I learned early on as a young adult that my parents, no matter how great I thought they were, were not infallible and as with most people, they are just human beings, they make mistakes and have shortcomings like everyone else, it was kin to finding out, there really isn't a santa clause or easter bunny. They taught me that in order to go further in life, I had to be self reliant, independent, and to take on anything I would do with 110% effort and determination. It wasn't enough to say you are an adult or independent, you had to actually BE independent.
Personal responsibility begins inside of us. It starts by making the right choices, even though they may not always be easy choices. One can only be responsible by making the right choices, and dealing with situations with the correct emotional response. We must take responsibility for the circumstances that we create in the world around us. That's not saying, I am perfect, I have made many major mistakes in my life, but I take every mistake I have ever made and learn from it, and I never ever make the same mistake twice.
To avoid making a choice is not being personally responsible. Even if you choose not to choose, you have still made a choice, and it will never work out to your benefit. If you ignore something, it will, no doubt, NOT go away. We are gifted with free will. We constantly make conscious choices every day and with those choices, come great responsibility. When you follow the rules, life works; If you think you can get by with breaking the rules, you are only fooling yourself.
When you think that others are responsible for your bad decisions or someone else is responsible for where you are, or should solve the problems you have created because you are not personally responsible, You need to fix the way you are thinking. You are your own problem.
People tend to think, especially when they are younger, that they have plenty of time to fix whatever bad decisions or choices they have made in their lives. Truth is, you have no idea when you will be taken from this earth. They waste time saying, "I'll do it tomorrow or next week, or next year" but that day never comes. Change in attitude and critical thinking and personal responsibility need to happen RIGHT NOW. Make the choice to make the change right now!
Another saying my mother used to tell me, which I also did not understand in my youth was, "What you do today (choices/actions) will affect you tomorrow". Wow, I should have listened to that one. If you make a bad decision or choice today, it could and usually does haunt you for years, sometimes decades later. The truth is that true individual independance is the freedom from reaction and the ability to choose the actions and make the choices that will eventually positively affect your future and your life as a whole.
In ending, I just want to say how incredibly important it is to be self reliant, to be personally responsible for yourself. It's not just about saying you are an adult and you can do what you want, it's about actually doing what is right, making the tough decisions even though you would rather not. Its about owning up to the decisions that you made and dealing with the outcome of your decisions and knowing it was all your own doing and you really are the only one that can make it better.
