You have come to the sobering and evening discouraging realisation that you have participated in every bad decision you have ever made!*
Sunil Raheja

Sunil Raheja reminds me of the most important thing I did for finding the path I must walk: taking responsibility for what had gone wrong.

It wasn’t a once and for all decision, and I still look around for other people or things to blame when something goes wrong – I don’t like the accompanying feelings of embarrassment, guilt or even shame – but I know, only taking responsibility will free me to keep moving.

Erich Fromm wrote about how no-one is completely free. I can’t find the quote right now, but he was saying, we’re each free to some extent or another and life is about finding out just how free we are.

When we figure out how free we are, we can begin on an incredible journey:

More than ever, more us have the freedom to care, the freedom to connect, the freedom to choose, the freedom to initiate, the freedom to do what matters.**

Responsibility begets freedom begets passion, but we have to make sure its the kind of responsibility we must take and not the kind that is not ours to take.

You may want to spend a little time taking responsibility for some bad decisions you’ve made. Not too long, though, because you also need to make some good decisions, the freedom you have to follow your passions:

Your passion is simply the work we have trusted ourselves to do.^

Work through Seth Godin’s list of freedoms: to care, to connect, to choose, to initiate, to do what matters, naming the things that are your joyful responsibility.

*From Sunil Raheja’s Dancing With Wisdom;
**From Seth Godin’s It’s Your Turn;
^From Seth Godin’s The Practice.