughter Laden, I share this. I shine this. Because even saying those words out loud, there is still that human aspect that I want to guilt and blame myself for not knowing this sooner. But I didn't. And that is largely why I'm educating and sharing here. I know the power of it. I believe in it. I believe in you. And I promise to always have these honest conversations so we can continue to grow together. Think about what this means to you. Think about how it integrates. Think about where the resistance is. Think about where you feel annoyed, frustrated, sad, scared, overwhelmed. Those are the places to do the work.

Begin journaling doing the work.

Send me thoughts you have, whatever you want. We will continue to dive in and untangle this. And in the meantime, I am sending you all so much love.

Thank you all so much for being here at Grief and Guts as Layden's mom. Being able to spread the stories, the strategies, the lessons I have learned through Layden and from Layden is the thing that means the most to me in this world. And I love allowing my daughter's short life to have long and lasting impact.

By shining her light.

Truly, nothing means more if you align with and believe in the work that we're doing here in these messages. The best way to give back and to spread this out into the world is to rate and review on Spotify and on itunes. Thank you for taking just a moment to do that. Feel free to shoot me a message. Let me know what you want to hear more of, what you want to see more of. I know here to serve. I'm grateful to do so and I'm.

Cheering you on in your journeys. Always.