Last week’s post was about me choosing to be offended by comments from my sweetheart.  

Whether you’re choosing to be offended, hurt, angry, jealous, betrayed or whatever emotion is your choice today, this blog is for you. 

How would you answer this question?

“What percentage of shared responsibility do you have in making a relationship work?”

Would you say 50/50?  60/40?  Maybe 80/20?

Also do you know someone who is always up?  Never lets anything bother them?  How do they do it?

Darren Hardy in his book “The Compound Effect” quoted an instructor “You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return.  Only when you are willing to take 100% responsibility for making the relationship work will it work.  Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable for disaster.”  

When you’re being 100% responsible for everything you experience in your life.  When you completely own all your choices and all the ways you respond to whatever happens to you – you have power – power to change you, your life, and your outcome.

Do you recognize and believe you’re responsible for everything you do or don’t do, and how you respond to others and things that happen to you?   

It’s a little scary, I know, but the truth is, you are responsible for every action you take, every thought you have and every response you have to your thoughts!  

Yep!  It’s you!  You’re responsible for how you feel.  No one can make you feel sad, mad, hurt, inferior, or ….whatever, without your permission.  Without your consent.  Only you decide how you will feel.  It your choice. 

You might be saying to yourself, just as I did, ‘it’s the other persons fault that I feel this way, and I’m going to be offended’ or mad, sad, hurt, upset, furious, or …???   If you’re saying this – you’re wrong.  It’s not the other person’s fault.   It’s yours.  You choose to feel that way. Yes, absolutely, 100%, no question about it..it’s all… you!

Yes, maybe the other person did something that created an emotion within you.  And yes, that emotion has triggered  the neuropathic superhighway within your brain and it found that when an event like what just happened, happens, that you are to respond to that event in the way that you’re responding.

More about the neuropathic superhighway in another blog, what matters here is there is an instant in this process that you have the opportunity you to choose your emotion, how you are going to feel, and your action.  In other words, you can choose how you will respond.  And that my friend can make all the difference in any and every relationship you have. 

Where or from whom your mind learned the response your have been using  …your parents … your siblings… your friends…past events … a movie … a book, who knows.

The source of where it became a learned response, really doesn’t matter nearly as much as knowing that you can choose to respond a different way.  If you were to pause in the moment, take a look at the programmed response you currently have and ask yourself, “With this response, this action, or this feeling I’m experiencing, am I taking the full 100% responsibility for my response and actions or am I allowing myself to become a ‘victim’ of someone else’s influence?”

When you take 100% responsibility for your response, there is no  finger pointing, no ‘he started it’, no  ‘she did this or didn’t do that.’  Nope, sorry that response is no longer a valid option.  

You don’t want it to be an option!  Why?   Because if it is, you’re giving up your power.  You’re giving your power to choose to be happy, your power to feel whole, your power to be at one with yourself, God and the other person.  

If you choose to play the victim, to be offended, to be angry, to be some other negative feeling or emotion, you’re choosing to give that person your power!  Your ability to choose!  Your ability to be the person you really want to be.

Would you ever want to do that?  Believe me you don’t!  And you know it!  How do you know it?  Because you’ve done it in the past.  You’ve chosen to ‘let’ someone else control how you felt.  And you didn’t like it.  You found that once that power was given,  it’s very difficult to get back.  Difficult, yes.  Impossible, no.  Possible to get back, absolutely!  How?

By taking 100% responsibility for your response to an event, action or circumstance.  Not for the event or what happened, unless of course you are responsible for that event or what happened.  But, responsible for how you feel, how you react, what you’re thinking, your…response.

Some examples how you might give up your power might be …

… you’re late because you missed a traffic light

… you’re mad because your child spilled his milk

… you’re furious because the driver pulled right in front of you and just about destroyed your car!

Did the light really make you late?  Or did you leave later than you should have?

Did you really have to be angry because of an innocent spill?  Will it really help your child not spill again? 

Do you really have to be furious and let the driver who cut-in know how furious you are with a 5-minute horn honk and by tailgating him?  Or could you have kept your cool and let the other driver in?

Did I really have to be offended by feedback from Pat? (See part 1)

You are 100% responsible for everything you do, don’t do, and how you respond to every event in your life.  

Doesn’t knowing this empower you?!  Doesn’t knowing you have control, no matter what happens around you or to you or about you… really make you feel empowered?  Do you see that you have more control than you thought?  It should!  And it does!

Before suffering in Gethsemane for sins he didn’t commit, being mocked and tried in an illegal court,  enduring a flogging to satisfy jealous religious leaders, and experiencing crucifixion with common thieves, Christ understood he had the ability to choose his response.  Rather than being a victim, pointing fingers, blaming others or calling down hosts of destroying angels, he chose to control his response and said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  

1 Peter 2:28. ‘Who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”

Christ didn’t give his power to others.  He retained it and used it for the good of all mankind.

As in all things Christ is the perfect example of taking 100% responsibility for his choices.  He chose his response to all events and circumstances.  He has taken 100% responsibility for making relationships work.  He gave and gives 100% to his relationship with us, with zero expectation of receiving anything in return.  He said ‘Come follow me.’

Will you follow Christ and take 100% responsibility for actions and responses?  It is in your power, you know.

It wasn’t until I took full responsibility for my response and emotions to my sweethearts comments, that I was able to be fully reconciled with her and receive answers to my prayers.   I hope you choose to do the same.  Try it!  You’ll never be the same!