Take a look to your left. Now look to your right. See anything scary?

We’ve established that no one has a gun to your head. That means everything you do is a choice.

You have the choice to either acknowledge that or see yourself as a victim of circumstances.

With responsibility comes power

By taking responsibility for the choices you make in life, you have the power to change things if you’re unhappy. It means you don’t have to wait around and hope others will change. You don’t have to sit miserably while anticipating some future situation in which you can feel happy. You get to decide what the quality of your life will be—one choice at a time.

Taking responsibility for your choices means accepting that you play a role in everything that shows up in life.

If someone treats you badly, you get to choose how to respond. You choose whether to keep that person in your life. And you choose whether you’ll make changes in the future based on the experience.

You choose your goals and how hard you’ll work to attain them. You choose whether to be an angry person or an understanding person. You choose to be honest or deceitful, kind or selfish. You choose to value the people you love or take them for granted. You choose how you spend your time and with whom. You choose to see the world as a basically good or bad place.

All the choices you’ve made up to this point add up to the life you are currently living.

Choosing not to be a victim

The pricetag for all that power is that you have to let go of your claim on victimhood. Since you chose every part of your life, you can’t very well feel victimized if your life stinks.

So instead of fruitlessly whining if things aren’t what you’d like, become your own hero. Start making different choices.

Tired of friends who treat you badly? Get new friends. Don’t like the way you spend your time? Figure out what you really enjoy. Want a better relationship with your kid? Try giving them more love and positive attention.

Different choices, different results

By choosing to make a change, you’ll get different results. Now, those results may or may not make you happy—time will tell. But at least there’s a chance you’ll end up with something better.

Or you can just complain about how your life stinks and keep making the same choices. Guess what your life will look like tomorrow? Same as today.

And if it stinks today, it will probably stink tomorrow too. Your choice.

A good example

Most importantly, by taking responsibility for your own choices, you’ll be showing your child how to avoid living like a victim. You will save them the years spent complaining about how everything outside of them is responsible for their unhappiness in life, because they’ll have the power to change things that don’t work for them.

Let’s raise a generation that understands they are in control of their own lives. They’ll eventually be in charge of the world anyway, so it’s probably better to have them prepared to do it well.