Starting Out – Equally Happy

How Do I Start My Own Business, Part 1

January 23, 2012 By Gal Leave a Comment

No, this isn't me

Gal’s Note – Unlike other blogs who’ll tell you that working for someone else makes you a brain dead wage slave, I’m going to tell you that starting a business is not for everyone. It’s risky, takes a lot of work to start and requires a lot of time to maintain. There are no easy solutions here and no easy alternatives to a day job. Some people will like this choice and some won’t. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with working a standard job for someone else and if that’s what you like then by all means, enjoy. In fact, if that’s what you want, I have a few other posts you may be interested in.

Gal’s other note – This was originally meant to be a single post. However, due to the increasing length of the post and my own time constraints, I’m going to make it part of the whole Diamonds or Dogs series. I’ll explore more aspects of starting my own business in the over the new couple of weeks.

So you want to create a business? Here’s a few things I’ve learned over the years, starting up both successful and unsuccessful businesses. The basics of starting a business consist of:

The Idea – What is it that your business will do?
The plan – How are you going to launch your business?
The communication – Who are you talking to about your business and why?
The execution – Putting you plan into action.
Adapt and evolve – What do to after it turns out that your plan was wrong. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Goals, Perfectionism, Starting A Business, Starting Out Tagged With: Business, Diamonds or Dogs, Goals, Ideas, Perfectionism, Starting Out

The Plan For 2012

January 9, 2012 By Gal 1 Comment

Earlier I wrote about my plan for 2011 and how that went, this post will be devoted to 2012.

Each of the items below is something I want to do or accomplish this year. I’ve gone ahead and created a project for each one of these (nothing fancy, I just use tasks in Microsoft Outlook to track these). Each project has various items under it that represent to do’s or tasks. Accomplishing these tasks may lead to more tasks. For example, when I figure out what I want to build from scratch I’ll have more to do’s around buying materials and making blue prints.

Each of these projects has measurements attached where possible. These measurements are used to indicate success or failure. for example, the blogging goal has a measurement of 1000 users per day to indicate success. I then take this measurement and figure out what I need to do in order to achieve it. Some goals, like children, have no measurements attached but in such a case I usually make a note to myself about why is it that I’m tracking this goal. For example “I want to be a good parent”. This will help me figure out what I need to do.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my grand plan for 2012! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Communication, Family, Goals, Losing Weight, Making More Money, Starting Out, Step 2 - Make A Plan Tagged With: 2012, Decision Making, Goals, Money, Planning, Relationships

Come To Jesus Moment

May 4, 2011 By Gal 2 Comments

Ever had a come to jesus moment? I just did.

First, A Definition

A come to jesus moment is that moment when an individual is compelled by the weight of evidence and looming penalty to admit wrong doing.

Yep, I’ve done wrong. I’ve lied to you which is bad enough, but worst than that, I’ve lied to myself. Here I am telling myself that I know it all and I’ve done it all, that my life is perfect and that I have what I want. I almost managed to convince myself of that, until tonight. Tonight I had dinner with several executives from the Silicon Valley tech industry, a CEO from Singapore and a VC or two. I was sitting at one of the best steakhouses in the country with people who run multi billion (that’s with a B) organizations and I was thinking to myself, “what have I accomplished?” I looked around me and I saw men who are leaders, men who were not given what they have but won it through hard work, intelligence and a relentless drive to succeed. These men excelled at everything they put their minds to. They weren’t just great executives, they were also wonderful parents who cared deeply about their children and devoted hobbyists of various sorts. Some ran marathons, some did iron mans but all of them shared a common trait. In all cases, no matter what they did, from parenting and surfing to running companies and marathons, these men threw themselves into the task with 110% of their strength. They held nothing back and never shied from the task in front of them.

Now you may not want to be a silicon valley executive, and that’s fine and dandy, but you still want to be something, don’t you? You still want to accomplish your goals, don’t you? What is it that you dreamed about when you were a child? What was it that you saw in your dreams when you lay down to sleep? Those are the goals you had, the things that drove you forward, the things you wanted to devote yourself to 110%, as these men did to their dreams. And yes, sometimes they failed, sometimes they tried and no matter what, they could not succeed. One of the men was divorced, another had a failed start up a few years back, but they never gave up. No matter what happened, they picked themselves up and rededicated themselves to their goals. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Confidence, Drive, Procrastination, Starting Out, Step 4 - The First Step Tagged With: Drive, Goals, Motivation, Success

You Miss 100% Of The Shots You Don’t Take

January 26, 2011 By Gal 1 Comment

2011 is off to an AWESOME start! I wrote about a couple of experiments a few weeks ago, one involving weight and the other involving money. Well, both experiments are going very well.

Take The First Step

October 12, 2010 By Gal Leave a Comment

I’ve been talking about rebooting your life for a while now. I started out with some priority setting, moved on to making a plan and then talked about being honest with yourself and with others. I’ve been doing this because I want you to succeed. I want you to feel the same intense feeling of joy that I feel, a feeling like my life is moving in the right direction. Well, if up until now we’ve talked about planning, now it’s time to actually start moving; it’s time to take that first step.

Yes, I know, it’s scary. You’re about to embark on a quest that might change your entire life. What if you fail? What if people see you fail? Will they make fun of you? Are you being a fool to risk your whole life like this? Are you making a bad decision? What are going to be the consequences? Oh no! What if you lose your job? Your house? Your life savings?

Sound familiar?

We all have these inner monologues that keep us from actually taking a first step. As much as we dream about the best case scenario, when it comes time to actually doing, we stop ourselves with constant nightmares about the worst case. I used to be this way. I would prefer to day dream about my immense success than to actually take the first step and do something to improve my life. After all, life was perfect in the day dreams. Everything went well and I needed to do no work. Well, life isn’t that easy, but on the bright side, it’s also not as bad as you imagine. Let’s take an example.

My biggest goals right now are to start a family and retire young. In order to do that, I came up with some to do items as you can see in this post right here.

Some of the items on my list for starting a family:

Get to know people through various online services
Sign up for meetup.com

Both of these essentially had to do with meeting people, something I was having difficulty with considering my busy scheduling. Some of the items on my list for retiring:

Refinance mortgage
Refinance school loans

As you can see, both of these had to do with reducing expenses.

First things first, break it down!

In order to make that first step a bit less scary, break down your task into smaller items. I already started doing this by breaking down “retire young” into “Increase income” and “reduce expenses”. I then broke it down into even smaller items such as “start a personal finance blog” and “refinance school loans”. Now we’re going to break it down even further. The goal here is to come up with actions that are small, manageable and obvious. For example, in order to refinance my mortgage I had items like “get in touch with bank”, “shop around for loans” and “get paperwork in order”. These smaller tasks allow you to tackle a big project in bite size chunks. That way you don’t feel overwhelmed by some huge projects that you have no idea on how to start.

Now, take that first action. For refinancing a mortgage it was “call my bank and see what they offer”. That’s pretty simple, right? It’s not scary, it’s not risky, I’m just going to call up my bank and see what they have to tell me. For “meet people through online services”, my first action was “sign up for plenty of fish“. This is a free dating site that allows people to meet and chat. Sort of like a match.com without the monthly fees. I felt like this was an easy way to try online dating without any risk. I also had similar plans for refinancing school loans and signing up for meetup.com.

I went ahead and did all of these things. Two of them I failed on, meetup.com turned out to be a dud and I didn’t enjoy my outings through that service while refinancing school loans proved impossible due to some government legislation. So, what bad things happened? The answer is, absolutely nothing. I learned a few things about myself and about government legislation. No one made fun of me, no one called me a failure, I didn’t lose any life savings nor did I destroy my life. On the other hand, I did meet a wonderful woman and we’re currently in a relationship that makes me extremely happy. I also managed to refinance my mortgage, thanks to some advice from friends, and save a few hundred dollars a month without any expenses on my end.

Now it’s your turn? What have you been putting off? What do you want to do but haven’t dared yet? Remember these simple steps:

Prioritize – What’s important to you? Why are you focusing your time and effort on this thing you want to do?
Plan – Break down big goals into smaller goals and then set some dates.
Communicate – Be honest with yourself and others about your goals. If they cannot accept them you either have the wrong friends or the wrong goals. Either way, probably something you should pay attention to.
Start! If you’ve broken down your goals into small enough chunks then that first step should be easy, doable and not so scary. Take that step today, not tomorrow.

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For those of you who are curious about my experiment with radical honesty, I have to say that it’s been amazing! I can feel the need to make that occasional white lie that we all make but that’s going away rather quickly. On the other hand, I feel like every aspect of my life, from my relationship to my job, has improved in quality. I’ll talk more about this in future updates but needless to say, I’m becoming a convert!

Filed Under: Confidence, Goals, Starting Out, Step 4 - The First Step Tagged With: Fear, First Step, Planning, Self Confidence, Starting Out

Why Aren’t You Broadcasting Your Goals?

September 27, 2010 By Gal Leave a Comment

So you’ve written up some goals and made some plans, right? That’s great. Now why are you keeping them to yourself? Yep, step 3 of your new life is all about communicating your goals to your circle of friends and family!

Now many of you, like me, are a bit shy about your goals. What will people think when we tell them we want to climb Everest? Will they think us stupid? Arrogant? What will they tell me when I say I want to run for public office? Will they make fun of me? Will they tell me I’m a fool? I’ve mentioned this embarrassment that people have about their goals before, now I’m going to mention it again but in a different context. In addition to being honest with yourself, I want you to be honest with those around you. That’s right, you need to tell the people in your life about your goals.

Why Would You Do That?

For three reasons. First, because it’s a good way to make sure you’re not missing something. Second, because it’s a good way to get motivated. Third, it’s a great way to get help.

Are you missing something? The people in your life know you really well. They know what you’re like and they know what makes you tick. By sharing your goals with them you can often discover things you’re overlooking. For example, when I shared my goal of retiring by age 40 with a friend of mine who had achieved something similar, he mentioned to me that retirement isn’t what it’s cracked out to be. He didn’t think I’d be happy sitting at home or going fishing every day because he knew how much I loved interacting with people. It’s because of his insight that I added the second goal of owning a bar or similar establishment. That would give me retirement while still giving me human interaction.

What about you? What do your friends and family know about you that you might have missed? Do they know of some need that you prefer to ignore? Do they know of a problem that you might have to overcome? Talk to them, use them as a sounding board for your ideas. You’ll be surprised at how insightful they can be.

Are you motivated? Trust me, your friends can be great motivation of both a positive and negative kind. They can drag you down or they can keep you going through the toughest times. If you tell them what you’re trying to accomplish and also WHY you’re trying to do it, you’ll often find who your best friends are. Those are the friends who will keep you focused and moving forward. Again, to use an example from my own past, I communicated my health goals to several friends. They may not share them but they’re always helping me. They pick restaurants which serve healthy food, they encourage me when I attain certain goals and they remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing when I’m really tempted to order a big mac and some fries.

Are you getting all the help you need? A few years ago I became interested in running for office. You’ll note that even today, being elected is one of my big goals. I just had one problem, I had no clue where to start. So I casually mentioned this to a few people and got no helpful advice. Finally, almost giving up on this idea, I got help from an unexpected source. Turns out my very own mother had a friend who used to be the mayor of Cupertino (home of Apple Computers). She introduced me to him, he introduced me to other people and three months later I was on the Housing and Human Services Commission for the city of Sunnyvale.

Trust me, your network of friends and family has resources and information which will surprise the heck out of you and, best of all, they want to help you! Why not put them to good use by telling them what you’re trying to do and then asking for help? To me, networking is the best way to get anything done. It’s something that I’ll explore in more detail in upcoming articles but for now, let me just say that your network will never be able to help you if they don’t know you’re trying to do something. So get the word out!

A Note About Why

One last note about communicating goals. When talking to your friends and family, always make sure to mention the why and not just the what. Tell them why you’re trying to accomplish certain things and not just what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s a much better way of getting their support.

Filed Under: Communication, Family, Friends, Goals, Honesty, Starting Out, Step 3 - Communicate Tagged With: Communication, Family, Friends, Friendships, Goals, Motivation, Support

What’s The First Action You’ll Take To Start Living Your New Life?

September 6, 2010 By Gal 4 Comments

Do You Know How To Start Living?

Last week I asked you to think big, don’t hold back and write down your innermost dreams. So now you’re sitting there with a list that includes things like “climb Everest”, “have sex with a supermodel” and “make a million dollars” and you have no clue how to even start. This seems pretty stupid now, doesn’t it? You should get back to your day to day issues and forget about your dreams, right? Wrong! Goals like these are not stupid, they’re the things that make life worth living. The question is, how do we make them seem a bit less impossible?

By the way, throughout all of this I’m going to ask you to keep one thing in mind. Your dreams are NOT impossible. The moment you start thinking of them as impossible is the moment you give up and accept failure. I refuse to accept that. I believe in you and I believe in myself. More than that, I care about you and I care about me. I want us to be happy, I want us to feel fulfilled and happy. I want us to live a happy life with no regrets. I know how to do this, I just need you to believe in yourself and follow along.

So without further ado…

What’s stopping you? – Analyze the obstacles. What’s holding you back? For example, let’s say you wrote down “meet that special someone”. What’s stopping you? Is it a lack of confidence? A lack of time to meet new people? Bad personal hygiene? Whatever it is, write it down.
Break things down – Now, set up some smaller goals along the way that sound more reasonable. You’ll be amazed at how much your confidence grows as you achieve these small goals. For example, you want to climb Everest? Ok, can you even hike the peak 10 miles from your house? Sounds like you need to start getting in shape. Perhaps you should consider climbing that nearby peak to be the more immediate goal while still keeping Everest in the back of your mind. By the way, ideally these goals match the obstacles you’ve identified. For example, if you need to get in shape for your mountain climbing, the immediate goal might be to “be able to hike for three hours without needing to rest.”
Next step – Based on those last two things, you’ll need to figure out what the next step is. What do you tackle first? Do you need to start getting in shape or do you need to do some research on mountain climbing? Do you need to think up a business idea or do you need to start saving more? Whatever it is, this will become your guide.

Assuming you’re actually doing these exercises and not just ignoring them like you have every other exercise in every other self improvement book you’ve ever read (how’s that working for you by the way?), you should have a table that looks something like this:

Goal	Obstacle	Immediate Goal	Next Action	Target Date
Climb Everest	No knowledge of mountain climbing	Climb Mission Peak in under 1 hour	Find a course on mountain climbing	October
	Out of shape	Be able to run 12 miles at 6mph	Start running more at gym	December

Note that my Everest goal actually has two line items here. That’s fine, sometimes the big goals will have more than one thing you can work on. In fact, they almost always will. By breaking down big tasks into smaller ones, we make them more manageable and give ourselves a starting point.

Here’s another example:

Goal	Obstacle	Immediate Goal	Next Action	Target Date
Retire at age 40	No passive streams of income	Buy a piece of rental property	Talk to friend who knows real estate	October
	Not enough savings	Increase income	Ask for raise	December
			Refinance school loans	October
			Get personal trainer certification	November

Note that the “Not Enough Savings” item actually has 3 different actions after it. That’s great. If you have multiple ideas on how you can achieve these immediate goals, write them all down. If you think of something else later on, add it. You’re essentially writing down possibilities to follow up on later.

What Now?

Now you have a giant list of to do’s, don’t you? Seems impossible, doesn’t it? Actually, it is impossible. Sorry, were you expecting a different answer? Don’t worry, I’m not talking about your dreams here, I’m just talking about doing this whole big list at once. One of the common mistakes people make when they try to change their lives is to do too much at once. You’ve seen this before, haven’t you? The friend who realizes their life sucks and then tries to exercise more, eat less, work harder, find a second job, refinance their home, fix up their yard, get a new hair cut, start dating and write a book all at once. Sorry, but that’s impossible. I know you want your life to get better RIGHT NOW but that’s just not how it works. It took you a while to get where you are and it’s going to take you a while to get out of it. So pick 4 or 5 items, focus on those and move on. Try to pick the high priority items first. For example, money helps almost everything. So if you have a couple of goals focused on making more money, maybe hit those first. Also try to hit actions that impact multiple goals. For example, I want to climb mount Everest, run an iron man and get to 180lbs. All three of these goals will require me to get in better shape. So perhaps a new exercise program is in order since that will move all three goals forward.

Once you have your actions, start doing them. Congratulations, you’ve started changing your life

FYI, here’s my action table:

Items that have no target date are items I have no plan for working on until I’m done with some other stuff.
Items in bold are the ones I am working on right now.
Also note that one of my items (get to know my gf) has no action items. There are some things you really shouldn’t plan too much

Goal	Obstacle	Immediate Goal	Next Action	Target Date
Married to the woman of my dreams with two or three beautiful daughters	Haven’t met her yet	Meet more women	Join meetup.com	November, 2009 (DONE)
			Join online dating site	December, 2009 (DONE)
			Go out more with different circles of friends	January, 2010 (DONE)
	Get to know her	Not applicable
Retire by age 40	Not enough savings	Increase income	Ask for a raise	January 2011
			Start personal improvement blog	September, 2010
			Get certified as personal trainer	December, 2010
		Reduce expenses	Refinance mortgage	October 2010
			Refinance school loans	October 2010
To own a bar	Not enough savings	See above
To climb Everest	Not in shape	Exercise more	Start a running program	September, 2010
			Start biking to work	September, 2010
		Eat healthier	Cut out meats	September, 2010
			Cut out sodas	November, 2010
	No clue how to climb mountains	Learn about mountain climbing	Join meetup climbing group
		Find a climbing partner	No idea yet
To run an iron man	Not in shape	See above
To be 180lbs	Not in shape	See above
To scuba dive the great barrier reef	No travel plans	Schedule	Talk to friends and GF
To hike every hike in the 25 greatest hikes book	No travel plans	Schedule	Talk to friends and GF
To be CEO of my own company	Need to get promoted or open my own business	Get promoted	Talk to boss about what I need to do for this	January, 2011
			Think more strategically and find ways to add value to company	November, 2010
		Start own business	Find idea
To write a book	No time	Find time	Add to schedule
To skydive	No plans	Schedule	Talk to friends and GF	September, 2010
To be elected to public office	No experience, knowledge or connections	Find people who know about this	Look through network

Filed Under: Confidence, Starting Out, Step 2 - Make A Plan Tagged With: Actions, Goals, Obstacles, Planning, Self Confidence, Self Improvement

First Step To A New Life – Figure Out Your Priorities

August 24, 2010 By Gal 4 Comments

Get A Life

I’m a member of Meetup.com, a site which I think is absolutely great. For those of you who don’t know it, meetup allows you to meet new people based on shared interests. It’s a site that deserves a post of its but for now, just bare with me. Today, I got an email from meetup telling me a new group had formed with the following description:

Did your college degree land you an assistant manager’s gig at Starbucks? Are you twenty something and still living with your parents? Is your debt to income ratio higher than you are right now? Are you tired of all the stupid, fucking corporate bullshit?

If you answered yes (or “meh”) to any of these questions then you should come hang out with us!

This group is for those of us, children, who have have been left behind. We realize it’s all bullshit, that we’ve been lied to, that it’s not going to get any better if we “just stick it out.” This is for all you people who spit out the bitter Kool-Aid and are looking for human contact that’s more genuine than “Would you like whipped cream on that latte?”

My first reaction was “geez! Whine much?” My second reaction was “geez! Whine much? Why not do something about your life instead of whining about it!” Then I realized something, I wasn’t that much better than these guys when I graduated school and I had the good fortune to graduate at a time when the world wasn’t going through a major crisis. Still, just because I was a whiny 20 something (and possibly 30 something), doesn’t mean it’s ok. You’re right, it won’t get better if you “stick it out” but it will get better if you get off your whiny butt and do something! It’s time to get a grip and accept some responsibility for that useless college degree (what on earth made you major in French?) and start improving your life! So here it is, step 1 of the Equally Happy life improvement regime, MAKING PRIORITIES!

What Do You Want To Do?

Seriously, have you ever thought about what you want to do with your life? What kind of experiences do you want? What kind of things do you want people to say about you at your funeral? What kind of life do you want to lead? Most of us go through life just getting by. We live day by day, waiting for the next weekend to arrive so we can try to forget about the previous week before the next week starts. What the heck kind of miserable life is that? I know Hollywood makes all those “free spirit” characters who flit from one day to another look very cool and romantic but this is total Hollywood bullshit. Most “free spirits” like that end up in meetup groups like the one I mentioned above. Which is not to say that being free spirited is a bad thing, it just needs to be done with a little bit of forethought (yes, you need to plan out your lack of a planned life. How perfectly ironic!).

Try This

Take out a sheet of paper (or even better, start a new Google doc) and write down some things you want to do and be. Don’t let reality get in the way of your dreams and don’t hold back. Just write it out. You want to be a chef? Write it down. You want to raft down the Amazon river? Write it down. You want to write a book? Write it down. You want to have kids? Write it down. You’re a beautiful woman who wants to have a casual fling with a personal improvement blogger? Write it down (and then email gjosefsberg@gmail.com). Ok, so maybe that last one was a joke (it wasn’t) but I would still urge you to do this little exercise. In the next few weeks I’m going to go through a number of steps I want you to take and writing down your priorities is the starting point. Seriously, if you can’t even figure out what you want to do or be, you’re in more trouble than I can help you with.

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Thank you to My Wealth Builder for including my “are you worthy of a raise” article in their recent blog carnival.

Filed Under: Goals, Starting Out, Step 1 - Priorities Tagged With: 1st Step, Life, Meetup.com, Personal Improvement, Priorities

Get Up and Do Something!

May 21, 2010 By Gal Leave a Comment

Last night I finally got more than 5 or 6 hours worth of sleep. Sleep is a good thing and through various commitments and poor planning, I’ve been getting very little of it for the past two weeks. It’s had a real impact on my life in terms of energy level and overall happiness. I know I should be getting more but I just couldn’t do it. So this morning I woke up, after the first good night’s sleep in a long time, and I expected everything to be better. I expected to be full of energy, full of “get up and go”, except my “get up and go” seems to have gotten up and gone away.

I was tired, stressed and more lackadaisical (look it up) than before. I just couldn’t get started on any of the things I wanted to do. I couldn’t get up the energy to do anything more than some random web browsing. This of course set me off on the usual stress treadmill. “Why aren’t I getting anything done? There’s so much that needs doing! I’m lazy! I’m a slacker! I’m going to get fired!” I sat in front of the computer screen for 30 minutes before I got up and started snacking, which of course is a stupid thing to do since it just added to my stress level. “I’m training for a marathon, why am I snacking? I want to lose weight, why am I eating?” Ever had one of those mornings? Probably. We all have them on occasion. The question is, how do we deal with them?

Here’s a little trick I found out to prevent mornings like these to escalate into something even worse. Ready for it? It’s easy. DO SOMETHING! I don’t care what it is, just do it. Start right now. Don’t wait, don’t think about it, don’t consider what, just do something. Answer an email, create a project plan or start writing that personal improvement blog post you’ve been too busy to write. Whatever it is, just start doing it. That’s the hard part, the starting, once you do that the rest will seem so much easier.

For me, I started writing this post, and you know what? As soon as I started doing that, my stress level disappeared. I was focused, I was in the groove and I was getting stuff done. Of course, as soon as I get the first paragraph done I had to go to a meeting, but so what? At least I got something done and my mood was so much better.

Your brain is sometimes your worst enemy. It will spin you in circles stressing out about why you’re not getting things done and in so doing it will prevent you from getting anything done. You’re so busy trying to figure out why it is that you’re not accomplishing anything that you never get focused enough to accomplish anything. The trick is to distract the brain and just get started. Being a finely tuned machine, your brain will actually focus right in on the task at hand if you get started. It’s the idling that drives it crazy and that’s what you need to avoid.

By the way, by doing something I also mean not doing anything at all. Sound confusing? Let me explain. Sometimes, it’s ok to take a break, but when you do so you should really take a break. For too many people taking a break means stopping work but still stressing out about work. This is not taking a break and it’s not really helpful. When you take a break you should do something that engages the brain in something relaxing. For example, read a good book. Reading is one of the best stress releases out there. It’s involving, but not demanding, especially if you’re reading something light and fluffy. Playing with your dog is another good one. You have to think and be engaged and so you’re not thinking about work or bills or politics.

An idle mind is not your best friend.

Filed Under: Starting Out, Stress Tagged With: get things done, lazy, Procrastination, productivity, slacker, work

Taking Responsibility For Your Life

April 28, 2010 By Gal 1 Comment

How many of you feel like your lives are out of your control? How many of you feel like you’re stuck somewhere unhappy without a way out? How often do you think to yourself, “there’s nothing I can do, this is just the way life is”? You’re not alone and help is on the way, but that help can only get there when you decide to take responsibility for your own life.

My Lesson

The most important thing I’ve learned in my life is that this is indeed my life. It may suck at times and there are some things about it that I wish to change, but at the end of the day it is my life. The decisions that shape my life are mine, as are the consequences of those decisions. If there are things that suck then it’s up to me to fix them and if there are things I want to change then I should get off my butt and change them. This, my friends, is the essence of responsibility. To be responsible means being willing to step up, make decisions and accept the consequences. I am responsible for my own life as you are responsible for yours.

I can already hear what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that your current state is someone else’s fault. You’re thinking someone did you wrong, someone took your life away or perhaps someone gave you a rough start to what could have been an easy life. Was it a parent who didn’t care? A school which wasn’t good enough? A lover who left you and broke your heart? Whatever or whoever it was, that’s all in the past. Those things have happened and there’s no way for you to change them. What happens from this point on is your decision and that’s why it’s your responsibility. This is your chance to step up.

There are no knights in shining armor and no magical solutions. Changing your life might be harder than you can imagine or it may be easier than you can believe but either way, it’s your responsibility to create that change. You may have many people willing to help but the responsibility is still yours.

My Day Of Reckoning

I still remember that summer day when I finally figured this out. It was a few months after my divorce and my life was in shambles. I was depressed, I hated my job and I desperately wanted a different life. I remember that morning as I tried to get out of my bed and couldn’t get any further than sitting up. I burst into tears and sobbed out repeatedly “please, someone help. Please, someone tell me what to do.” I spoke those words over and over but no one answered. My ex did not magically reappear to fix our marriage, my job did not magically get better, no shining figure descended from the heavens with all the answers I needed. The only one who was there for me was my dog, who lay by my side and gave me her unconditional love. Eventually, the sobbing stopped. I realized then that I have three options. I can accept being miserable for the rest of my life, I can end my life or I can improve my life. I chose option number three.

Your Day Is Here

Yes, I know, your life is different, your troubles are tougher, your misery stronger and the forces pushing you down are heavier than mine. Your life is horrible, your pain is intense and your troubles insurmountable. To this I say, horse crap! There’s always a way and there is always time to fix your life. The sooner you start the sooner you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The first step is always the same though. Accept responsibility for your life, accept the fact that the decisions that will shape your life are your own as are their consequences. Accept the fact that you may sometimes fail and that failing hurts. Accept that it may take a while. Accept that it may be hard. Accept all of these things but first of all accept the responsibility that comes along with being an adult human being. That is the first and most important lesson I have learned in my life. An adult is responsible for his or her own life.

Don’t Be Scared

To some of you this may seem scary but it really isn’t. I’m not trying to frighten you, I’m trying to set you free. Once you realize that control is in your hands, life becomes an experience to enjoy rather than a burden to be endured. It’s frightening to realize you have complete freedom but it’s also the most wonderful and joyous experience you’ll ever have.

So the choice is yours. Stay trapped in that life, blaming your parents, your kids, your boss or your government and be miserable, or accept responsibility and start living life. Every time something happens, every time you experience an event, tell yourself, “this is my life, this is my responsibility, I can change this if I want.” That right there is a good beginning. If you’re willing to do that, then stick with me and let’s see what we can learn together.

Filed Under: Responsibility, Starting Out Tagged With: Freedom, Personal Improvement, Responsibility