I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve always been a self help junkie. I’d spend my weekends scouring bookstores, looking for someone else to tell me how to be better. I’ll admit that I still read a ton of self-help books, but I’ll summarize all of them in three words, to save you a ton of money, time, and effort.

Radical Self Responsibility

That’s it. There’s literally nothing else to it.

If you’ve reached adulthood, your life is entirely the way it is because of you, and you alone. Your thoughts. Your actions. Your decisions. I know how harsh this might sound, but it is true. Regardless of the hardships you’ve endured, this is still true. There’s always a case of someone who has overcome worse obstacles, and yet pulled through to accomplish amazing things.

I’m not telling you this to shame you in any way, shape, or form. I’m telling you this because I wish someone had told me sooner.

At the height of my own health issues, I sat over my toilet bowl hunched in a lot of pain, throwing up blood. I had been diagnosed with PCOS a few years earlier, and was now experiencing bowel issues. I felt completely at mercy of my own body.

Why am I experiencing so many health issues, when all my friends my age are completely fine?

I’d think to myself. I exercised, I ate ‘healthy,’ I’d meditate daily for goodness sake. It didn’t seem fair.

Girl, life isn’t fair. There isn’t some score being kept up in the sky, ensuring that we’re all passed an equal share of hardship or certain consequences for our choices. Some people smoke cigarettes everyday and still live to see their 90’s, apparently unharmed by the well documented ill effects of smoking.

That’s when it dawned on me. No one can take care of you the way YOU can take care of you.

It’s not my doctor’s fault I’m sick, it’s not our food system, and it’s definitely not any past trauma’s fault that I was unwell.

It was me. 100%, on me.

I ignored alarm bells over and over again, expecting someone else to come take care of me when something inevitably went wrong. I expected our medical system to magically cure me with a pill or magic treatment. Luckily, that didn’t work out, because the journey it took me on was so much better.

I took responsibility for everything. I went on an extremely restrictive diet to get better, without knowing if I’d ever be able to live a ‘normal’ life again. I learned about the pathology of my health issues, and reached out to very different health practitioners to learn their opinions, and then formed my own. I went to school. I studied.

Through a lot of trial and error, I finally got it right. It was cool to experience good health again, but it was even cooler to carry over this new mentality to everything else in my life.

Over the next 5 years, I cleaned house. I audited my relationships, my finances, my fears, and any other lingering poor habits I had lurking around.

Your life is your responsibility, and yours alone.

If it helps you can think about yourself like you’re taking care of a small child. You’d tell them to go outside and get some exercise, eat their vegetables, and get to bed at a decent hour. You’d make sure they’re doing their homework, and maintaining healthy relationships.

Own every part of your life, especially when your circumstances don’t feel fair. You could be in a completely different place in 1 year, if you’d just get out of your own way.