#1 Secret to Taking Full Responsibility for Your Life

Thoughts are things, right? There's an energy out there. Words, thoughts, memories, how you tune yourself, what you remember. You may discover, many of you, that if you did this with somebody home, when you go to communicate with them, they may feel something different. I know that sounds airy, fairy, but I found it over and over again to be true. And you got some good practice. What culture do we live in today? Blame. If there's a problem, find somebody to blame and attack them. Because what blame allows you to do is step away from your own vulnerability of what you may have done to make this happen. And the great thing about the Sopo Ono is you're not beating yourself up because you had nothing to do with it, but you can still take responsibility as part of the collective. That's the power of it. Now, if we want to make progress, one of the most important new habits is for you to learn to blame effectively. Because I know I could never convince you not to blame. So I'm not going to try to get you not to blame, but we're going I teach you how to blame effectively, elegantly, consciously blame people. What does that mean? It means if there's someone, how many of somebody out there that has done something that's unjust or unfair to you, in your mind, it doesn't matter what color you are, what gender you are, what your sexual preference is, what country you're from, what your religion is. We are tribal as human beings, and when people are different and people are uncertain, they move into their tribe. I'm not suggesting it's good, I'm just suggesting it's real. Now we can go beyond our conditioning and have a level of consciousness that isn't survival consciousness, and we're not in survival. You can experience love with strangers. You can have experience. I'm not talking about sexual love. I mean just love, a connection, a caring for someone you don't even know. But if you want to have the most progress in your life, the most important thing is learning how to blame effectively. So what do I mean by blaming effectively? Well, some of you have a story about some injustice in your life, and the story may be totally true. However, your story about what it means is not true. Life gives us experiences that are extremely unpleasant at times, is always a call to adventure, It's a call to growth. It's the hero's call. The hero's journey is nothing but taking what you're used to and getting out of your comfort zone and entering a world of uncertainty where you will grow, you will not grow in A world of certainty when you know what's going to happen, how it's going to happen, where it's going to go. There's no growth in that. That's also why there's no passion if there's not uncertainty. Quality of my life is in direct proportion to the amount of what uncertainty I can comfortably live.

So my friend over here, who used to think he had ocd, was just very addicted to certainty, and as a result, his life would be very limited. He can help others by valuing some uncertainty because all passion is found in the realm of uncertainty. All aliveness is found in the realm of uncertainty. Certainty is the basis, the basic human need. It's a survival need. But most of us in this room are far from survival, although we will act like it sometimes because our brain can be triggered. And what triggers it. And by the way, trigger. I hate the term trigger, but I use it because it's natural, used in the culture all the time. The word trigger actually comes for someone who's had a true trauma, like somebody who's had ptsd, and they get triggered. Now, we use that term for anything somebody says we don't like, which is absurd. That is not a trigger. But we'll use the word in the way people use it. The bottom line is you want to make it so you de trigger yourself, not try to change the world to do that. The only way you can do that is if you take 100% what responsibility for whatever you're experiencing. Not 100% responsibility for whatever happens to you. 100% responsibility for your experience of it. So someone can do something horrific and you don't have to experience it as horrific. You can experience it as unpleasant and a learning experience and move on. Or you can take it for the rest of your life and say, I'm scarred by this, by the way. Show me scar. There is no scar. But when you say I'm scarred by that, scars don't go away. But the truth is, it's not a scar. Remember, whatever language you use, much of it locks you in place. You're only stuck because that's the language use. You're not stuck at all. You're just doing the same pattern. And you can change any pattern. And if you had to, you would. That's why I said, change is now never a matter of ability. It's always a matter of motivation or drive or reasons. Right? Life is always happening. What for us not. But it's our job to find how it's for us, because it doesn't Feel like it's for us. But if you can develop that discipline, everything works. So blaming effectively means you're going to find some people you've blamed and we've all done it. And there's some things you may not even be conscious of, but you still do. What we're going to do is figure out how to blame you, take you through a process of blaming them elegantly, effectively, which is you'll be able to call them up and say, no, I'm Dad, Joe, Mary, whoever, or see them in person and say, I just want you to know I blamed you for all these things in my life that didn't happen or that occurred and this occurred. I just woke up recently. Like what an absolute idiot I am. Because if I'm going to blame you for all that, I have to blame you for how strong I've become. I have to blame you for when you were there for me that I'd forgotten about. I have to blame. And you look for all the goodness in your life. If you're going to blame somebody for all and give them total responsibility, then you have to blame them for all the good. And this process can be an incredibly healing process. Even if you don't think there's anybody really blaming life. Because if you dig in, you do. Because as long as you're human, these things happen. If you've been hurt someplace, there's some unconscious, if not conscious place to blame. So we're going to teach you this process. But part of what makes us blame people is our fear. We're not enough. And so we want to make sure the problem is somewhere else, not us. But the problem with that is if we blame them, we can't grow. The only way you can take control of your life is to own the responsibility. The responsibility, remember, the ability to respond only happens if I have control. If you're the blame, I have no control. So this is a process of reclaiming who you are. But more importantly, it's also a process of loving or giving someone to someone who by the way, probably blames themselves even more than you blame them. Most people don't realize how much they do. And we've done this process for years and the healing has been really powerful. Part of why we blame is we judge by the way. Some of us blame ourselves. But you're judging too soon. You're seeing things in the moment and not understanding. There's a longer term purpose in everything. Someone stealing from you. Or is the seed, opportunity planted for something in the future that is beyond beautiful.

How often do we premium prematurely judge ourselves.

Or judge another?

If we're open to it, we adopt a couple of simple beliefs, like life really is happening. For me, it may not look like it. This painful situation.

How many have been carved by some painful situation? Carved? I mean, you deepened yourself, you strengthened yourself, you increased your caring. Something came out of those horrible experiences that was absolutely beautiful. That maybe blame is something we give up unless we're doing it elegantly.

Maybe look at life in a very different way. What if everything was a blessing?

What if your biggest problems were a blessing because no problem is permanent, only our souls are permanent.

What if this week was the gift of you remembering things you'd forgotten? Or trusting with faith that you are being guided even when it looks like it's not working?

What if it was all just a test of faith? Faith is your ability to see a future that's beautiful even when it looks like it's impossible. And to trust in it and work with certainty to create it. Even though it seems like it can't be. The more you give to, the more you'll receive. But none of it will be fully felt as long as blame lives inside you. And you can blame into appreciation, understanding and love. And you can also appreciate that people do the best they can.

The resources they have. In those moments, we can all grow and expand. We've lost the sense of redemption in our culture. People like to gotcha about something somebody said or did five years ago, 10 years ago, a tweet they sent 15 years ago. I want to destroy them and define their whole life by one thing they did or said or were perceived to have said or done isn't the greatest gift in life. It doesn't matter where we start, doesn't matter how we were. It matters who we become.

Wouldn't it be nice to offer redemption to those you blamed by redeeming them in your own heart? By seeing a broader picture of the role they played in your life. What if we all were volunteering to be in each other's story and we're all here to play a part. And sometimes that part is the provocateur or the stimulus for crow, it doesn't feel good all the time. It would make for a very different life if you could begin to develop certainty that it all serves you. What if you could celebrate those things that used to be so painful for you? What if you could bring love to where there was judgment, appreciation to where there was anger, gratitude, even for places that were painful? How much would that transform your life? To leave the suffering and pain and blame and just own yourself or own and trust that the universe or God, whatever word you use for it, is a benevolent place, that there's a higher purpose in it all.