There is one belief I learned as a teenager that has forever changed the course of my life.
When I was a teenager in high school, I was pretty shy, quiet and withheld. I was terrified of talking to people. I could hardly look people in the eyes, it was so bad.
I have always grown up like this. Every year since I was in elementary school I hardly conversed with anyone. I was known by my peers as the shy and quiet kid that hardly spoke. One day, I was informed of a girl thinking I was cute. It took me months to finally build up the courage to ask the girl out.
Close to the last day of school before summer break, I nervously walked over to the girl, sat down next to her and asked: “Hey, would you like to go to the movies sometime?”
The girl replied, “yeah sure thing!”.
I smiled, said great and walked away.
…and I didn’t talk to her again.
The One Belief
I was just too damn shy to follow up. That summer, I spiraled into a deep sadness as I hated that I was not able to fully express myself. I used to ride my bike around the block every day as I wondered why I was such a failure. My self-esteem was at an all-time low…
And like a gift sent from the heavens, I picked up a book called the “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens”. I had learned about the book from one of my classes, and I started to read it. In the first couple of chapters, they talked about beliefs and paradigms. The book talked about trying on new perspectives if your current ones do not serve you. I had always seen myself as a “shy guy” and so I started to question if that belief was holding me back.
As I went through the book, I read a section of the book that hit me like a bag of bricks. The section told me this one belief that would set me up for how I lived the rest of my life…
The belief was…
“You are 100% responsible for your life”
It was such a new concept to me. It put me in the driver’s seat of my life. If I was unhappy with my ability to express myself–it was my responsibility to change. Taking responsibility for your life may sound like such a simple concept. We take responsibility for things every day.
Just like if you were to have a water issue at your house, you would call a plumbing company to fix the issue, it is your responsibility to fix the leak. Nobody else will.
Accepting responsibility will free you from feeling like a victim.
I made the conscious decision to no longer label myself as the “shy guy” and take steps to change. I started walking along the streets and asking random people for the time. I was absolutely terrified of this but I kept with it. I enrolled myself in a public speaking course and joined a few clubs at school. By my senior year, I was a completely different person. I was still not the egregious social type but I had made leaps and bounds.
I want to pass along the belief to everyone out there.
“You are 100% responsible for your life”
Most of us have been indoctrinated to blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life we don’t like. We start to blame our friends, family or people in general for our problems but the real problem is ourselves.
Nobody else is responsible for your happiness except for you. I ended up dating that girl my senior year of high school after I made all those positive adjustments in my life. If you are unhappy with certain areas of your life, it is your responsibility to change it. Period.