The Future starts now!

Post date: 03-Sep-2010 20:14:50

I’ve been thinking a lot about responsibility and accountability this week. Perhaps sparked by discussions last week at the Tangible Ireland Ambassadors Summer School about the kinds of change we would like to see in Ireland for our society, our economy and indeed our governance.

While presenting the fundamentals of goal-setting, visioning for change and achieving success, someone noted that although we might already know the route to success, we often don’t follow it and asked why that might be.

Essentially, I believe it comes down to responsibility and accountability. We now know that life is 1% what happens to us and 99% how we respond. Everything that has ever been created started as an idea in someone’s mind and so we create our own reality with the thoughts, pictures and intentions we hold in our mind. This knowledge is incredibly liberating. If the future is created by our thoughts, and we have control of our thoughts then we have control of our future. This should be great news and allow us all to pursue excellence and success in every aspect of our lives. On the flipside, however, it also challenges us to accept responsibility for our mistakes and our failures. If we believe we’re in control of our lives, we don’t get to moan about how awful it all is and wonder why “they” don’t fix it.

And let’s face it, as a nation, we take moaning to an art form! It is more comfortable to complain about the failings of others or the system than to take 100% responsibility for where we find ourselves in our lives. The problem with that comfort is that it prevents us from acting.

So perhaps this recession has a silver lining after all, which is that many of us are no longer comfortable anyway, so why not capitalise on that discomfort by using it as the motivation to change? There is no “they”, there is only every one of us making a choice between being a victim of circumstance or creating a better future.

Your future is yours to create and every thought counts – so be sure you’re focussed on the future you want rather than dwelling on the problems you currently perceive. The future starts now and you get to take 100% responsibility for yourself. As Molière said “It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”