Happiness Tool : Responsibility

Happiness Tool :

Responsibility

In order to be happy, we have to take our lives

in our own hands. We have to take

responsibility for our own happiness, and

ultimately, our own destinies. That sounds both

obvious and impossible, but in reality, a very

small number of people do it. You can be one

of them.

It means choosing your present over your

past, and your power over the power of anyone

else or anything that’s ever happened to you.

That isn’t always easy, and many people never

do it for the simple reason that it would change

everything. If you, and you alone, control what

your life will be from now on, that means you

have to act to make it what you want, or

accept that you’re choosing your current

situation voluntarily. A lot of people are too

afraid to ever face that, but it is reality.

If you’re stuck and want to get unstuck, there

are four main ways people give up control of

their lives: victimization, entitlement, rescue,

and blame.21 You need to eliminate these from

your life in order to be happy.

Victimization

Have you been wronged? Has something that

happened to you kept you from doing what you

want to do, or living the life you want?

If so, I’m truly sorry to hear that. I wish the

world was the sort of place where things like

that didn’t happen.

The good news is, you have the power to turn

this situation around. Whatever happened, no

matter how bad it was, it doesn’t have to

define your life. It could be your whole story,

or it could be just an experience from the past

that you’ve overcome, one of many things that

have made you stronger. Only you can choose,

and you do have a choice. You can keep

holding onto it, or you can let it go. It is

standing between you and happiness.

Even if something unspeakably horrible has

happened to you, you can still rise above it.

Rape victims, children sold into slavery, people

who have been blinded or crippled, even

Holocaust survivors have managed to

overcome the atrocities committed on them

and go on to live positive lives.

Consider this quote from Man’s Search for

Meaning, a book by Viktor Frankl about how he

and others survived the Holocaust and rose

above their time in the concentration camps:

_We who lived in concentration camps

can