Its All Your Fault-Take Responsibility for Your Sh*t!

​Welcome back to the real value podcast, the podcast about business, life, success; about finding value in anything and everything, and about creating absolutely as much of it as you can with the time we have! Good morning my friends, my name is Blaine Feyen and I am your host for this, and every episode of the Real Value Podcast! I trust that you have made it safely, healthily, and happily over to this side of another great week of being alive and appreciating all that you've been given to make something in this world. If, by some crazy stretch, you have not made it to this side of the week and haven't found anything to be appreciative of, just give me a call, I'll gladly chat with you and we can do a mindset adjustment. I love helping people find things to be appreciative of and see a side of things that maybe they haven't taken the time, or maybe were simply never trained to see. ​

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You know, if you’ve listened to this show for any period of time, you'll know by now that I am really big on personal responsibility and taking responsibility for everything and anything that goes on in your life. If I haven't made that clear by now then I need to work on my articulation, communication, and story telling abilities because it is foundational pillar of my personal and professional belief system and one of the mindsets that I have been teaching for over 2 decades. I learned the concept in my early 20s and really embraced the idea because I love to have control. I don't think those closest to me would call me a control freak or anything like that because I don’t have to control everything around me, but I like the idea that I am in control, to some degree, of the things that are controllable. Meaning, for example, if we're going somewhere by car, I like to be the one driving because I like to think I am super aware of what's going on around me, where the potential dangers are, I've had lots of driving experience, I drive very defensively, I am constantly eliminating, or at least reducing, potential hazards and danger points from the route by taking precautionary measures and keeping distance between me and the other drivers, I'm always on the lookout for escape options should things get hairy, and so on. By being the one doing the driving, I feel like I have some sense of control over my destiny while in the car and so I take responsibility for everything that goes on while I am driving. Some people, while driving, tend to have a sense that things are happening to them which leads to greater anxiety and stress and a feeling that they have less control of their surroundings as a result. People randomly pull into your lane without using their signals, you get cut off, the light turns red at the intersection when you’re late for an appointment, you get behind the school bus at 2:45 and stuck while it stops at every corner to drop off kids, and you an feel your blood pressure rise as your attitude takes a nosedive. All of this is happening to you! What did you do to deserve this? Why does this always happen to me? Does anybody around here know how to drive? Look at all these distracted drivers on their cell phones! All of these things are happening to you and theres nothing you can do about it…or is there? 
 
Yes! Of course there is! You didn’t think I’d leave you just hanging there with your stress and anxiety and lack of control feelings in your hands, did you? You should know me better than that by now! Let me introduce you to synesthesia patterns. Synesthesia patterns are, at their most basic, utilizing all of ones senses and having one sensory input affect another. So, for example, some synesthetes, as they’re called, perceive numbers and letters as colors. Each number or letter corresponds with a color for these people. It happens naturally and without their conscious input. For others, certain numbers or dates are perceived as having a specific and precise location in space. For these kinds of synesthetes, they may see and feel time as either a big ruler so older dates are located on the left side of the ruler and future dates are located to the right of the ruler. Some see time as a 3 dimensional map of the world with different dates representing space on this map. The point about synesthesia is that we all have this capability whether we know it or not, some develop it very early in childhood and never have it beaten out them through linear education, while others tend to grow out of some of the more extreme versions of synesthesia, like the numbers and letters as colors example. I learned about synesthesia while studying meditation because meditation awakens this ability to have different senses informing other senses. One form of synesthesia is called chromesthesia, which means these people relate sound to color in some way. For example, one person may here a guitar and ‘see’ blue circles in space, while another synesthete may hear the same guitar and ‘feel’ the color blue. The act of hearing something, one sense, triggers an automatic connection to another sense like feeling, tasting, seeing, or smelling. 
 
So why are we talking about smelling the color blue when we hear a guitar? We were just talking about stress, anxiety, traffic, and getting stuck behind school busses and now I’m rambling on about tasting shapes, seeing smells, and feeling numbers. The greater point is that all of our senses, in some way, inform all of our other senses. Over time, we learn to either discard and shut down the information we receive from certain senses that we don’t or can’t relate to the other senses. Most of us don’t assign a particular taste or smell to a color, nor do most of us feel the date 1970 as being located at a particular place on a 3 dimensional map. We are all, however, affected positively or negatively by the information that is taken in by all of our senses. And this is where the idea of control and personal responsibility come into play. Everything we say and do, regardless of whether its said internally, meaning our internal self talk, or externally, meaning out loud using our tone and volume, kinesthetically affects how you feel both internally and externally. This is an example of synesthesia where what you hear affects how you feel, regardless of whether you hear it through your ears or from within your own head. You’ll immediately understand this concept if I were to ask you how you feel when you think about your spouse or significant other saying that they love you, or they’re very proud of you. All it takes is a thought of that experience and it elicits a feeling. The thought of a sound elicits a chemical reaction in your body related to positive feelings. If you’re like me and many others, you hear an old song and you instantly have a feeling of that time when you were first hearing or listening to that song. It could have been 10, 20, or 30 years or more ago and the same feelings come rushing back. For many of us, certain smells trigger feelings and memories from our past that get anchored in to our brains. I can smell one particular hand soap and it brings me back to a family trip to northern michigan when I was 12 years old. I can instantly remember everything that we did, where we went, the taste of the ice cream, the feeling of playing miniature golf, and the feelings I had during that time. Without the smell of the soap, I can still remember what we did, but its much more difficult to access the feelings and the tastes. The triggering of the smell instantly connects all of those other sense memories which means they are intricately linked inside my brain, just as they are in yours. 
 
What this also means is that what we constantly tell ourselves internally and externally, what we are being exposed to, or what we expose ourselves to, on a daily basis creates connections in our brains and burns in patterns that are connected to other senses. We become very good at triggering those connections with how we speak, think, and act on a daily basis. To go back to the traffic example, how you feel in those situations I mentioned is related to the connections you’ve made internally and how you’ve anchored those scenarios in your mind. When you feel out of control in those situations, as if all of those things are happening to you, it triggers a kinesthetic response, which means a physical response, both internally and externally, and all based on what you are seeing through your eyes, telling yourself internally about what you are seeing, and then feeling the feelings that are associated with those activities. What I am quite confident in hypothesizing about you, even though I may not know you yet personally, is that your body language changes with each one of those mental states. The mind and body are inextricably and vitally linked and they both affect each other regardless of whether the experience is positive or negative. I’m quite sure that your physiology would look different if I asked you to imagine hearing those loving words from your significant other than if I asked you to imagine being in traffic and being cut off or pushed out of your lane. Your physiology would also look different if I asked you to remember a time when you won an award for some kind of achievement or a time when you were extremely successful at something. Typically what happens when I ask somebody to do this exercise, you can visibly see their bodies become straighter and more upright, more confident looking. Their chin rises up off their chest and their head starts to tilt more upward in a dignified position. Even their breathing changes when they start thinking about those memories. Conversely, If I then thrust you back into the memory of a high stress or depressing situation, the physiology changes quite dramatically. The posture loses its dignified erect posture, they begin to slump a bit, the breathing becomes more shallow and rapid, and the chin makes its way back down toward the chest. Try it on yourself just sitting on the couch, or try it with a friend and see if you can see the physiological changes that occur. The point being that you and you alone control how you feel and respond to what goes on around you. If you don’t like the way you feel about something, one of the quickest ways to change how you feel, there are two parts to it: the first step is to immediately change your physiology. By that, I mean, take a quick survey of your body, your posture, your overall physiology, and then find a way to change it so that you are more upright, more dignified in your posture, your chin comes off of your chest, your head moves back so that your neck is in alignment with your spine, you relax your jaw (most people tighten their jaw when they experience stress and anxiety), and you find a way to open up your belly a bit so that you can begin breathing more deeply (most people’s breathing becomes shallow when they’re stressed and anxious). 
 
The second step is to take complete responsibility for everything that is going on around you. The people who feel the most stress and anxiety are those who are always focused on the past or the future and have a sense of not being in control of it. In essence, they feel out of control as if everything is happening to them without their consent and they worry about what is going to happen next. Changing your physiology is the first step in developing a sense of control because you do have control of your body and your breathing. You also have control of what you are thinking, despite what many of you may believe sometimes. You get to choose your thoughts but your brain is a muscle and choosing your thoughts is an exercise that must be practiced regularly to make it a habit. Taking complete responsibility means taking responsibility for how and what you are thinking and, and this is a big one, everything that is going on around you at any given moment. ‘But Blaine, I didn’t choose to get cut off! That was an asshole driver!’ Taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life does not mean you have to say you chose to be cut off or your chose to get cancer or you chose to lose your job. What radical responsibility means is that you learn to stop assigning blame, which just keeps you in the victim category, and you immediately move to accepting that it happened, whatever it may be, and then you immediately move to acceptance and control. Not control of the situation necessarily, but control of the only thing you truly have control of which is you! Your thoughts, your emotions, your physiology, your mental construct of what happened, your response to that thing, and how you’re going to respond in the very next moment. Will it be an out of control response or will it be a calm, cool, collected response that has immediately accepted that what just happened happened and now you move on. It takes practice my friends. I wouldn’t expect a long time habitual middle finger giver with anger management issues to immediately adopt a lifestyle of radical responsibility and accepting total responsibility for everything that occurs in their life, but they can eventually. 
 
We’ve talked in other episodes what goes on in your body when you're experiencing lots of stress and anxiety with the release of adrenaline, cortisol, and a virtual cocktail of fight, flight, or freeze hormones and chemicals so I wont go into it in this episode. Just understand that the person who takes complete and 100% responsibility for everything that occurs in their life experiences significantly less of those disease creating and life altering hormones and likely lives a considerably more rich and full life of peace. When you take complete responsibility for everything, and again, that doesn’t include placing blame, it simply means accepting that what is is and whatever just happened happened and that’s it, the world open up for you and opportunities make themselves known to you. Now, I can tell you as somebody who has been living this exercise for a long time, what eventually happens is that your decision making skills become fairly adept and your vision and awareness expands exponentially outward. Why does this happen? Simple! When you take responsibility for everything that happens in your life you learn from everyone and everything that happens and you log those experiences in your brain. Because you take complete responsibility for everything, (not blame, which is an out of control inducing response), you will immediately learn something from each experience and that will begin to inform your response for the next time that thing may occur. In essence, you’ll become very adept at seeing similar patterns take shape and unfold before your eyes. Using the traffic scenarios as an example, when you’re driving in traffic, have you ever seen, or are you one of these people, that drives 2 to 3 feet off of the back bumper of the car in front of you? We see it every day on every road we drive on and I can assure you that these are the people either cutting people off or being cut off because they have no room or time to respond to sudden shifts in traffic so their responses are rapid and erratic. They cant possibly see far enough ahead, or in all of the other directions around them, to have adequate escape routes, adequate time to respond to sudden changes, or the ability and awareness to see things unfolding all around them. When you see people driving like this, you know full well that is how they always drive and they likely are throwing middle fingers left and right. They are also dealing with a higher level of stress and anxiety, and certainly causing it in others. They likely feel that by driving like this that they’ll get to their destination faster than the person who keeps 2 to 3 car lengths between themselves and the car in front of them, which we know from the many tests done by highway safety and departments of transportation all around the world, its an almost physical impossibility that this will occur. At best, it may put you in the parking lot mere seconds before the more cautious or responsible driver but at an extremely higher level of risk and stress. What we also know about these people is that they are complaining about every other driver on the road and how stupid and idiotic they are. As an aside, I will confess to you that I believe I am one of the best drivers on the road because of my awareness and I take every opportunity to tell whomever is in the car with me that I am, in fact, the best driver on the road. I will frequently point out to my kids when I see silly things going on in front of me because I want them to see the benefit of having distance and having time to respond as you see things unfolding in front of you. What I typically don’t do, however, is bitch and complain about everybody else on the road. I will occasionally throw out a ‘look, look, look…look at that jerk weaving in and out of traffic!’ Or ‘look at that asshole texting and driving!’ and I do it as a way to bring awareness to my kids or even to just to recognize that I’ve noticed it. What I wont do is wallow in it and act is if it is all happening to me and I have no control. 
 
The individual for whom these things happen to, because they take responsibility for everything in their lives, will take measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again and they begin to modify their behavior. This is what taking responsibility for everything looks like. Something happens, you don’t assign blame, you simply accept that it happened. You then log the experience and immediately move to asking, ‘how can I make sure that doesn’t happen the same way again in the future?’, and your brain finds answers that then inform your new behavior and you begin to modify your driving habits to conform to your new view of the world, one where you’ve just taken responsibility for ensuring that the chances of being cut off, having to stop suddenly, cause an accident, and maybe not get to your destination is considerably less likely to happen. The driving example is an easy one because we all do it every day and we can all relate to those examples, either because you’re the cutter offer or you’re the cut-off-ee. Where this mindset and lifestyle pays huge dividends, however, is in your personal life and business. A vast majority of the people walking the streets today have a script playing in their heads that says they are who they are and have what they have, or don’t have, because of something that happened to them. They are always placing the opportunity to truly change a circumstance outside of themselves to a large degree because what happened to them was out of their control and, therefore, nothing they could have done to change it. And because it happened to them, instead of because of them, no changes are required because the blame lies solely in the direction of the thing that occurred. By the way, if you’re listening to this and saying, ‘oh, that’s not me, I take responsibility for everything’, its likely not true. We all have hidden areas of our lives that are still operating from a place of ‘its their fault’. It just happens subconsciously so it flies under the radar for most people. 
 
In the appraisal industry specifically, we can see this attitude in every direction. The constant complaining about AMCs, low fees, crappy clients, turn times, asshole Realtors and lenders, how terrible things are, what a shitty business this is, and the list goes on and on. Any time you hear blame being thrown about after a complaint, you know you have a person who doesn’t take responsibility for their life and the goings on around them. Watch out for these people my friends. For all of the new appraisers who have just come into the industry or have maybe been in it for a couple years, put up your armor and protect yourself from these people at all costs! One of the struggles you will have as a new appraiser is the mountain of bad attitudes and non-responsibility takers in this industry. If you hang around these people long enough to be infected, you too will begin to think the whole world has gone mad and appraisers are the only ones who are sane, just grossly misunderstood. And this couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, we all deal with asshole Realtors and Lenders, yes, many of you deal with AMCs who don’t value your work in the same way you and your peers do. Yes, we all deal with a little bit of what appears to be insanity at times. How you respond to it, however, determines what opportunities you see inside of the insanity. Just like the driver who starts to take responsibility and puts 2-3 car lengths between themselves and the next car so that they have time to respond to changes and see hidden opportunities in all directions, the individual who looks around themselves and says, ‘ok, this is happening and I am part of it.’ But then goes on to ask, ‘how exactly am I part of it, how have I contributed to it, and what can I do to change my situation, or at least view, of it?’ That’s what taking responsibility sounds like. No blame being thrown in the direction of agents, lenders, AMCs, legislators, USPAP, or anybody or anything else involved in your traffic situation. 
 
When you become part of our coaching program and are part of the small group calls, you’ll hear me often asking the question, “why do you allow that to happen?”, or “why have you allowed that to occur?” The coaching members get quite used to hearing it and eventually start saying it themselves before I can even chime in. It’s a phrase and a question that rattles people out of their helplessness in many situations. It pisses them off to hear it and beginners will often push back and give all kinds of excuse, ‘but Blaine, I didn’t do it, they did… it just happened to me!’ And I’ll say, “and why did you allow it to happen to you?”, and we go on like this until eventually they say something like, ‘well, I guess I had a feeling something like this could happen, I just didn’t think it would happen to me.’ Or, ‘I guess I saw it coming but didn’t think it would happen on this scale to somebody like me.’ You see, I know its in there! I know that most of you know how to take responsibility for whatever is occurring in your lives but the script you were raised with and continue to feed still lives! It lives in your mind and the subconscious portions of your brain. You have so many connections that trigger that behavior that you are completely unaware of. Its not unlike a smoker who gets in the car and lights up. Why? Because it’s a trigger. They have something to eat, boom, light up. It’s a trigger. Drive by the bar, or the gas station, or the office, or the grocery store, boom!, light up. It’s a trigger. Smell beer or whiskey, boom! Light up! It’s a trigger. You cant help it, its these damn cigarettes. They’re throwing themselves into your mouth! How rude would it be to not light them once they’re in there? Rude! Gotta light em up! Blame the cigarettes, the stress, the workload, the air, the wife, the kids, whatever set of excuses you’ve built into support of that thing and that which allows you to not take responsibility for it. Blame the AMCs, the agents, the lenders, the fees, the expenses, the damn car, the licensing model, the education requirements, you name it and there are appraisers out there complaining about it. And you can absolutely believe that where one of those people exists, there is a whole group of unhappy, stressed out, anxious people either commiserating with them or so damn sick of hearing it that they’ve built up their own armor and their own set of excuses for why they allow YOU to be the way you are! ‘Well, he’s all I got. He pays the bills. She’s my boo. That’s just the way he is.’ If you and I were sitting in a bar sharing a libation together and you were complaining about work, your spouse, your kids, or anything else that most people complain about, you’d hear the same question from me, “why do you allow that to go on?” “Why do you allow him/her to act that way around you?” “Why do you put up with this and not do anything about it?” And do you know what people say in response to those questions?, “geez Blaine, I’m just talking. You know, I’m just venting my frustrations.” To which I say, “if you have frustrations that are in need of venting, that means you have unaddressed issues that need addressing lest you desire to live with them the rest of your life. If you don’t want to address them, that’s your choice, but never complain about them ever again. Shut up about it or change it!” If you listened to the episode called Appraiser Wisdom Keys, you’ll recognize that as one of them. Never complain about what you’re willing to and have been permitting or allowing in your life. Take responsibility for it, shut up about or change it. It really is that simple. 
 
As you can imagine, I don’t have many friends anymore as a result of this behavior, but that’s ok because I take responsibility for it. They know that I’m that way and they know they’re going to get a dose if they start bitching about something so, either they call somebody else who will commiserate with them, or they don’t bitch when they’re with me. The funny thing about people who like to do that with their friends is that they have no care or concern for what dumping their issues on you does to your state of mind or the friendship. The other funny thing about those kinds of people is that they are very unlikely to be around or available if you want to vent. They are typically one way relationships. Why? Because they never take responsibility for their shit! And they sure as heck don’t care about yours. If somebody wants to bitch about something, I’ll let them bitch for a time, and then we’re going to move in the direction of asking, “what are we going to do about it?” if they say, “nothing, I just wanted to bitch”, I’ll say, “great, you got it out, now never bring it up again.” What I know about these kinds of people as well, and this is the real takeaway, is that many of these people need this angst and for things to not be going well for them to feel alive. Being out of control of their shit is the only way they feel comfortable. If they start to take control and responsibility for their baggage and the things going on in their lives they eventually sabotage because it’s the only place they feel comfortable. Learn to recognize this behavior pattern in yourself and in others my friends. God forbid you end up partnering with somebody like this, being mentored by somebody like this, working for or with somebody like this, or becoming somebody like this.  If you ask the honest question, “is that me?”, and the answer comes back a resounding “yes!”, that is great news my friend. Its like the first step an addict must take in admitting they have a problem. Admitting you haven't been taking full responsibility for your life and all that is in it is the first step to change.
 
What I recommend doing, as a regular practice, is to become very familiar with the following three questions and asking yourself these questions often. Making these part of a daily exercise is the next step to taking full responsibility for everything that has and is occurring in your life. When you do start taking complete control of everything, you have complete control over making positive changes. If you give any ounce of control away to external circumstances, other people, your ex-wife or husband, the car accident, the cancer, the appraisal industry, realtors, lenders, or your fellow appraisers, you are relinquishing your opportunity to see opportunities and make changes that benefit you. We talked in a past episode called ‘Save Yourself’ about how you can be a positive influence on a whole industry by taking care of you. A big part of taking care of you is taking full responsibility for everything and anything in your life. So the three questions I recommend making part of your daily habits are:
 
Question one: “what in my life and/or business do I not feel in control of? Remember, these are honest questions asked by yourself in the privacy of your home of office. You don’t have to share them with anyone else if you don’t want to. If you want to share them with me, I keep that kind of thing in strictest confidence and can usually offer some insight. Nevertheless, ask yourself honestly and be prepared to write down an honest set of answers. Becoming honest and vulnerable with yourself is a big part of this process. When you can be painfully honest with yourself and answer these questions honestly, then you start the journey called progress. An easy example we deal with all the time with coaching members is an answer to this question that sounds something like, “I feel out of control of the business development process”, or ‘I feel out of control of how to go about doing more but working the same amount of hours’, or ‘I feel out of control of the process of hiring a virtual assistant or using some of the technology that’s out there to be more efficient.’ And to be honest, it doesn’t really matter what the answer is because, if you’re being honest with yourself, whatever it is is true for you and just admitting it is the first step to addressing it, which comes next. 
 
So question two is: “why do I feel out of control in this area and what is holding me back?” So the first question is a ‘what’ question. What do I feel out of control of? The second question is a ‘why’ question. “Why do I feel this way?” What is the thing that needs work, why does it need work, and why have I not taken responsibility for it prior to today. The idea behind asking the second question is not to shame, blame, or feel like a failure. The question is designed to get you into the practice of taking responsibility for your life. When you can honestly answer why you feel not in control of something and what has been holding you back from making a change, you are making yourself vulnerable to a side of yourself that may have been hiding, shaming, blaming, avoiding, and protecting the status quo. So, in answering the second question in response to the first answer of ‘I feel out of control of growing my business but being able to work the same amount of hours or less’, you might answer, “I feel out of control of that process because I already work too many hours and cant keep up with the work I have, even though I want to be doing more.” “What’s holding me back is the feeling of overwhelm and not having any real systems set up in my business to help me get more done in less time.” By the way, these are real answers from students. I wont ever share anybody’s name but when we share struggles, we often find others in the groups having the same issues. So, first asking what, then asking why you feel that way and how you have helped create the situation. This is super important in this process my friends! If you don’t start taking responsibility for stuff at this point in the process, the potential solutions to the problem will look different than if you do take responsibility for where you are. When you take responsibility for everything, even when it’s embarrassing and hard to do, the answers and solutions take a different form. You’ve broken down a barrier that will allow you to choose solutions that address the core issue instead of solutions that may help you continue to cover up your role in your current situation. 
 
The third question is one of the easiest and most fun because it’s the action part of the process. The third question we ask ‘what can I do or be doing today to start changing this situation?’ So, what is it that needs work, why do I feel that way and what has my role been in creating this situation, and what can I do today to begin the process? Please hear what question three is really getting at. Its not just hypothesizing an answer to the prior questions and brainstorming solutions. That is part of it and quite an enjoyable part, I think, because you often can come up with a bunch of potential solutions. The great benefit of these kinds of exercises is that you are activating the subconscious with empowering questions and it keeps working 24-7 to find answers. So, even if you don’t come up with a great set of answers right away, you come back to the exercise the next day and you keep asking the same questions. Sometimes it can take a bit to break through your own resistance and admitting your role in all of it. Once you do, however, the ideas and answers start flowing. Question three, however, is designed in a way that helps to stealthily help break through some of the resistance because of the word ‘today’ that is part of the question. When you ask yourself ‘what can I be doing today to change some of this?’, you force your subconscious to push through potentially previous resistance whereby you maybe weren’t able to get any great answers to questions one and two. When you’re asking yourself what can I be doing today to move through or beyond this thing, your subconscious says, ‘oh! You want to know today what can be done?! Ok, why didn’t you say so?!, we can do this, and this, and a little of that…’ And the answers you get from the third question often given you insight and answers to questions one and two where before you maybe struggled to come up with stuff. When you start coming up with answers to the third question like, ‘well, I could start playing around with that iPad I bought a couple years ago but never got around to using’, then you know that the answer to question one should be something that pertains to efficiency, mobility, technology, squeezing more time out of the day, making more money from each of your orders, etc. You can go back to questions one and two and more clearly state what you feel out of control of as it becomes more clear. 
 
The other big benefit of question three and the word ‘today’ being part of it is that you will hopefully feel compelled to actually do some small step today to move you in the direction of taking responsibility for changing whatever you said in questions one, two, and three. How do you eat an elephant, one small bite at a time. You don’t have to change the world overnight my friends. But you do have to change. Change is the only constant we can be sure of. If you can take one small step and make one small change today, then you’re building the muscles to make another small change tomorrow. These are called atomic habits and what it means to be a 1%er! To make tiny incremental changes however, you must know what it is that needs change and what needs your attention. Taking responsibility for everything that is around you and in your life is the first step. Start making the ‘three steps to change’ questioning process a regular part of your routine and I guarantee you’ll see positive changes start to occur. 
 
To wrap this episode up and bring it all back around to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show, your body moves your mind and your mind moves your body. This is a given and is non-negotiable. Recognizing this truth is one great step towards taking responsibility for yourself, your business, and everything that goes on around you. You have control over how you move your body, and subsequently, how your mind and emotions respond. Remember, we all have connections in our brains and bodies that are affected by other senses. You are in control of what you feed all of your senses, for the most part, on any given day. What you listen to while driving, what you watch or listen to while working, what you feed your body nutritionally, how you treat yourself mentally and physically, how you speak to yourself and others, all of these things affect everything else. To be ignorant to these vital unions is simply to be ignorant. You can change your mental state by changing your physiology, just as you can change your physical state by changing your mind. It really is that simple. My recommendation before doing your gratitude exercise and the three steps to change exercise is to first change your physiology so that you put yourself in a positive and dignified position  and posture, which will inform your mind in the same fashion. Sit upright, head held high, breathing deeply in your belly, and chin off of your chest. A simple exercise to change your brainwave state is to adopt the posture I just mentioned and then, without moving your head from its forward looking position, make your eyes look upward toward the top of your head as if you’re trying to look at your eyebrows or find a pair of sunglasses on your head without moving your head. This stimulates your brain into the Theta brainwave state which is a more relaxed state that has easier access to your subconscious. Put yourself in this state before all of your writing, goal setting, and business planning sessions and you’ll have much great access to the in built resources we all have as human beings. Use synesthesia as a way to change your mental state by changing your physical state. Speak positive and affirming words to yourself and others as a way to change your own physiological state from potentially negative to assuredly positive. 
 
I want to thank you my friends for investing your most valuable currency with me this week, and that is, of course, your time. Take some time this week to go through some of the responsibility exercises I went over earlier, you wont be sorry that you did. Find ways and opportunities all around you on any given day to take responsibility for something you may have previously shrugged off as somebody else’s fault or somebody else’s problem. You’ll find yourself becoming a responsibility master and a true leader. When you do start taking responsibility for everything in your life, even the things you thought previously were somebody else’s issues, you give yourself the permission and the power to change it. You may not be able to change things for another person. That is ultimately their responsibility to make changes. But you can take responsibility for how their words or actions effect you, ow you respond to them, and what you are going to do moving forward with that situation. Until you take responsibility for your role in all of it, you’ll never be able to effect positive change for yourself, much less for anyone else. Catch yourself when placing blame or bitching about circumstances over which you have some control. Catch yourself when you hear others placing blame and bitching about circumstance over which they have some control. What’s your initial instinct? Is it to commiserate and jump in with them? Feed the fire and not provide a helpful solution? You’re part of the problem, take responsibility. Taking responsibility in those situations can take a variety of forms. One of the easiest is to simply not be a part of it. Another form is to offer a positive comment and solution. The more you catch yourself in those situations, the more you’re breaking the pattern and script of passing the buck. Eventually, you’ll see those scenarios developing from far off in the distance and you’ll know how to respond or avoid long before it arrives. Just like the traffic situation of driving too close to the person in front of you. Put some distance between you and potentially limiting situations and you’ll begin to see opportunities and solutions far off in the distance. ​