One of the principles of Living From Your Higher Self is being willing to explore your true self. Another important feature is the ability to take responsibility for your experience. Taking responsibility does not mean taking the blame for things that go wrong. When you understand the philosophy, you will know that when we know better, we do better. Taking responsibility means owning the moment and deciding what to do next. It is the best way to empower yourself to move forward.

If you are waiting for someone else to change, or feel resentful about your situation because of someone else, then this part of the philosophy is for you.

Years ago, I applied for a promotion and thought I had a good chance of success. When it went to someone else, I was disappointed. My immediate reaction was to search for reasons, including blaming favouritism and pointing the finger at the decision-makers for what, in my mind, was a curious choice. I spent some weeks stewing over how they’d got it wrong.

What finally snapped me out of it was a piece of advice from a coach that I have written about before. It was a pointed lesson on humility and taking responsibility for my experience. They helped me see that I was wasting energy blaming others or expecting them to conform to my needs, and that maybe I had it wrong.

I realised that, regardless of how unfair I had deemed the decision, my next move was entirely up to me. So, I swallowed down my pride, asked for feedback, and focused on learning what I could do to become the undeniable choice for the next round. When the next opportunity came up, I got the job.

This applies to almost anything in life. We can waste our time obsessing over what someone else did wrong, or we can ask ourselves a much more useful question: “What do I do now?”

When we operate from a reactive place, blame becomes a defence mechanism. The ego loves to protect itself, prove it’s right, and find a villain. We replay conversations in our heads and gather evidence to support our version of events. After I missed out on that promotion, my ego was hyper-focused on how unfairly I’d been treated and completely uninterested in whether I had room to grow.

Sometimes, life is just unfair. I’m all for getting annoying situations off my chest; however, constantly railing about them only prolongs suffering. Moving past the ego doesn’t mean pretending bad things don’t happen. But as long as your focus stays glued to someone else’s bad behaviour, you miss your own options. If you wait for an apology, recognition, or a change of heart before you allow yourself to move on, you are giving that person massive power over your life.

Taking responsibility means being the active driver of your own life, not a passenger. Self-awareness helps us notice when we are simply reacting out of hurt and gives us space to examine our assumptions.

Taking responsibility simply means recognising what is actually within your control: your next action, the boundaries you set, and the support you ask for.

Crucially, this has limits. You are never responsible for someone else’s harmful behaviour, and accepting responsibility doesn’t mean blaming yourself for being hurt. Sometimes you just need safety, time, and space to process a setback before you can even think about the next step. You can still hold people accountable and ask for explanations. But you give your power away the moment your ability to move forward depends on them agreeing with you. They might never see it your way. What are you going to choose if they don’t?

If you want a practical way to unpack these instances, Byron Katie’s approach, often called The Work and set out in her book Loving What Is, is helpful. It uses four simple questions to challenge our assumptions about how others “should” behave, asking whether a thought is true, whether you can absolutely know it’s true, how you react when you believe it, and who you would be without it.

Finally, you turn the thought around to see the opposite perspective. It brings your attention right back to yourself.

I used her technique for some serious issues, but one particularly light-hearted one was when I used to constantly complain about how untidy my children were. I used to get home and clear up their mess. With a demanding job, that made life very stressful. I tried everything, but at that stage in their lives, being tidy and doing the chores I wanted them to do was just not going to happen.

So I applied The Work. “My children should keep the house tidy” turned around to “I ought to keep the house tidy,” and that was the truth of it. I realised I was just causing myself and them excessive anxiety because of my expectations. I recognised I was the only one who actually cared about a tidy, organised house, and then I had a decision to make. I either spent my free time doing the housework, or I employed some help. I chose the latter.

I still catch myself wishing people would act differently, and I still waste a surprising amount of time mentally managing other people’s lives. But these days, I notice it much sooner.

When I notice thoughts like “They should have…” or “Why can’t they just…?”, I pause and ask: “What actually needs my attention right now?”

Maybe I need to speak up, or maybe I need to set a firmer boundary. Sometimes I just need to sit with the disappointment for a minute. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean you always have an immediate, perfectly wise response.

With that promotion, I couldn’t guarantee I’d get it the second time around. But once I stopped pointing fingers, I finally had something productive to do. I could learn and prepare. That’s why taking responsibility feels so liberating. Other people’s choices will always affect us, but we always get the final say in what happens next.