Taking responsibility and letting go.

When something goes wrong, are you quick to blame someone else? Did something happen to you because of something someone else did? Was it someone else’s fault things didn’t go as planned?

This weekend, we went to my in-laws for a belated easter gathering and I took my laptop to look at furniture with my sister-in-law. About ten minutes into our twenty-minute drive home, I got a text from my father-in-law saying I left my laptop. My first instinct was to blame my husband. If only he hadn’t been in a hurry to pack up and get home, I wouldn’t have forgotten my laptop. If only he wasn’t so eager to listen to his baseball game, it would have gone differently. If only… Shortly thereafter, I realized that actually I was responsible for forgetting my laptop. I forgot it. Plain and simple. When I realized it was my fault and took responsibility, my anger and disappointment dissipated. That emotion was no longer productive. 

Successful personal finance requires personal responsibility. Policies could be better. Financial literacy shouldbe taught in schools. Laws could be different. But until then, we are responsible for our own destiny. It doesn’t serve us to blame others for our circumstances, to hope for someone else to change our trajectory, to wish things were different. We have to be proactive and responsible for making the change we want for ourselves. 

I heard a podcast last week and the conversation went something like this:

So often we allow ourselves to be the victim of our own circumstances. We say that something goes wrong because of someone or something else. What does that mean? It means that your thoughts and feelings are dependent on someone else’s actions. Those beliefs make you a victim in your environment. When you do things to change your thoughts and feelings and it produces an effect in your environment, you change the belief that you are a victim subject to these bad things happening and instead you get to become a creator in your life. When this happens, you can’t blame anyone else because you are greater than your environment. 

How powerful is that?! You are the creator! You don’t blame others for your circumstances because you are in control of what they are. That’s amazing! 

I see these comments thrown around a lot on the web – the government or others are responsible for the way our lives are; life would be better if student loans were forgiven; the pink tax is exploitative and a cause of financial hardship; universal healthcare would solve a national problem. I see people waiting for these very real things to change, to be different. I see people accept these things as a reason for their circumstances and allow these things to control their current and future wellbeing.  To disempower them. What happens if the changes you want from these external forces don’t ever occur? What if you wait for twenty or thirty years for something to change and it never does? Were you just a bystander observing your financial life unfold in a way you didn’t like because someone else didn’t take an action for you? 

Anyone can have success with finances and can be secure. Take control so that external forces won’t negatively impact your financial wellbeing. From there, you get to create what it is that you want. Remove unproductive anger towards factors out of your control.