Law of Attraction: Taking Responsibility Vs. Blaming Yourself

If a concept like the law of attraction resonates with you, and you want to seriously apply the teachings, one of the key things you must be willing to do is take responsibility for your ‘vibration’ and your life.

If our thoughts, beliefs and feelings determine what shows up for us day-to-day, that means it was us that set the wheels in motion for the variety of manifestations that made their way in.

If our thoughts, beliefs and feelings determine what shows up for us, that means by consciously directing them in a way that supports better stuff showing up, we can create a completely different life for ourselves. That is super-empowering, no?

How great is it to think we don’t have to rely on anything outside of us to make us happy? How great is it to think we are not at the mercy of the whims of others or external forces? How great is it to think we are not tasked with trying to control other people and circumstances, in order to get what we want?

I think it’s pretty damn great.

Many of the ‘LOA-haters’ however, have a bone to pick with this part of the process because they take ‘responsibility’ to mean blaming yourself for all the bad things that happened to you. They believe there is some sort of implication that you somehow wanted these things to happen to you (um…ridiculous much?)

Taking responsibility=awesome. Blaming ourselves…not so much. It is so important to understand the difference and move away from the latter anytime we find ourselves falling into that trap,and it is a trap that is very easy to fall into once you start doing this ‘work.’

We Had No Idea What the Hell We Were Doing (And Still Don’t Sometimes)

The word ‘attract’ can have a negative charge to it, and when many people hear we ‘attract’ something, they take that to mean ‘had it coming,’ ‘brought it on themselves,’ or ‘deserved it.’ And that it so not what it means.

For this to hold water, it would imply that we knew what we were doing by directing our focus and energy in a way that would yield these unpleasant results, and no one would do that.

Our whole goal in life is to maximize the good and minimize the pain, and unless you are a masochist of the highest order, you would never purposely draw these unwanted things to you.

So, yes, we were creating these experiences for us somehow (we may not always know how and that’s okay) but that does not mean blaming ourselves for doing so.

Taking responsibility is about gaining a better understanding of how our experience is formed, and making the conscious effort to work on our inner world.

Taking responsibility is about empowering ourselves with the knowledge we are the ones running the show, and all we need to do is be more deliberate about our focus, decisions and working on our energy.

We are not to be too hard on ourselves for our past—again, we really didn’t know how it worked. Whatever happened happened. Sure, things may have turned out differently if we started doing this work sooner, but it wasn’t time yet I guess.

All that crap shaped us and played its part, and we can learn from it.

At The Time It Seemed Like the Best Option

Remember what I said not a few hundred words ago about us being driven to maximize pleasure and minimize pain? No matter how silly it may seem in hindsight now that certain decisions were made from this perspective, they were.

The situations may not have been good exactly but they were better, more tolerable, less scary, less painful, less uncomfortable than whatever alternatives were available at the moment.

You may be berating yourself for staying with your abusive husband for as long as you did, but 10 years ago, when you were a young mother with a young child who had never held a real job in her life, and had zero savings and zero marketability, staying with him probably seemed like the better option.

You may be beating yourself up for not following your passions and spending the last decade working a job you hated. But you were newly married, your wife was pregnant and you were presented with an opportunity for a steady salary that would allow you to buy a home and get health insurance for your family. Taking that job probably quelled a lot of heavy fears and anxieties about your new life and responsibilities, and you couldn’t pass up a chance for that sweet relief.

In this ‘higher’ vibe and with this different perspective, you will naturally question why you ever did anything you didn’t want to do because you now realize it doesn’t have to be that way.

But at the time, you were operating from a whole different space energetically, a space thick with the conditioning of your family, community and culture at large, beliefs that smacked of being powerless, a general idea that life is supposed to be a struggle and no one really gets what they want and the like.

At the time, these choices made the most sense, they made us feel good in some way, or at the very least, quelled any bad feelings we may have been having, at least to some degree.

This time wasn’t wasted—it all brought you to where you were today. There were lots of lessons learned and lots of insights gained, that will serve you extremely well as you embark on your new journey as a deliberate creator of your life.

How Quickly We Forget…

Again, as we change, our perspective changes. We may look at things that have happened in our past completely differently. We will conclude perhaps we should have made different decisions. We’ll want to beat ourselves up for the choices we made, and grapple with regret and ‘what if.’

We can forget what drove us to make certain decisions in the first place, and we may sometimes find ourselves thinking we did something we shouldn’t have done, and maybe things would have turned out better for us had we made a different choice.

Maybe you divorced your husband when your children were very young, and you feel badly sometimes how it has affected them. Would your kids have turned out better had you stayed? Maybe if you guys had tried a bit harder. Maybe you were too hard on him or things weren’t really as bad as you thought they were.

Many years have passed and time is often a great healer. We often forget many things, and forgetting can be a blessing. You may have forgotten how terrible your marriage was, and how his drinking was affecting your life and your children. You may have forgotten many of the instances where you clearly observed the negative impact of the state of your home life on them.

Leaving that marriage and getting your children in a different environment was the best choice at that time. Could things have turned out differently? Sure, maybe. But those other options weren’t on the table at the time and you did the right thing.

You may be thinking about the ex-boyfriend who was perfect on paper, and was ready to marry you. If you had only said yes, you would have so many of the things you want right now, like the great house and the cute kids. How stupid you were to make that choice. You may beat yourself up for being too picky or whatever. You had a chance to get all the things you wanted and you blew it.

From your space of feeling lonely, and perhaps a bit desperate, you think of all the great things about him. But you forgot how at the time, you realized you really weren’t in love with him. You were different in really fundamental ways that probably would have made for a difficult relationship as time went on.

When contending with situations like this, it is easy to forget what was really going on at the time, and how these choices were actually good, and being made from the right frame of mind.

Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

When doing this work, it is so important not to be too hard on yourself. Your mind is going to want to criticize and judge. It’s going to want to remind you of all the better decisions you could have made.

It will want to torture you with visions of all ways your life could have been different if only you had gotten on this path sooner, had these realizations and this outlook sooner.

Do your best to shift course when this happens and just focus on now and moving forward. Realize that yes, all that happened was in response to your energy, and you can now be more deliberate in shaping that energy, so that different things show up.

If you have it in you, try to develop some gratitude for all the crap in your life…without it, you never would have been driven to create something better. You would have never been put on the path of truly creating something great.

Your Turn…

What did you think of the post? Anything resonate in particular? Do you find yourself sometimes walking the line between responsibility and self-blame? Anything you would add to what I said here? Looking forward to your comment as always.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for the next call in the Manifesting Like a Mofo Series

Onward and Upward: Releasing Your Grip on the Past