If I am going to pick a word for this year, it would be responsibility.
It hasn’t been a word that I consciously used or thought about all year, but it has been coming up in the past week louder and stronger.
I guess, going on a trip around the world and deciding to get rid of everything we owned was a big step into taking responsibility of our lives, too.
And now it’s sinking in that also the little things in life, the things we do in our day to day, need to conciously decided and behind everything I do, stands the big thought of taking responsibility of my life and creating the life I want to live.
Last week, just a day or two after we arrived in Bali, I broke our refrigerator (the one in the Airbnb we are staying at). There was a lot of ice buildup in the freezer compartment and I had the idea that I could use some of it in a smoothie, which wasn’t that smart of an idea either… But I picked on it with a big sharp knife and all of a sudden gas kind of exploded out… I had punctured the freezer gas valves that went through this plastic board.
I hoped that this only broke the freezer part and that the fridge part would still work, but during the day the whole things got warmer and warmer.
I told our host that the fridge wasn’t working and they said that we would wait to the next morning to decide what to do.
It couldn’t sleep all night and was really thinking about how to cover up my stupidness and just tell them that it stopped working!
In the morning than while meditating, the voice in my head screamed at me: Take responsibly for your actions!
I stopped my mediation and knew that there was only one thing to do.
I texted my host and told him what I had done and that this little hole must have stopped the whole refrigerator from working.
He was very pleased that I was honest and telling him and that this would be much easier for him to fix, since now he knew what the problem was. I asked if I was ok paying for the repair and of course I agreed to that.
Wow! I was really stepping up my game, I felt like. It felt so good to speak the truth and going through the consequences with dignity, even though I was a bit embarrassed for what I had done. But being able to stand up and pay for the repair felt like putting myself in a totally different energy level than I had been in thinking about how to cover up my mistake…
And all I got back was pure love and so much gratitude. There was no scolding or punishment or even rolling eyes…just love.
So, I have gave this some more thought.
Where in my life am I not taking full responsibility yet? The biggest part that came up is that I am not showing up the way I could to live my passion.
I have this big task up supporting and inspiring others to do the same thing: creating the lives of their dreams by taking full responsibility of going on their own paths into their own freedom.
So, I am surrendering to this. I will not just coach one on one, I will bring more content into this world via social media and wherever I meet people in person. Right now I am doing it with this blog post. (It’ll be cool when my website is finally up and this can be viewed there.)
Our children are so much better in taking responsibility for their lives!
For them it comes naturally and they don’t have all this baggage of past experiences to consider their actions.
Yesterday, I experienced a situation that again left me sleepless, but just because I think there is such a big learning factor in and that I want to encourage everybody to be inspired by our children (with this post).
My kids weren’t invited to a birthday party of one of the kids that we have met here in Bali. Not a biggie at all, since the kid had already told them that they were not invited. They couldn’t have asked why and the kid would have told them…
But then there were reasons communicated to me that just weren’t true…but that we found out later. It was said that the kid wanted only his close friends around that he has known for a couple of months now and they were special to him.
I explained this to the boys and they understood. Later though, we saw that another family’s kids that was new to him too was invited and of course my kids were confused about this and asked me why they were invited since they couldn’t be that special either.
Now I am the one who has to come up with an answer to that.
I just think it would be much better when everybody stayed with the truth. Only the truth means taking full responsibility for your life.
I’ve been in this situation where one of my kids wanted to invite certain kids, but not others! And I know how bad that feels to a mom to include some and exclude other people….
I might have even invited kids that my son didn’t want to invite….
Why do we do this though??? Why do we make up shit when we feel bad for others????
Of course, we have had experiences where we were the ones left out and we don’t want others to feel the same. Or we don’t want our kids to be the ones excluded, so we try to include everybody.
BUT we then make up things that are not true that can then in the longrun hurt that person even more than the blank truth AND we are not giving that other person permission to take responsibility of his or her own! We are making decisions for them! And that’s not ok, in my opinion.
It’s not ok for the person and we are putting ourselves in this spiral of thoughts. Always thinking about how others could react or feel or whatever and this in itself is taking up too much brain capacity to being able to focus on your own issues and your own motivations to take responsibly for your own life.
I’m not judging anybody. I’m just saying that I’ve been there myself and that the world would be a better place if we all took on this responsibility that we were put here with.
I enjoy living a high energy life. I enjoy being surrounded by people that live their own truth, no mater what. It’s very refreshing when nothing is taken personally and everybody just does what’s best for them. I feel like every time I am not talking the truth, I am betraying myself too. And the consequece to that is that I live on an energy level where I get this back, where I experience people around me being truthful to me…
So, here I am committing to living and talking my truth and being the best example for my kids and the people around me.
This life is too short to holding grudges and not living to the fullest. Who wants to be real with me?
Much love to you and your families! Annika <3