Take Personal Responsibilty!
Always take personal responsibilty for the results in your life. The good, the bad and the ugly! If you enjoy taking responsibility for the good things that happened in your life, why not the bad and the ugly? I say, enjoy the good and learn from the bad and ugly.
When you start to lay blame on others or give excuses or justify, you are giving your power away. When I went bankrupt, I wanted to blame the government, the economy, my parents, my teachers, my spouse and everybody else. Imagine if I were to do that, today I will still be a very bitter person and stuck in self-pity and powerless because I gave the power to everything external that I can't change.
For things to change, first I must change! So I decided to take personal responsibilty, admit the mistakes that I made and learn from them. My wife left me when I went bankrupt and I don't blame her because she has the right to have a better life. Even after our divorce, I have decided to take care of her by giving her alimony and buy her a house. I am always grateful that she had bore me 3 beautiful kids, Genevieve, Sidney and Kerilyn. By letting go and moving on, I have now found myself a very beautiful, intelligent and understanding wife in Sue and we are having a baby soon.
Always remember this, when one door closes, another door is opened and waiting for you. If you hanged on to the closed door, you will never find the new door.
You see, I can also justify and say that the economy is bad and many people had gone broke, therefore it is ok for me to be broke. Instead of justifying, I took responsibility and admit that I have screwed up because of my ignorance in business and it has got nothing to do with the economy. If it is because of the economy, then why is it that there are people who strive during the downturn? When I admitted my mistakes, I am shooting down my ego and that was when I realised that I have to find mentors and learn from them.
The highest form of Leverage is Education! I will talk about that next week.
