REsponsibility: Response-to-YOUR-ability
Sometimes my newsletter comes later in the month than earlier. Know why?
It’s not because I haven’t been thinking of you.
It’s because I literally WAIT until I receive what I am supposed to share. I am getting inspiration all the time, but this [REstore] newsletter is to me a birthing table of the victorious life – my divine monthly opportunity to pour out fresh life into the minds and souls of the overwhelmed.
I cannot just pen a cheerful “get organized” missive that won’t really change anything. I refuse to add mental clutter and “noise” to your life.
I want [REstore] to be for you an open door, a chance every few weeks to REnew and REfresh. A stream of living water.
If it happens later-than-I’d-like, it feels like an overdue baby – I feel the weight of what’s coming and just hold on for the ride. This month feels like that.
We’re going to talk about REsponsibility, ok? But, not in the way you’ve ever thought about it…I promise.
So, if the word “responsibility” itself sends an automatic fear or guilt or “ugh” response zinging through your body, just “breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth” (like I tell my 7 and 5 year old). Take a deep breath….
I’m going to set you FREE!
A major theme of our personal lives over the last four years has been taking back what we have unknowingly given away. I’ve begun to share with you our own intimate journey into a freer, more integrated life.
Our journey into the original design for life has spanned every area; it has impacted the way we run our household, our parenting, our marriage, our relationships, our finances, our health, and our spiritual lives.
We have been shocked at ourselves.
Appalled at the way we – for the majority of our lives – had ceded our responsibilities to someone else.
And we thought we were “responsible” folks. We were hard workers, and me – even a workaholic in the early years of my business. We paid our bills. We avoided debt. We were good, clean living citizens. We were training our kids to be good.
But boy were we asleep.
At the end of the day, we were just a part of a myriad of systems and we did what was expected of us:
- We spent, saved, and gave “appropriately” according to the “rules”, and we felt like we were within good standing
- We hired experts to help us manage our money, because we didn’t understand the stock market and figured others knew better than we did
- We took our kids to the doctor and trusted “expert” advice on how to manage our children’s health without even a thought or research of our own
- We worked at least 8 hours a day, and usually more, and I never felt it was enough – yet getting in an “acceptable” workday felt right, especially considering only one of us “worked”
UNTIL…
We woke up.
And we were wrecked.
And then – little by little – all the systems we had been reflexively participating in had to reckon with us!
Bit by bit, we began to turn our world right-side-up.
Because we had been living upside-down. We had been living UNDER rules and systems and obligations.
You see, we had made a mistake. It seemed innocent enough. It seemed practical. Intellectually, it made sense. We had believed that someone else knew better than we did.
After all, financial advisors and doctors and educators and business gurus were EXPERTS. They went to school – for years – to accumulate the knowledge that we did not have. They had letters after their names. Degrees and specialties to prove they knew more. So, we believed they knew more, could predict better, and could be trusted.
We, along with pretty much everyone else, then trusted the experts with that which had been entrusted to us – from our finances to our children to our souls.
And with every order, rule, and piece of advice we got more numb. More convinced they knew better than us and more dependent.
Thankfully, when we woke up, we realized one simple truth:
True responsibility isn’t about doing the right thing (and if you don’t know which is the right thing and you’re a conscientious person, you will lay down your rights to find others who do).
Authentic respons*ibility is actually a response –to-YOUR-ability. It’s all right there, hidden in the in the word.
In other words, you already have the ability!
After all, you are the expert on YOU!
ü You know how your body feels and when something is out-of-order
ü You are equipped with an on-board warning system if something doesn’t “add up” or “seem right”
ü You were the one entrusted with that marriage, that child, those funds in the first place – and you have an innate sense of what is going to work best
Now, you know that I’m not suggesting that people boycott systems in blind individualism! I am advocating a return to our senses, that you can – in fact – trust your own senses!
I am suggesting that for the vast majority of issues, you CAN trust yourself!!
You see, we have been trained by the many systems that we’ve engaged in that we cannot trust ourselves.
Brands, companies, agencies, and even the government has spent billions to convince us that we need an expert. We cannot possibly do the research ourselves, heal ourselves, manage our resources, or teach our children. We aren’t educated enough, we’re told. Not savvy enough. Not equipped.
And yet…when we WAKE UP…we realize the opposite is true.
We really are limitless.
We can do anything we set our minds to and have the grace to carry out.
We have INCREDIBLE ABILITY stored up in us, just waiting to be released.
But the first step is to push off the safe shores of broken and sheltered thinking. We must break our tether with the reliance on the systems to which we’ve reflexively deferred. Many systems were begun to help mankind, but have dissolved into structures that constrict, rather than free us.
Now, I want to be clear that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong about consulting others for help! At Restoring Order, we use a bookkeeper, a product development team, an accountant, an IT advisor, among many others. And as you know, Restoring Order itself is an organizing products and services company.
So, our big ah-ha was not about departing from outside help and partnerships. That would be isolationist. We are much better because of the partnerships we have. The nexus of what we’ve discovered is that we have had to break free from our dependence on systems and experts to tell us what we should do.
We had to re-engage with our own personal responsibility for every.single.decision. All too often, especially when fear came (someone is sick, market is plummeting, we don’t know how to do something, etc.) our first instinct was to seek and do what an expert advised.
To help you think about this practically, below are some of our own very personal exchanges and upgrades that have happened over time as we began to realize how much we had given over to others. (Now remember, these are OUR discoveries and leadings that we have had – your own discoveries will come from what you seek and critically examine with fresh eyes in your own life):
- The financial system (we have uprooted the way we did things and are constantly evaluating how to be less tethered and more entrepreneurial)
- The health system (we have cut reliance on white coats and white pills, and have reclaimed our health one discovery and trade-up at a time)
- The education system (we homeschool our boys who are living a lifestyle of learning, believing that our loving, productive, safe, free household is the only choice for us)
- The business system (we have intentionally blended business, household, work, ministry, farm, and fun into one integrated dream life of service and destiny)
And our list goes on.
When you reclaim your autonomy and begin to trust yourself, you will start to see how very many areas of your life you had actually subjugated your own wisdom to that of others. You will find out how much territory you have ceded.
Our slogan at Restoring Order is Reclaim Your Life® and, as it turns out, that is exactly what we have experienced in our own life so that we can pay-it-forward to you. We have taken back our lives so that we can champion you as you do the same.
So go ahead, get Response*ible!
Let that AWESOME ABILITY ARISE in YOU!
And then RESPOND to it and recapture that territory someone else may be managing for you.
Never will you experience such freedom as when you come home to the original intent for your life – a place of a personal response to the great ability that was custom-designed into you!
– Vicki
Related:
- Sign up for our monthly inspirational [Restore] enewsletter
- Join the movement of Life Reclaimists by signing up for my free Life Reclaimist Jumpstart
- Visit our Life Reclaimist page for more resources
