Our duty, our right

I love to read motivational quotes, readings and thoughts. A few years ago (2006 to be exact), Mark Condon wrote a Plan for Success for the year. He included the following point. (I will share more points later, I have kept this list hung in my office for four years now, inspirational!).

TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY:
"You must stop blaming everything and everyone for why you are where you are and why your ministry or your department is where it is today because of something or someone. You are where you are today because of your thinking, preparation, and action of your yesterdays. You will be tomorrow for the thinking, preparation and action that you take today. Stop complaining that take responsibility for where you are." (Mark Condon)

Other "responsibility" quotes include:

"I must do something" always solves more problems than "Something must be done."

If you mess up, 'fess up.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs. ~Joan Didion




Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else. ~Ivern Ball

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights. ~Pearl Buck

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. ~John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. ~Bill Maher

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Even when we know what is right, too often we fail to act. More often we grab greedily for the day, letting tomorrow bring what it will, putting off the unpleasant and unpopular. ~Bernard M. Baruch



I don't see the point of being a human being if you're not going to be responsible to your fellow human beings. Selfishness thefts away the human and reduces you to just a being. ~Candea Core-Starke

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. ~Albert Ellis

Duty is what one expects from others. ~Oscar Wilde

You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it. ~Ken Keyes, Jr.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. ~Booker T. Washington

God has entrusted me with myself. ~Epictetus

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it." ~Sidney J. Harris

I have pondered the above thoughts, knowing that the hardest part of wanting to "grow up" is the rush of responsibility that accompanies this desire. Maturity means I have taken on the "right to be a grownup" and take care of my duties....to my God, my family and my country.




The greatest way to feel good about yourself is to take responsibility for your actions...good or bad...own up to them. You will come out a stronger, bigger person...someone you won't be afraid to see in the mirror.