“To decide, to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility for your life and to be in control of your life.” — Abbie M. Dale

“Responsibility by definition means answerable or accountable for. And what is a person responsible for? Everything he thinks, says or does. Why? Because no matter what or whom one can blame for the circumstances of his life, he is still stuck with the consequences of everything he thinks, says or does. People can be terribly unreliable but never irresponsible. Thus there is no way a person can be irresponsible because everyone is answerable or accountable for everything he thinks, say or does, does not do or neglects to do. Until people fully realize that they are totally responsible for their lives, we as a society collectively will be operating under a false and distorted assumption of what responsibility means.” — Sidney Madwed

“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” – W. Somerset Maugham

“Acceptance is such an important commodity, some have called it “the first law of personal growth.” — Peter McWilliams

Some important points about this intention:

• You get treated the way you teach others to treat you. If a family member pushes your buttons, start looking at your thoughts and responses and not their behavior.
• Your family relationships are in your mind. Whatever power they have, you have given to them.
• Changing your mind is changing your relationships. Now, that’s a heady thought!!!

A few ways Dr. Dyer suggests to practice being authentic and peaceful with all of your relatives.

• Intend for all your relatives what you intend for yourself. What you give comes back tenfold.
• Act ‘as if’. Begin acting as if what you intend to manifest is already true.
• Hold no grudges and practice forgiveness. Open yourself to the idea that your previous relationship with family was what YOU wanted from them as you tried to learn some life lesson. Learn the lesson and get in gratitude with them!

Emotions are like waves on the sea or weather in the skies, rising and passing of their own accord. You cannot control your feelings by an act of intention or will. So you are not responsible for your feelings; only for your response to them. Accept emotions completely, let your feelings be; just don’t let them run your life.

You perceive the world through an obscure window of beliefs, interpretations, and associations. The world is therefore a reflection of your mind. As your mind clears, you perceive reality simply as it is. What does your experience of life reveal about your filters of perception?

For all those disappointments, I learned to say: If I believe I create my own reality, and I do, then I created THIS! Why? What did I get from this? What did I learn?

Sometimes, what I got was what I needed to prepare me for what I wanted. My belief system would not have allowed me to accept or enjoy the want at that time. Sometimes, it has to do with recurring life lessons, that I needed to shake free of in order to manifest my ideal life.

As I became comfortable with asking the question, the answers became easier. In fact, I had a personal goal of ‘making the connection’ from the event to my spiritual development in 4 seconds or less. A stretch goal, to be sure, but much better than the 10 years or so it took for me to understand some life events in the past.

So, if you find that you are not achieving the results you want and you know you are doing all the right things, then ask yourself the question as stated above and be willing to hear the answer!

I’m 100% open to the idea that I create, promote, allow or step in everything in my life. If there is something in my life I no longer choose – I take full responsibility for changing it. I am in the driver’s seat and I love it!

Make a 5×7 card that says the above. Post it where you can see it and read it several times a day. You may want to make more than one to post it in a number of locations.

Courtesy of the 12 Steps to High Self Esteem workbook by Linda Larsen and SkillPath Publications. (Modified slightly by LMK).

However, for the Laws of Attraction to really work and really bring the results you desire, it is essential that you BELIEVE in the concept of abundance and that you BELIEVE that you deserve to have that abundance in your life.

I am finding more and more that people who are aware of their thoughts and try to focus on attracting the positive, don’t seem to really believe that the positive is possible. Or, if they do believe it’s possible, they don’t believe that they will ever experience it.

How to work on your underlying belief system? I use a series of clarifying statements with my clients and would recommend working with each of them until you believe it completely. Take a deep breath before you say it outloud, pushing out any and all emotion that may have come up the last time you said it. Basically, the process is deep breath, say it out loud, notice first thought or feeling, then take another deep breath and repeat the process.

Once the words come out with no internal resistance, move on to the next sentence. Here is the sequence of statements I would recommend for this issue.

I’m 100% open to the idea that I can experience abundance in my life.
I’m 100% willing to accept that I can experience abundance in my life.
I’m 100% ready to accept that I can experience abundance in my life.
I’m 100% ready to experience abundance in my life.
I now choose to experience abundance in my life.
I now commit 100% to experiencing abundance in my life.

If you get a persistent but, add it to the front of the statement. For example, should the thought “but I don’t deserve it” keeps coming up, change the statements to add the following to the front: “Even though I don’t believe I deserve it, “. Acknowledging the resistance usually allows us to work through it.

Please try this out for yourself and let me know how it works for you.

The six most important words: I admit that I was wrong.
The five most important words: You did a great job.
The four most important words: What do you think?
The three most important words: Could you please…
The two most important words: Thank you.
The most important word: We.
The least important word: I.

Today, however, while I want to point out the differences between being a doer and a thinker, my point is to show that that’s all they are — just different! Neither is better or worse than the other, they are really just different styles to approaching problems, and life in general.

If you’re not familiar with The Myers-Briggs Personality Test ™, it is a test that evaluates your responses to a set of questions and determines what is called your personality “type”. There are actually 4 scales (or continuums) that define you as one of 16 types based. Your type is determined by your answers to a series of multiple choice questions that you are asked to answer from the standpoint of what best describes you and has nothing to do with what’s right or wrong.  The four scales* are:

* from http://www.personalitypathways.com/MBTI_intro.html (a great resource if you are interested in learning more about the Myers-Briggs test).

The first question, “Which is your most favored Energy Source” is the continuum that has to do with Doing and Thinking.  The letters E and I actually refer to Extroverted and Introverted.  While we usually define those words in terms of how we interact with other people, in fact here they are used to define how you process information.  Bottom line, an E(xtrovert) is a doer and an I(ntrovert) is a thinker.

As a rule, we tend to think our way is the way to approach life, but nothing could be further from the truth. This often creates problems, especially when one is in close relationship with a person on the opposite end of the continuum.  Doers can’t understand why thinkers just sit around and “do” nothing.  Thinkers can’t understand why doers act “without” thought.  This can lead to many arguments until we begin to understand that our way isn’t better, it’s just our way.

The easiest way to determine which one you are is to look at how you generally tend to solve problems.  Both types follow the same process, however, the big difference is on WHEN they take action.  A doer will come up with a preliminary game plan, often through talking it out with others and start taking action on that plan almost immediately.  As their actions produce different results, either bringing them closer or further away from a solution, they tweak their action plan until it works.  A thinker will find a quiet place and “think through” the process, determining potential results or stumbling block, tweaking the action plan until it is “almost” a complete workable solution, THEN they start actually doing. The first is an external process; the second an internal one.

The result is that people of both types actually arrive at a final solution around the same time. However, the stress generated by judging how the other person is working on the solution creates a lot of unnecessary  anger and resentment, which can get in the way of either individual coming up with a solution.

So, as you interact with people today, start noticing if they are a doer or a thinker.  Knowing this about the people around you (either personal or work related) can go a long way in creating harmonious relations that move you forward on your path to wholeness. As a rule, once you are aware of your style and their style, your increased respect and acceptance for the other style makes that harmony a reality.

I was recently updating some software and I got the usual “Click here to accept this agreement” dialog box. As I clicked through 2 of these screens as quickly as is humanly possible, I found myself wondering where else I was accepting agreements without bothering to read or, worse, think about them.

So often, we give no thought to casual things we say or do, not fully understanding the scope of the agreement we’ve just made. “I’ll call you.”  “I’ll take care of that.”  “The un-communicated agreements we make in our various relationships.”  I’m sure the list can be extended quite a bit and you have your own examples.

One of the best ways to figure out if you are indeed making unconscious agreements is to look at why people are ticked off at you, because so many of these agreements have to do with expectations. For many people, “I’ll call you” mean’s “I’m going to call you within a [defined] period of time.”  It is not casual or idle conversation meaning “Someday, sometime, I’m gonna call you.”  And so, when you don’t call as they think you promised you would, they get ticked at you.

When two people mean the same thing, cool.  That works perfectly in that relationship. But if you are one of the “I’m gonna call you someday” people, saying “I’ll call you” to someone who takes that as a commitment, an agreement to communicate in the very near future, you are going to run into problems.

The best way around these unspoken agreements and expectations is to clearly define what you mean. If you mean tonight, say “I’m going to call you tonight”.  If you mean sometime in the future, say “I don’t know when I’ll get a chance in the next few weeks, but I’ll call you when things settle down.”  These are just examples, but you can see how you are setting different expectations.

Once YOU’VE definted what you mean, then stick to it, because, like it or not, you’ve just made a commitment. Just like the software company, once you’ve clicked to accept the agreement, you are responsible for meeting the expectations explicit in the agreement.

As you go through your week this week, pay special attention to where you are making unconscious agreements.  If you are comfortable with where and when you are doing it, then you’re in a good place.  If paying attention to these unspoken agreements makes you uncomfortable, then figure out how you are going to change the expectations you set with others.