I remember when I was a kid, and I heard that someone was suing my dad because they had tripped over a cement parking bumper (aka the cement block in front of the parking space) in the parking lot of his business. I was surprised and perplexed. I was certain that if I’d tripped over a parking bumper I would have, best case scenario, laughed and felt a little silly; and, worse case scenario, been mortified, feeling like a total klutz, hoping no one had seen me do it. But one thing I would never have considered was to look around for someone else to blame for my not watching where I was going – It’s a parking lot, not Disneyland.
And this goes for pretty much the entirety of your life. If you want to have any power over your destiny in the moment, or in the future, you have to take personal responsibility for your experience, choices, actions and mistakes. You’ve got to own your situation to be able to control it. Yes, it’s somewhat of a double edged sword. You can’t change your circumstance until you are willing to take responsibility for it, and that means you’ve got to come to grips with the fact that there isn’t really anyone else to blame for your predicament. And that can feel intimidating and scary if we aren’t comfortable with our level of personal power or our ability to exert it.
Taking responsibility does not mean casting blame upon yourself, or piling on the guilt for finding yourself in a particular circumstance- neither of those reactions are beneficial and they aren’t accurate assessments of what it means to claim your power in any particular situation. Acknowledging your personal power means taking 100% responsibility for the experience you are having in your personal interactions, because when you embrace your responsibility in a particular encounter you become an empowered Marvel Superhero. Your super power is owning your circumstance and hence your ability to change it.
Thus, you are no longer helpless at the mercy of the unpredictable Asgardian gods, or the other mere mortals in your life. You are large and in charge.