I’ve been particularly inspired lately by some athletes and fitness experts in my life. There’s no shortage of basic life principles to be gleaned from sports and athletics. Among them none is perhaps more foundational than taking complete responsibility for your life. People in the business of pushing their bodies to their full potential understand that results are always in their own hands and shifting blame onto others serves absolutely no purpose. They go about their daily disciplines with the intent of building themselves a beautiful body—movement by movement, lift by lift, step by step, brick by brick—the same way I encourage you every week to get out there and build yourself a beautiful life. It’s inspiring. I’m all for it. And this week it reminded me of one of the big lessons.Without question, one of the hardest but greatest lessons in my life has been accepting that I am responsible for literally everything that has ever happened to me.I know, I know, I hear you thinking, “Well that’s just not true. Terrible things have happened to me at the hands of others. Things I didn’t invite or encourage. Things I couldn’t stop. Things I absolutely wasn’t responsible for.” Me too. Me too. I’m splitting a hair here but if there’s ever been a hair worth splitting this is it. In the English language we unfortunately have come to use the word responsibility as a synonym for blame or guilt, and we really shouldn’t. We ask, “Who is responsible for this mess?” When what we really mean is, “Who is to blame?”The reason this is so very important is because assigning blame and guilt—identifying who did what and when—is all about sorting the past. But responsibility, is always about what happens next. In our family we see responsibility as our response-ability. Our ability to respond to whatever has happened and whatever is happening. When you are as small, short-lived and powerless a creature as we all are there is an endless list of things life can throw at you that you will have no power to stop. But the one power, sometimes the only power, that nothing and no one can take away from you is your power to respond. Your response-ability is the seat of your true power. That is why it’s so important to accept responsibility for everything in your life.By the way, side note—taking full responsibility for what happens next is the secret behind the power of forgiveness. When people have wronged me I want to forgive them as quickly as possible. Not because it clears them of blame. That’s for them to deal with, or not, doesn’t matter to me. No, it’s because I’m not going to sit around waiting for the person who hurt me to heal me. In some cases I’d be waiting forever. I don’t want others responsible for me. That’s a victim mentality. “I forgive you,” means I’m firing you from the responsibility to fix me. It means, thank you very much, I will continue to be response-able for myself.My high-school football coach, Al Oliver, played for UCLA and then the Rams before succumbing to a knee injury and ending up at my little school. Al shared a lot of wise things with me. He was a great coach, a gentle giant who asked a lot from us, and far more influential in my teen years than he knows. When he was pushing me to get something done on the field he used to say, “Dean, there are reasons, but no excuses.” He expected me to take response ability for what I did out there regardless of what anyone else did, right or wrong. Never lay down your power.PHD nutritionist and fitness expert Layne Norton put it this way just this last week … “Excuses don’t improve your life. Blaming other people doesn’t improve your life. Blaming the government doest improve your life. Blaming big corporations doesn’t improve your life. The only thing that improves your life is consistently executed actions.”Someone else may be to blame for what just happened to us, but you and I need to be responsible—response-able—for whatever happens next. Forgive, then go get yourself healed....
