8 Ways To Happiness: Responsibility

Written by Jennifer

"Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility. -- Albert Einstein

1) Responsibility
2) Deliberate Intent
3) Acceptance
4) Beliefs
5) Gratitude
6) This Moment
7) Honesty
8) Perspective

1) Take Ownership Of Your Emotions

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If you're going to work towards happiness, you will need to know who controls your happiness. It's a fairly common belief that a person can make another person feel bad. "She made me angry." "He upset her." "He really pissed the boss off this time."

I am going to challenge this idea and propose that...

You can not, in any way, ever, MAKE someone feel anything.

When I have talked to people about this idea, they inevitably bring up the time when someone had upset them or made them angry. They say to me, "they caused my anger for if they had not been there, and said what they did, I would not have been angry."

I can understand cause and effect in the physical world. I push the pencil and it rolls. I drop a glass and it shatters. But cause and effect don't translate very well into the emotional world.

When someone says something to you, are the words going directly into your brain and switching on your "I'm upset" lever? When someone gives you the evil eye, are they shooting laser beams into your brain pushing your afraid button? When someone makes an unfavorable comment about your hair and you become offended, are they sending invisible "offend waves" causing your response? No, of course not. How can words, sent out as sound waves and picked up by your ears then translate into an emotional response? Is there nothing between those sound waves and your response?

I think people have difficulty understand this concept of responsibility for their emotions because they make no distinction between influence and control.

Influence & Control

There is a difference between the terms influence and control. Influence has the potential to impact. It's indirect. Control has a direct effect on a result. Lets look at one example and see how influence and control play out.

Terry is Mark's wife. They're having some financial difficulties and make an agreement to hold off on major purchases until they're out of debt. One day while shopping, Terry sees a watch she loves and purchases it for $350.00. When Mark sees the credit card bill, he explodes in anger. "How could you?!?, he screams at Terry, "you know we're in debt!"

What caused Mark's anger? Was it their financial situation? The credit card company? Terry's purchase? The watch? All of the above?

In this particular case, none of them. Mark believes a "good husband" provides well for his family. When the bill for the watch came due, he almost instantly felt bad about himself for not being able to afford such things for her. His belief about what it means to be a good husband gave Terry's action a particular meaning, i.e.: he's not a good husband because he can't afford the watch. He looks for the cause of his feeling bad and sees Terry. He becomes angry at her for making him feel this way.

Terry, their financial situation, the credit card bill, were all influences on Mark's belief about what it means to be a good husband. This is worth repeating. People and circumstances can have INFLUENCES on our beliefs. (The perverbial "He pushed my button.") But YOU have direct CONTROL over what you believe. Who controls what Mark believes? Who else could it be, but Mark. If Mark is the steward of his beliefs, then he has the power to examine and change those beliefs if he so chooses.

Outside stimuli like people and events can have influence (triggers) on our beliefs but it's you and you alone that give meaning to those influences. No one can make you feel anything. Sure, they have influence. But it's you alone that controls your beliefs.

Still not convinced? Let's change Mark's beliefs about what it means to be a good husband and see what happens.