The Buck Stops Here

"The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life." Brian Tracy

A woman whose family of origin was less than stellar told me that she decided she would be the one to turn it all around, starting with herself and moving on to her own children. President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said, "The buck stops here." While it's easy to play the blame game or continue being a victim, it takes real integrity to be fully accountable for your life.

Some people, after the break up of a marriage, villify the spouse and act totally clueless about what they themselves might have done wrong in the relationship. A popular variation of this theme is the idea that you had the perfect marriage, and then the cheater cheated or the gambler gambled or the abuser abused. Please! Marriage is a two-way street, and even if one person is clearly in the wrong, the other party responds and reacts and is half of the problem. The success or failure of a marriage takes two people. As a divorced person myself, I must admit that the failure of my marriage was my personal failure. That is the starting point. Then you move on to discover what went wrong, what your specific responsibility was, what can be learned from it and so on.

We can never be truly happy until we grow up and become accountable for our own actions and attitudes.

Susan