[MajestyJo]

Sunday, September 7, 2014

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Powerless over Others

Stop making excuses for other people.

Stop making excuses for ourselves.

While it is our goal to develop compassion and achieve forgiveness, acceptance, and love, it is also our goal to accept reality and hold people accountable for their behavior. We can also hold ourselves accountable for our own behavior and, at the same time, have compassion and understanding for ourselves.

When we claim powerlessness, we are not claiming irresponsibility. We have no power to control others, what they do, what they did, or what they might do. We're stating that we are willing to end an ineffective life based on willpower and control. And we're beginning a spiritual, mental, and emotional journey in which we take responsibility for ourselves.

We are not victims. We are not helpless. Accepting powerlessness when that is appropriate enables us to begin owning our true power to take care of ourselves.

Today, I will avoid making excuses for my own or someone else's behavior. I will let consequences and responsibility fall where they belong.

A good one, I didn't know I didn't know I wasn't responsible. My mother told me I was. I wrote not to long ago that she told me it was always my fault if something went wrong. Had a lot of false guilt and carried a lot of false sense of responsibility and felt less than because I could never measure up and never do what I thought was expected of me. I had to stop justifying my existence and making excuses for my actions and explain my reason for being.