Have you ever traced back all of your good and bad experiences from your earliest memories? 
Your accomplishments? 
Your setbacks? 
Your happiness? 
Your pain?

We are all taught to work hard for our future and to not live in the past. While I agree with that mindset, I feel as though it can be interpreted as too exact and leave much room to lead an unfulfilling life…

How can we know where we are going when we may not even know, understand, nor appreciate how we got here?

Have you ever set aside time and patience to truly understand how you have gotten to the place where you are today? “The place” as in your personality, your reactions, your actions, your beliefs, your self-view, your wants, your needs, your habits, your addictions, your likes, your dislikes, your emotional state, your mental state, your physical state, your digestive state, your stress, your maturity, your friends, your family, your relationships, your location, your job, your school, and so on.

While reflecting and appreciating are necessary steps, the real magic happens when we revisit our past and take full responsibility for our experiences.

It’s obviously much easier to take responsibility for our good accomplishments, for our positive achievements, for our good deeds, for our beneficial reactions… but what about for our poor accomplishments, for our negative achievements, for our bad deeds, for our selfish reactions?

When something good happens because of our conscious efforts we are the first to step up and claim our prize – promoting that we did “it” happen rather than “it” happening to us. Why can’t we do the same when we experience, accomplish, or encourage a negative outcome? Why, when we experience a negative, do we find ourselves asking “why did this happen to me?”

In every single situation we must take responsibility for what happened, how it happened, how we reacted or encouraged that happening, and how we shared in a part of that happening. While much of what occurs is at the power of a greater reality, we also have the power to influence our own reality.

Everything that we pride ourselves on and everything that we are running away from can be better understood by taking ownership of our lives.

Only when we take responsibility for our experiences can we truly learn about who we are and how we came to be.

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