Excerpt from The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.

Taking responsibility

liberates you; in fact, it is perhaps the single most liberating thing there is. Even when it hurts, even when it doesn’t seem fair. When you don’t take responsibility, when you blame others, circumstances, fate, or chance, you give away your power. When you take and retain full responsibility—even when others are wrong or the situation is genuinely unfair—you keep your life’s reins in your own hands.

Negative and difficult things happen to all of us; most of them are mostly or completely out of our control. It’s how we react, how we view those circumstances and conditions, that makes the difference between success and failure—and that is completely within our control. As the American naturalist John Burroughs put it, “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”