With Great Strength, Comes Great Responsibility

To feel in control of your life, you need the conviction that you're in control of events, and events are not in control of you. To accept this is to accept responsibility for all areas of your life. As a child, you had all your needs met by your parents. If you cried, a warm hand took care of you. If you expressed discomfort, that same warm hand came and made you feel better. If you felt frustrated, someone came and took responsibility for you. This strategy is great for children, but doesn't work in adult life. Yet, many of us continue to respond to life with the same strategy. We respond with resentment, unhappiness, and frustration, hoping that life will take pity on us and solve our problems. When life doesn't respond to us the way we want, we can easily turn resentful, point blame, become aggressive, and destroy our self-esteem.

To feel in control of yourself, not controlled or controlling, is to have high self-esteem. It comes from taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life. That means taking responsibility for your happiness, the achievement of your goals, the quality of your relationships, and your communication. It means taking responsibility for your existence. The opposite is to become a victim, and to have low self-esteem. A victim does not feel in control. A victim is someone who let go of his hold on life, and is now at the mercy of life, chance, circumstance, and people. Just like a beggar is. His self-esteem is continuously in jeopardy, and has organized his life around pleasing, placating, and avoiding. If you believe that someone or something has victimized you, you must also believe that you are helpless, that your life doesn't belong to you, and that you are at the mercy of other people. The biggest frustration is not being able to express himself.

When you take responsibility, you realize that the resentment you harbor towards people, events, and life is not valid. They are not valid since they are not responsible for you. No one owes you anything. Life doesn't owe you a living, and people don't owe you care and admiration. No one is coming to rescue you. You must rescue yourself. Everything starts and ends with you. As a responsible person, you'll feel more optimistic, happy, and deserving. There is a clear relationship between responsibility and power.

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