In my travels around the Blogosphere today, I found this post about your Responsibility Quotient. I got a warm fuzzy while reading it, as I always do when I find a kindred spirit out there.

You know you don’t have to look very far to find someone who is whining and crying about their miserable life, yet doing nothing much to change or improve it. Don’t get me wrong - it’s good to vent every now and then. Most of us are living life at breakneck speed, leaving little time to contemplate and reflect and the buildup of frustration, resentment and out and out disappointment can poison even the best efforts at cultivating a positive outlook unless they are dealt with on a regular basis.

Living in this world of duality (can’t have happy without knowing sad, peace without chaos, joy without misery, abundance without lack), we’d be foolish to ignore the negative emotions we experience living life.

But, the trick most of us still need to learn is how to experience the ‘dark side’ without getting stuck there. If you know you’re going to experience sadness, chaos, misery and lack from time to time, then you can become more of an observer of these experiences in your life and resist the urge to claim them as your ‘truth’. By going to the balcony, you can remove yourself from the emotion swirling around you and discover the lessons and gifts each of these so-called negatives bring to your life.

The only way you’re going to be willing to do that is by understanding that you, at the end of the day, are 100% responsible for your life.