Cathy Glass - Happy Adults

A woman, aged forty-five, who had been in foster care for a year at the age of eight, wrote that she blamed all that was currently wrong in her life, including her two sons being drug dependent, her husband’s domestic violence and her obesity, on being in care thirty-seven years previously. While I would never minimize the disruption being taken into care (or any other trauma over which a person has no control) can have on a young person’s life, by allowing a crisis in her past to become a convenient peg on which to hang responsibility for all her woes and misfortunes, this woman was not taking any responsibility for them herself.

Whether we are suffering as a result of an unhappy/abusive childhood, losing a job, a hurtful comment or action, a failed relationship or a divorce, bereavement, ill health or a fateful encounter, at some point we have to take responsibility for our lives and deal with whatever needs to be changed. Otherwise we are like flotsam on a wave – sloshed around at the will of the tide and never in control of our destiny.

A man, aged twenty-three, who drank excessively and drove while intoxicated, was stopped by the police, heavily fined and banned from driving for two years. He was then sacked from his job, which required a clean driving licence. He blamed fate and an old friend: If I hadn’t stopped off at that pub after work I wouldn’t have met him and none of this would have happened. A better response, where the man took responsibility, would have been: What an idiot I was! But I’ve learnt my lesson. When I get my licence back I’ll never drink and drive again. In the meantime I’ll have to find a job for which I don’t need a driving licence.

Taking responsibility for your life is fantastic! It puts you at the steering wheel and you can go wherever you want. Yes, it can appear a bit frightening before you begin your journey. But once you have assumed responsibility for your life and therefore your destiny, you’ll wonder how you ever managed before.

What you gain from taking responsibility

Let’s look at all the positive outcomes from taking responsibility for your life; there are no negatives!

1. Empowerment. Taking responsibility empowers you. Once you are in charge you can do anything you wish – even fly to the moon, as long as you train as an astronaut first. You decide what you want to do with your life – where you want to be in a week, a month, a year, ten years – and go for it. Many years ago when I was struggling as a writer, receiving more rejection slips than cheques, I was inspired by the maxim We are only limited by the extent of our imagination. It is so true, and by taking responsibility we empower ourselves to achieve whatever our hearts and minds desire.

2. Liberation. Taking responsibility liberates you from the constraints of others. If you pass responsibility for your life to others you will live in the shadow of their experiences, expectations, successes and failures, and this will result in you becoming frustrated and discontented. Once you take responsibility for your life you are no longer beholden to the actions, attitudes or opinions of others, and a huge burden lifts from your shoulders.

One woman, aged thirty-four, who was juggling family life with work and doing unpaid overtime until 6.15 most nights, felt she was ‘being used’ and a ‘slave’ to everyone else, although she knew her husband loved her. She wrote: So I finally stopped blaming everyone else for what was wrong with my life and decided to take responsibility. I explained to my boss (nicely) that I would be leaving at 5.30 in future as I had family commitments. To my surprise he was fine about it, and said he understood and that I should have said something sooner. I then had a big chat with my husband and said I needed some ‘me time’. I am now having ice-skating lessons – something I always wanted to do – on a Wednesday evening, while my husband looks after the children. I was surprised it was all so easy in the end. I felt a great sense of liberation. I am in control of my life again and I’m sure I’m a much nicer person to be with now, at home and work.

3. Achievement. When you take responsibility for your life you can also take the credit for your achievements. What a great bonus! Yes, you may be working alongside others on certain projects and your relationships will be a partnership, but whether you are working on something alone, with someone else, or in a group, any positive outcome you achieve is your responsibility. So give yourself a big pat on the back.

4. Development. By taking responsibility for your life you develop as a person. You learn from your mistakes and use your past experiences to make better judgements in the future. Each new decision you make – regardless of how small or disastrous the outcome – is character forming. You will develop a strength and roundness of character you never thought possible. Others will experience and appreciate your new-found inner strength, although they won’t necessarily recognize the transition you have made. Your development as a person and therefore your new resourcefulness of character will be magnetic. Very soon you will be one of those people others come to for advice and guidance.

5. Satisfaction and contentment. Taking responsibility for your life allows you the satisfaction and contentment of knowing you did your best. Even if the outcome is not as you had hoped, knowing you were in control and you couldn’t have done any more gives you peace of mind.

We are what we think. Consider this statement for a moment and its implications. How far reaching it is; how simple; how complex; how easy and yet unobtainable!

‘We are what we think’ means that our thoughts create the person we are now and will be in the future. Just as our bodies absorb food and we become what we eat (I say more about this in Chapter Seven), so our personalities are a product of what we think. Our thoughts govern who we are and therefore our actions, which clearly influence our future. Research has also shown that our state of mind directly influences our bodies.

We are all familiar with the scenario of ‘getting out of the wrong side of the bed’. Not literally, of course, but that feeling at the start of a new day that we are full of self-doubt and pessimism and at odds with the world. We know what type of day we are going to have – one when we wished we’d stayed in bed. It will be a day when others and situations seem to conspire against us, when we achieve little or nothing, and hostility and aggravation are all around us. On such a day we get exactly what we envisaged, and as a result we feel unhappy and discontented.

We are also familiar with the opposite scenario, when we start the new day full of optimism. Our thoughts and feelings are positive: we focus on what is right in our lives and we are more than ready to greet any new challenge. We are so full of positive thoughts and vibes that we can’t have anything but a good day – we achieve what we set out to and others appear to work with us and are on our side. We feel good about ourselves and are happy to be alive.

Then of course there are the days in the middle of the spectrum when we greet the new day with ambivalence, not particularly enthusiastic about what lies ahead but not dreading it. The day holds no surprises, we get by – achieving an acceptable amount, jogging along but not really engaging with those we come in contact with. If someone were to ask us: Have you had a good day? We would reply: It was OK.

In reality these three days were probably no different from each other in their happiness content. Happiness content means the external factors, negative and positive, that directly affect our happiness – for example, a pay rise, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, marriage, divorce, etc. No, what made each of these days different was literally our state of mind: our attitude, based on our positive or negative thoughts.