This picture was taken on the starting tee of the ITPI Kingdom of Golf Marathon Fund Raiser in San Rafael California. ITPI stands for Integral Transformative Practice International, a very powerful practice for integration of body, mind, heart, and soul, created by George Leonard and Michael Murphy. In the picture, Michael is in the middle wearing the Giants hat. Besides creating ITP, he is co-founder of Esalen, the west coast center for human potential, and author of the book and now movie “Golf in the Kingdom.” (Click here to see the amazing movie trailer).
Being one of the top fund-raisers, I was blessed with the opportunity to play in the foursome with Bobby Clampett, PGA Champions Tour Player, pro golf instructor, and NBC announcer. Can you guess which one he is? That’s right, the one in black and red who most looks like the pro golfer. He is actually wearing knickers and he also won the prize for best dressed.
As we played each hole, Bobby had lots of interesting things to say when it came to playing great golf. One of the most memorable for me was, “The best students and players never complain about why their ball didn’t go where they wanted it to. They never blame it on the wind, the grass being too wet, the sun in their eyes, or any of those things. Rather, they take full responsibility for each shot, knowing it didn’t go where they wanted it to go because they didn’t hit it there! The best students know it’s all up to them, and they LEARN from each shot so each one gets better and better.”
Today is 11-11-11 representing a powerful doorway to new levels of consciousness. Perhaps today is the day you embrace new levels of response-ability in your life. Perhaps today is the day you move into a new level of consciousness and power and truly own your life, your experiences, and all aspects of it. Today, 11-11-11, just may be that day.
In this blog we’ll explore more deeply how to be a star in the school of life. The answer, simple, elegant, and powerful, is one of the three Power Principles in my Major Good Mojo System, and one of the very first things my clients engage when embarking on their journey.
Read on and enjoy!
How to be a Star in the School of Life: Give Up the Blame Game
For the duration of the Major Good Mojo Program, my clients agree to follow, live by, and live into three important Power Principles. These are principles of living discovered through years of trial and error I’ve found essential to creating a life of Major Good Mojo. The third Power Principle, and the key to becoming a star in the school of life, is to take full responsibility for your results and experience in life. This is so important that I wrote a whole chapter about it in my book, NexGen Human, Chapter 4, “The Great Transformation.”
The blame game and playing victim is so common and prevalent in our society today; everyone wants to blame someone or something else for their apparent woes and problems. It’s so easy to do and we’ve all done it. The problem with this approach is that it never leads to solutions or resolutions of the issue. What it does is make powerless the person doing the blaming and playing the victim. By definition, blaming others and playing the victim absolves you of any responsibility, and thereby also removes your “response-ability.” You cannot respond, you can only blame and be a victim and perpetuate that vicious cycle of perpetrator and victim. The key is to wake-up and take back your response-ability and instead choose to move your life in directions you really desire.
Frankly, part of the awakening here is simply growing up and becoming an adult in those areas of our lives where we are still children. You see, when we were children we actually WERE victims, so it’s not that this story we believed was never true. The way we experienced the world was the way we experienced the world. It was true at one point in our life and we got very pissed-off about that. However, I’m sure you can see it was from a very limited view of the world.
When you are 6, 7, or 8 years old, you haven’t seen much of the world, nor have you interacted with very many of the people in it. You only knew what you were exposed to and that was it. However, over the years, as we develop adult competencies, distinctions, and capacities, we become far more able to take responsibility for our lives. We develop a far larger context inside of which our life is happening. And eventually the opportunity arrives when we can actually choose to be responsible about how we are reacting to our hurts, our trials and tribulations as a child. We can choose in this moment, as an adult, how we are going to relate to and perceive those incidences in our lives that hurt us.
At more advanced levels of this competency (being responsible for everything you experience in your life), deeper and more subtle stories of playing victim come to light. For example, people love to blame the government, the economy, the weather, their spouse, their kids, their finances, their health, and on, and on, and on! In all of these circumstances there is choice. Choice to be responsible for your life and the events in it, or the choice to be a victim and not responsible for the events in your life.
Again, this doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen, or that people and things aren’t out there making your life challenging. What it does mean is you don’t blame them and play victim to them. Instead, you acknowledge the challenges you have, recognize they are part of YOUR experience in YOUR life, and choose instead to take some creative, proactive actions that will move you and your life forward.
Taking full responsibility for your results and experience in life is a key piece of the Major Good Mojo System. To take this skill to new levels and become a star in the school of life, I invite you to engage the The Major Good Mojo Coaching Program.
Your Major Good Mojo Assignment:
Consider carefully the following questions. Your answers may grant you immense power and freedom:
- Are there areas in your life where you can stop being a victim and become more response-able? What and where might these areas be?
- Are there people in your life you can benefit from forgiving? Who might they be?
- How much pain and suffering have you created from being a victim or holding a grudge in your life? Think how great it would feel FOR YOU to let that go.
If you were to focus on one of the areas above and become less of a victim and more like a responsible creator, what might that look like? What would be your first step or action? Take it, and take your life into new levels of freedom, power, consciousness, and Major Good Mojo!
