It’s Your Life

Being an adult is great. You can buy yourself Christmas gifts all year round. This year I didn’t get too many Christmas gifts (which is alright since I have everything I need).

Yesterday, however, I received the best Christmas gift of all. The Colts decided to sit Peyton Manning in the middle of the game, allowing the Jets a defeat against a third string quarterback.

It also gave the Jets an 8-7 record, putting them in charge of their playoff destiny. Next week I hope Marvin Lewis decides to sit his best players too so that the Jets can win again. It’s the Marty Schottenheimer style of coaching – get into the playoffs and lose.

My Christmas break was great. I was in New Orleans looking for a place to get married. I saw some really cool venues. If any of you know a great band or a great photographer down there, let me know. Or, if any of you are a professional photographer, let me know and perhaps we can work something out.

Over the holiday, Yahoo! published an article of mine and put it on its homepage. I really love when Yahoo! publishes my articles. It’s great. It gives me massive amounts of feedback in about a six hour time period.

It also, however, makes me realize something very sad. It makes me realize that there are a lot of people out there who hide behind their laptop and criticize people all day long.

Whenever I look at comments on any article which appears on Yahoo!, I’d say at least 50% of them are full of anger. It doesn’t matter about what each person is writing, people will find fault with it.

They are the blamers in life. They are always blaming other people for their misfortunes.

They are also very negative people. They are always looking for the opportunity to say, “Aha! I told you this wouldn’t work!”

These people often say things like this because they don’t realize they are the cause all the negative things in their own life. They are responsible for every decision they make, every mistake they make and every relationship they’ve had.

They are 100% responsible for these things. Instead of confronting themselves and taking responsibility, they hide in forums, chatrooms and message boards and blame others. Instead of going out and working on themselves, which they should do every day, they spend hours and days online blaming everyone else.

The Internet is wonderful. You can reach the masses by pressing a few buttons., but too often you realize that a lot of the members of the masses are very angry.

Sometimes I read comments about technology items — items that work perfectly fine — and yet people will find eight things wrong with them and spend their time and energy spewing their anger on a message board about them. Why?

Why waste so much time on anger? If you’re angry, it is your own fault. Take responsibility for your anger.

I have a friend who constantly bounces checks and is somewhat of a financial mess. He is always blaming Bank of America for his problems.

The bank is against him he believes. Really? Bank of America, which probably has about ten million accounts, is against him?

If you bounce checks, it is your fault. It means you don’t know how to handle your finances. It’s not that my friend doesn’t make money. He makes money and he is still a financial mess.

I can understand if someone is buying food for their family, and they bounce a check because they need food to survive. This person, however, actually makes a good living and he still blames the bank for his problems.

As we close out 2009 and head into the 10’s, isn’t it time you stopped criticizing or harping on things and started taking responsibility for yourself? You are 100% responsible for your life. That is what being an adult is all about.

For my young readers who still live at home with their parents (and maybe battle their parents on a daily basis), one day you will be 100% responsible for your life. You can start right to prepare yourself for that by seeing every decision you make as a lesson being taught to you.

I remember the first time a friend of mine got drunk and threw up. He blamed everyone, saying they forced him to drink.

We use the term “peer pressure” when we’re young. In reality, though, you are the one in the end who has to make the decision.

When you’re young, it’s harder to make an independent decision because you want to be cool and go with the flow. When you’re older, however, you just have to make up your own mind about yourself and make your own decisions.

So spend the next few days thinking about how you blame others for what has happened and how things are in your life. Start writing it all down. Write “I blame so-and-so for this” and “I blame such-and-such for that.”

Then I want you to amend all those and substitute yourself in those sentences. At the end write, “I am fully responsible for everything that happens in my life due to my choices.”

Have a great Monday!

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Dave's Faves, Life Style 101, Mindset. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.