Reality Check

In case you haven't stopped to notice it, we are already midway through August, 2017, two-thirds of the way through the year. This is stunning for me to consider, as it feels just last week was the new year's beginning.

If you read my last blog, "2017 - The Year of the Ten Fire Rooster," you may be feeling the truth of what was predicted based on ancient numerology and Chinese Calendar lore. Though perhaps a tad less tense than last year, 2017 comes packed with its own set of opportunities (or dramas, depending on how you choose to look at it). 

At this point in the game, it is important for you to find your inner balance. With strong beliefs and opinions streaming out from every arena, you'll need that inner balance to stabilize you through the rising and falling of emotional waves that pass through your personal space - those belonging to you and those belonging to others. It is human nature to have reactions to things, but it's not your inner emotional reactions that are the problem; it is what you do with them.

   

If you use your reactions to justify blame, shame, judgement, or separation, you are missing the truth and a powerful opportunity. Whenever you slip into this type of justification, you are actually passing off your responsibility for yourself onto others, where it does not belong. Your emotional reactions belong to you and you alone. 

Let me say this another way: Others are not responsible for your feelings - not now, not ever. 

It does not matter what they did or didn't do; you are the sole proprietor of your feelings today, in this moment. They happen inside of you, not outside of you. They are created inside of you. They exist and are managed inside of you. They dissolve away inside of you. They do not belong to anyone else; they belong to you, even when what you attribute them to happens outside of you.

This means that you are also 100% responsible for your reactions to the experiences of your life - how you deal with your feelings. Nobody makes you do anything, unless someone threatens your safety or your life if you do not comply with their demands. And even then you have choices; limited ones, but still choices, either in that moment or sometime later. Other than that extreme situation, you make your life choices from a place of freedom. You are nobody's slave, nobody's prisoner.

If you insist on blaming others for your state of being, you try to make them responsible for your choices, your feelings, and the quality of your life, when in reality you are. You hand them all your power by sacrificing to them how you feel and what you do in your life. And then you blame them when it doesn't turn out like you want. That's messed up. That is part of what Marianne Williamson refers to as error thinking.

As a free adult living in this country, you have the luxury - and it is a luxury - to choose for yourself who you want to befriend, who you join in partnership with, where you work and live, what you eat and drink, where you go, what you do, how long you stay, what you believe in, what you reject, how you feel, etc. No one else makes those choices for you. You make them for yourself, each one adding to the creation of the story of your life.

That means when things "go wrong" in your life, so to speak, or don't go as you hoped, you have the choice to change something to bring it back into alignment with what you want. Whatever happened in your past is past; whatever wounds you carry forward from that past can be healed. You have the choice to stop blaming others and take responsibility for your life now, starting today. There is no one to blame for your current situation, or for the feelings you hold in relation to it.

Instead of blaming others when you make a choice or a string of choices that do not bring you the outcome you want, or when you disagree with what is, or when you let your emotions get the better of you and react destructively, step off the road you are on and find a new path to walk. It really is that simple. 

You are the captain of your ship; the star, director and producer of your movie; the King or Queen of your life. You have the power within yourself to change the course of your ship, to manage the contents of your movie, and to make rulings about the direction of your life. But first you must stop blaming others and take full responsibility for yourself. You must reclaim your freedom to choose, for you alone can truly change your life.

And the sooner, the better.