Learn about responsibility and empowerment.

To be as free, strong, and secure in our own person as possible, we have to learn how to accept responsibility.

To understand how this works let's pretend that you decide to bake a chocolate cake. You find the recipe for chocolate cake, you follow the instructions, and after leaving it in the oven for the correct number of minutes, you pull out a delicious dessert that you made yourself. Once it is cooled you then decide to eat the cake. You eat and eat and eat, and it is so wonderful that you just keep on eating. Soon you have given yourself a tummy ache.

If you were then to blame your mother for your tummy ache, because she left all of the ingredients out where you could get at them to make the cake, she may decide to agree with you and lock up all cooking items. She has agreed to take partial responsibility for your tummy ache. The results are that because you were unwilling to take responsibility, you lost the right to cook, you lost the pleasure of succeeding at baking a cake, and you lose the pleasure of eating your own cake.

However, if you were to accept that it was your own actions that brought about your tummy ache, then later you can bake a cake again, but this time you will know better than to eat so much. So you learn a lesson and continue to be able to make and enjoy cakes.

When you are willing to take responsibility for the outcomes of your choices, you can take credit when things go right, and learn when things go wrong. You are less likely to project the things you don't like about yourself onto others. You also do not give away your own power in order to be safe. When you are safe within yourself, you have less reason to be afraid of people, since you are more confident that you can work things out, and you probably can. Tolerance does require this sort of courage.

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