You are the architect of your own fate. You are the master of your own life.

You are behind the

wheel of your own life. You are where you are and what you are because of your own conduct
and your own behavior. And it’s been well said over and over again that it’s not the government
and it’s not our parents, and it’s not your boss, and it’s not your family or your bills. It’s you. And
if ever you want to look for the reason for the way things are going in your life, look in the
mirror. And the truly responsible, high achieving, peak performing. If you want things to be
different for you, it’s up to you to change them.
One of the things I found and this sometimes is hard to get used to, is the fact that no one else
can live your life for you. No one else can make decisions for you and in the final analysis, no
one else really cares about you anywhere near as much as you do or will care about yourself.
The slogan of the high achiever is always if it’s to be. It’s up to me. We do not look to other
people as the solutions for our problem and what we do is Henry Ford said never complain,
never explain. In other words, if you’re not happy with something, change it. But don’t complain
about it. Complaining is a sign of weakness but it’s also a sign of victimhood. A person who
complains is saying basically, I’m a victim, I’m a victim. I have somebody who’s talking to the
actor who plays Aaron in 24. I had lunch with him Tuesday with Nathaniel Brandon. He was
saying and he’s become a speaker as well he’s saying you can always tell when people have their
lives out of control when they talk about what things are being done to them. He did this to me.
She did that to me, the did this to me, the company did this to me, he said. They are always
saying I’m a victim, I’m weak, I’m little, I’m ineffectual, I’m a child. I’m a victim. I’m a victim,
please feel sorry for me and what this does is that it guts your self-esteem. It just takes away all
your motivation and all your confidence. So, even the choice of words can be very bad. The
reason that people don’t succeed is because they have excuses. You cannot imagine a leader
weeping wine crying and making excuses is as Mark Twain said there are a thousand excuses for
failure but never a good reason so, one of the things we do is there’s no more excuses either do
it or don’t do it. Get in or get out but I don’t make excuses. I mentioned this before but I cannot
be too emphatic is that you can only give away control. You cannot give away responsibility. You
remain responsible for yourself, for your entire adult life. You can give away control by trying to
make someone else responsible for your life and you do and then wait for them to tell you what
to do or what not to do or to give you a raise or to promote you or demote you or hire you or
something else or you can accept responsibility and accepting responsibility is mandatory. You
cannot go any further. You are literally blocked in place almost like there’s a wall in front of you
until you accept responsibility and make the leap. And never make another excuse so, we say
that the word responsibility can be broken down into two words response and ability. It is your
ability to respond well in our life. Every time we respond well in our life, every time we respond
effectively to a challenge, we grow and become stronger and we become more tenacious and
we become more confident and we become more powerful. So, the only thing we can be sure
of is challenges in your life will be one series of challenges after another. They will never stop.
They will come like the waves from the ocean. Problem, after problem, the only question is can
we respond effectively? And if you do, you continue to grow. As soon as we stop responding
effectively to the challenges of outside life. What happens is we begin to implode so whenever
you have a challenge, remember you just say well, here we go again. This is what I do I respond
effectively to challenges and the wonderful thing is and I learned this in the metaphysics, make
the decisions that no matter what happens, you will respond effectively and pre-program
yourself. So, no matter what happens, I respond effectively. No matter what problem I have in
life, I take charge of it. I accept responsibility and I respond effectively. If you make that decision
in advance, then when the problem occurs, it’s almost like they push the automatic button.
You’re already set and you respond effectively. You don’t even have to think what should I do in
this situation. You respond in an effective way. You don’t get upset or angry or weep or cry or
lash out at other people. What you do is you say it’s a problem. So, we respond effectively what
do we do from here very very important. This attitude is the attitude of the leader. We know
that we only feel good about ourselves to the degree to which we feel we’re in complete control
of our own lives. And there is a one-to-one relationship between the amount of responsibility
you accept and the amount of control you have over your life in the world of work. You will
always rise to the level of responsibility you are willing to accept for results.

Your income, your status your security, your power will always tend to be equal
to the responsibilities you take on. Emerson said you can tell how big a
person is by how big their responsibilities are. This is one distinct area were winners
and losers part company. Winners always look upon themselves as the cause of
what happens to them. Losers are always blaming someone or something else now.
Why should this be well of course from the expediency Factor. We know that people always
seek the fastest and easiest way to get the things they want and if something goes wrong the
thing that they want is to get off the hook so the fastest and easiest way is always to blame
someone else. But when we blame someone else to that degree, we give control of the
problem to that other person and we take control away from ourselves and we become more
negative and we become more frustrated, the more we try to make other people responsible
for things in our life that we don't like high Achievers discipline themselves, control themselves
to keep their minds calm clear and balanced interesting about balanced Minds. The Great
psychiatrist Thomas said
there's no such thing as mental illness there are merely varying degrees of irresponsibility and
John T Malloy in his book live for Success says the one big difference between winners and
losers and he said let's not mince words let's call them what they are is that losers never accept
responsibility and winners always do when things go well for losers, they blame it on luck and
when things go poorly for losers they blame it on the system but winners except both the credit
and the blame for everything that happens to them fully responsible adults always look upon
themselves as self-employed. They act as if they own the place, they treat the company they
work for as though it belonged to them the worst mistake you can ever make in your life is to
ever think that you work for anybody else but yourself everybody is self-employed you are self-
employed. I am self-employed and all Peak performers in every field and Industry look upon
themselves as though they worked for themselves even if somebody else signs their paycheck,
they look upon themselves as being self-employed and they treat
the company as though belong to them. They treat the company as though everything that
happened in that company was theirs, they accept full responsibility if a paper clip falls on the
floor, they pick it up they never say that's not my job when they refer to
their company, they tell us an hour and we this company instead of they and them
and the boss, and so on. Now, if you can understand the simple principle, you'll
understand one of the key reasons why people move to the Executive Suite and
move ahead rapidly in their careers and other people go nowhere because bosses,
managers, executives are very alert to the degree of commitment that you make
to your work. Now, a very important point is when we go to school in the first
grade or kindergarten, we stay in school