Nothing will influence your happiness, relationships, energy, success, and overall life satisfaction more than your mindset.

Your mindset is your operating system for your life. It influences every part of your day, including what you focus on and how you feel. Your mindset can make the difference between flourishing and suffering.

One of my favorite quotes to live by is from Wayne Dyer: “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.”

No matter what the problem is, the solution is always YOU. You have the power to change the way you see anything, and therefore, to change everything. However, the first requirement is that you take responsibility for everything. Once you do, you place yourself in a position of freedom with the opportunity to create anything you want to experience.

Strategy #1: Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life

In my new spiritual coaching program, I teach strategies (ancient and modern) that empower people to manage and makeover their mindset and create success from the inside out.

Strategy #1 is all about coming to know who you are as a creative being, co-creating every experience you have. The fact that you can respond any way you choose is one of the liberating gifts you have as a human. But you have to claim it. You must say yes, I am responsible.

Taking personal responsibility doesn’t mean you start to throw blame your way. It means you’re taking ownership of your life. You’re saying yes to upgrading your mental operating system from blame and victimhood to pattern change and personal development.

• Do you feel overwhelmed? Take responsibility for the choices you’re making that are contributing to this feeling.
• Do you feel life is unfair? Take responsibility for the limiting belief system that is causing you to feel this way. Believe something new and take a new action to produce a new result.
• Do you believe people let you down? Take responsibility for your expectations. Examine how well you’re expressing your needs and having your needs met.
• Do you feel stuck or over-burdened? Take responsibility for the story you’re telling yourself and create a new one. Begin to visualize yourself living the life you want.

By responding in a new way, the triggers that once controlled you can actually become opportunities for more happiness, fulfillment, and success in your life.

Positive change in your external life will always require positive changes within you first. You are the place where anything in your life happens from. Just like an apple seed can only produce an apple tree, you can only experience the expression of what you think, feel, believe, and do. If you don’t put the work into your mindset, it’s much harder to experience the change you want to see in your daily life.

A Critical Part of Taking Responsibility

A critical part of taking responsibility is giving up negative talk, which includes blame, comparing, and criticizing. This means abstaining from negative SELF talk and gossiping about others—even people you don’t like. While not always easy, this simple practice allows you to begin the process of taking real ownership of your experience. The good news is you are designed for this kind of responsibility. You live in a body-mind system and universe where you were given 100% free will to think, feel, and believe any way you want and to choose any response your imagination can conjure up.

The Four Areas Where You Always Have Control

1. How you define yourself: Do you define yourself as confident, courageous, peaceful, energetic, capable, and worthy? Are the definitions you use to describe yourself positive or negative? Are they your personal beliefs, or were they handed down to you by family, community, society, and religion? Do you see yourself as a hero in your own life, or are you waiting for someone else to show up? Are you willing to define yourself in a new, more empowering way?

2. How you feel: What is your emotional home base? Where do you tend to land emotionally? Whatever it is you’re feeling, you’re also attracting. Feelings are the language of the universe. That’s why positive thinking alone doesn’t work. If we just try to think better but feel unworthy or incapable, we’re not going to get where we want to go. The good news is, we can change our emotional default just like we can change our mindset! In fact, emotions are part of your mindset. By taking responsibility and applying healthy daily habits, your emotions can be upgraded.

3. What you believe: Are your beliefs serving you or limiting you? Are your beliefs aligned with your highest vision for yourself? Do you have a vision for your life? Beliefs get wired into our subconscious. Limiting beliefs cause us to play small and avoid pain at all costs—which is impossible if we truly want to grow. But more good news! Beliefs aren’t facts. They’re nothing but thoughts you’ve thought a lot. Beliefs can be changed when we take responsibility.

4. How you behave: What are your daily habits? Do you have a daily self-care practice? How you behave is often congruent with how you feel and believe. Do you believe you are worthy of personal time? Are you on your own priority list? Every day I have a top 3 priority list. These are things I commit to that will move me forward in my life’s vision. #1 on my list of priorities is daily sacred practices. Before I started doing this, I was totally reactionary in my life, becoming easily triggered with very little self-control. How in control of your behavior do you feel?

Shifting Perspective on Success and Happiness

In Western culture, we’ve been taught to believe that success leads to happiness. Our focus has been directed outward, but the latest research coming out of modern science on the subjects of happiness and success has flipped this! It’s not always success that leads to happiness. Studies show it’s actually happy and soul-centered people who tend to be more successful in relationships, life, and business.

Accept the Invitation

This thing called life is always inviting you into a fuller experience of who you are and what you can create. Commit to becoming more aware and more conscious in your daily life. Take responsibility for YOU and how you show up in this big, beautiful world.

I’d love to hear from you! Was this helpful? How do YOU define success?

With love,

Joy